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Rates at dealers and local shops are comprable and within 15% of each other so that's not that big a savings.
I know the likelyhood of having more stuff to break is higher in a more gadget-driven vehicle but bread-and-butter stuff like window regulators, brakes, oil changes and the other stuff discussed here are probably a lot closer than most people think.
JR
oh well..........thank you Terry, Mathias and kyfdx for all your wisdom -- I appreciate your honest input and advice.....I have friends in the business that warn me of the same issues but don't want to be bothering them all the time so it's good to have expanded wisdom online with this program - ! (I confess I'm really bored with my Maxima still so any other ideas to consider would be great!)
Brad
And any upper-crust German car is another factor of two or more.
-Mathias
There are a lot of busy people out there for whom, PRICE isn't the most important thing. In my former life, I was one of those people.
I didn't shop for weeks, scared to death I just may pay a bit more than someone else did. I looked for what I believed was a good value and I bought from a store and a salesperson I liked.
These forums tend to attract people like you mention where PRICE is the only thing that matters.
I've only been in the business for nine years and I've seen a LOT of "new concept" schemes come and go...mostly go.
I still believe in relationship one on one selling. At this point, a large percentage of my business is repeat and referral.
You have done a good job of using these forums for advertising your new venture and I hope you are successful.
Me, I'll take a conventional "walk in" customer anyday over an internet "lowest price shopper". These people are usually friendlier, more down to earth and are more apt to be loyal long term customers.
But, that's me...I can handle both.
Should I call them back and get a signed doc?
you can also get your deposit back at any time, and for any reason...enjoy that fact between now and when they actually get the car for you.
You said...
Me, I'll take a conventional "walk in" customer any day over an internet "lowest price shopper". These people are usually friendlier, more down to earth and are more apt to be loyal long term customers.
Sure I would to if I wore a car salesman's shoes! You stand to make more profit as a salesman. I totally agree with you. I also agree yes these people might be more friendly, down to earth, and more apt to be loyal long term customers.
Now do me a favor and put yourself in your dealership owners shoes! As a owner personally I would want to sell as many units as I could for that month. Now Isell question for you? Do you have an internet sales department with staff constantly monitoring email for new business? If you don't your going to be left out in the cold because most major dealerships and alot of the smaller ones especially in my area do!
Point is your not the only salesman on the floor making money for your dealership. Your an important player but your not the only player. As the owner I would have you taking care of repeats and referrals because of your knowledge and customer service tactics. Repeats and referrals are very important to a dealerships image I don't disagree with you there. But on the other hand I am not going to just rely on repeats and referral business to increase profits. I am going to support my internet sales staff and have them do anything they can to bring in extra business to inflate my profits even further. If you turn a blind eye to the internet your simply hurting your bottom line. While I agree with you there is alot of people still out there where price is not everything you must agree with me that there is another BIG pool of folks out there where price does matter alot to them and to me it would be plain stupid if I just put my fishing line into 1 pond and not the other.
Again I am talking from an owner's point of view. Regardless how I get business wether it be from referrals, repeats, reverse auctions, free quotes services ect ect I am not going to care as long as its bringing business through my door and I am profiting from it. As for getting these people back through my door once I do get them in the door and I sell them a car I am going to do everything I can to make them a happy customer even if they did find my dealership through a reverse auction service or by any other means.
Bill
Bill
Bill, you don't know what a dealership owner is thinking, at all, but many here do. Dealership owners want to reach out and touch customers that are local, will buy again, will send their relatives and friends, will use t heservice department, etc. It is THOSE factors that build a dealership's business, not selling XYZ models for $25 over invoice to someone they'll never see again.
For your information, our store was the FIRST in the area with an internet department and, of course, we maintain it today. You are correct when you say this is important.
I, however lack the patience of sorting through twenty flakey inquiries looking for substance.
To each his own...
Again yes I do know what they think. One of my business partners just sold a very successful Honda Dealership about three months ago because he decided to retire.
As for your theory, now put yourself in a consumers pair of shoes. Personally as a consumer I want this to happen... Excellent customer service, best price on my new car, best price on my trade and the lowest interest rate I can get according to my credit score and debt to income ratio. Well as a SMART SHOPPER I am going to compare prices, interest rates, and I am going to compare how much a dealer will give me for my trade compared to what I can sell it for private party. How will I know how much a dealer will REALLY give me for me trade? Its simple I will take my trade in to multiple dealerships and get quotes without letting them know I am in the market to buy a new vehicle. So while I am running my reverse auction or getting quotes online for the best price on my new car I can then FREE UP TIME to take my trade in around to different dealers to get some numbers without them confusing me with numbers associated with the new car. And just as I just proved to you I can compare and get to bottom dollar on the new car practically overnight simply by using a reverse auction such as Mycar.com did for me. I was very impressed! And guess what, the lowest bid right now is right here locally. Now I do have some other 100 mile drive bids. If I feel there not worth my time I will buy from a dealer here locally or I will call the 100 mile drive bids and ask them if they would make the drive worth my time. Point is if you don't shop you will never know what the actual best price is. What if there was $1000 in dealer cash available that I could not find. Well using the reverse auctions or any other online referral method, I could possibly see this now (if Edmunds.com or any other site is not displaying it for some reason) because dealer A (locally) might not give up this cash but dealer B (100 miles away) might give up this cash or at least some of it just to steal business away from the big dealerships in the major metro areas. Drift your trying to tell me you wouldn't drive 100 miles to save $1000 plus interest? I can tell you the average consumer who is not wealthy would make this drive to save that kind of money. I am not talking about $17 as you are. I would personally use these services to find out if I can save myself a considerable amount of money from one dealership to another. If I didn't want to pay a middle man and I had plenty of time to look through multiple emails, and send out multiple quote request to every dealer in my state I would certainly do it because again price does matter to me. Once I do get bottom dollar, if I don't like your service department or your customer service tactics I will shop around until I found on in my local area that I do like. Its that simple. The internet has made car buying very simple and bottom line is (car salesman) don't like it because it's stripping profits.
Bill
"You just can't seem to stay away can you?
I've been around Edmunds over three years, long before you, and I'm not going anywhere. It doesn make me wonder how smart your ex-Honda dealer guy is to jump into helkping you with your "plan"...
Some dealers, if they suspect the "shopper" is up to your plan, they just might give the shopper a "high ball" on their trade in. That's a price they know far exceeds the value.
Then, when the weary SMART SHOPPER returns after driving all over creation, pitting dealer against dealer, the truth comes out.
" Oh, I thought it was an automatic"
" Oh, it has 85,000 miles...I thought I read 55,000"
" Oh...well, we had a buyer for it last week, he bought something else".
You have lots to learn. I'm also surprised Edmunds allows you to promote your website here.
yeah, those dealer guys don't know that people trade in cars....
"So while I am running my reverse auction or getting quotes online for the best price on my new car I can then FREE UP TIME to take my trade in around to different dealers to get some numbers without them confusing me with numbers associated with the new car."
Free up time? Why not just talk to your local dealer and strike your best deal, instead of goofing around will running all over creation to shop your trade - I have someone I know and trust - there won't be any shopping going on when I buy my next vehicle.
Also, how serious a number on that trade do you think you'll get when your opening line is "I'm not here to buy a car, just give me your best price on my trade"? The used car manager won't waste the breath to do it - he'll tell the greenpea that he'll give you $20 as it sits...why waste time with someone who isn't serious? Not me!
"Drift your trying to tell me you wouldn't drive 100 miles to save $1000 plus interest?"
Nope, I'd do my research, make a real offer at my local dealer, and save the money at home without driving 100 miles.
And I have to still wonder the answer to this question... why Bill thinks the dealer will pay for this service? The customer is getting all the service, you should be charging them????? As a consumer, pay $49.95 to save a few hundred and save some time running around... may hold, who knows... but I don't get it the other way around...
Enough of that, I'm with Drift, done banging my head against the desk... but I do like the laughs
Bottom line is maybe you don't have time or patience to place quotes online to potential buyers because your blessed by making all your money on referrals or repeats but salesmen located in your internet sales department makes most of their money by selling cars online or by getting . Its their job to respond to respond to multiple email inquiries! Am I wrong? And I bet you if Mycar sent an email requesting a quote for a potential buyer (and you guys knew that the buyer paid for this service making them even more serious in your eyes) your internet sales department would respond to it. And I bet if they sent another email saying that a dealer has submitted a lower quote by so many dollars your internet sales staff would send out another in order to have another chance to bring in the business. I know it works because every time I have bought or helped someone buy a car I have asked for multiple quotes and then when I received them all and I knew what the lowest was I send out a new email stating the lowest quote and almost everyone responds with a better quote than the previous one they gave me. I keep doing this until dealerships finally cave in and tell me that they can't do any better and I should go and buy from the other guy. That's when I know I am at bottom dollar.
So again I agree with you that this method might not be your cup of coffee but just because your not doing it doesn't mean that your internet sales department is not doing it.
Bill
if it was successful, he should have moved to florida and had the profit checks mailed to him. selling a successful dealership is one of the stupidest moves a person can make. so i see it 1 of 2 ways:
1. he WASNT as successful as he told you, in which case, you got conned.
2. he is stupid enough to sell a successful dealership and therefore too stupid to know what a dealer principle should know.
also, i thought you said you have 2 partners, a dealer GM and a former credit union guy???
A dealer GM who got out when the place was hot, only to back a "sure to fail" enterprise like a reverse auction?
That's like saying "my friend is a master mechanic - he works at Wal-Mart".
Drift...the Amway guys now sell something called Excel too. Old childhood friend's parents got into selling it. They told me to check out the website, and although I sensed the reek of Amway, I tried to look at it. I couldn't open their site.
That night, they called back, and I explained that the site wouldn't load up on my computer. There was a pause, and then, "So would you like to invest?"
Ummm...no.
Sorry to digress...back to car talk!
Turboshadow
Simply doing your research by using GUIDES does not guarantee the lowest sale price. Shopping dealer prices DOES guarantee the lowest price quote if you do it right.
As for trade ins...
If you don't want to shop for the best trade in bid then don't. It works (only if you know how WHOLESALE trade in values work) and I have done it several times. In one instance I did just this and then I took my best quote and compared it to the WHOLESALE quote while I was at the dealership. I negotiated the new car price first then I negotiated the trade in price. The wholesale price I got while at the dealership was less than what I got when I shopped dealers. I showed the dealer my results and he met my best quoted price from when I shopped my trade in. Bottom line if I didn't shop my trade in I would of lost money at closing time on my new car deal. You guys just hate hearing this because ideally you want some poor sucker to come in and negotiate the whole deal all together just so you can confuse him to max your profits.
Now bowke,
Like I said the guy retired. He had no family to give it to so he simply sold it. He was tired of running it. This guy is my credit union rep.
The other two are my back end computer programmer and the dealer rep. The programmer keeps the auction bug free and our classifieds ads script bug free along with a host of other things bug free. The dealer rep has important dealer connections in my state and he sells the idea to them. The credit union rep has connections in the state to with dealerships and without them my venture would be slow to say the least. These guys have made things happen and in a huge way.
As for advertising...
Mycar.com is not my site. I have never one announced my site name or where I am even from for that matter. So get over it!
Bill
I've told this story before, in 1973, but my brother in law (now 58 years old) had just come back from welding on the Alaska pipeline for two years. he had a bank account full of money and landed near home in Pasadena (what's that awful smell?), Texas. He paid cash for a new house and a new truck, bought a nice used car for my sister.
Then, he went to an Amway meeting - ended up dropping nearly $4k (in 1973 dollars, mind you) on Amway products, which displaced his new truck in the garage.
He soon realized he was not the entreprenureal type and also realized that the only person making money in that scenario was the guy he bougt all the laundry soap and car wash stuff from...
My mom and dad were still getting Amway products for Christmas as late as 1980.
This whole thing with "reverse auctions", which wreaks of "auto brokers", reminds of Amway, and the ever-immortal phrases "there's no such thing as a free lunch" and "people won't buy what they can get for free". Except bottled water, that is.
Yes, I make great money. No, I don't waste it. yes, I research my vehicle purchases - just ask bowke...he'll be selling me my new truck within the next 2 months and my new car within the next 6 months.
By the way, it's "you're", as in you are, not "your", which denotes posession of myself, which I already have.
so the "retired" dealer owner had to go to work at a bank???
moron
How does one go from owning a successful Honda dealership to being a loan officer? Might as well be a mall security guard if you just want something to do...
bill...let your friend know that i have some oceanfront property to invest in over in missouri.
If you didn't then you have no clue wether your wasting money or not. If I could save myself $500 or more and I already bought to me I have just wasted money.
Oh I am sorry. I forgot your logic is as long as I am happy with what I "THINK" is a great price. Not what I "KNOW" is a great price!
Come on guys you all have blinders on and your looking down a tunnel that only leads to what a car salesman thinks. Now I have agreed with you guys on several occasions but none of you have agreed with me when I say to step into a owners or consumers pair of shoes even though everything that I am talking about can easily be found on such sites as Edmunds.com! I am not making any of this up and you guys know it but you just don't want to admit it because again bottom line is it can hurt a car salesman profit margin.
Bill
I'm close to nosebleed....
Turboshadow
With all due respect, please take some friendly advice. I know this is a public forum, but sometimes, enough of the same thing is really enough. I think I can speak for most here when I say we don't care to learn anymore about your "schemes" or "ideas". We've been thru them left and right... we don't think they are viable... we don't see a business model that really works from the dealer's perspective.... and we don't want to rehash the same points over and over and over and over... you're putting all of us to sleep..zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz- - - zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz- - - - - zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz- zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....
So, please take your "idea", sell it to the dealers in your general area (you said you already have), I personally wish you the best of luck and are succesful in your venture... come back in a year when you're on the way to retiring in the Caymens... we'll all be happy for you and admit we were wrong. Until then, I don't see any further reason to keep beating a dead horse?
well Bill, I think its been brought up before a few weeks back, but this "idea" of your has been tried before and failed quickly and swiftly...
Again, I continue to wish you the best of luck.
However, Bill does have a couple of valid points. I have purchased two new cars (an Acura and a Honda) in the last six months, and things have changed in the last four or five years. First of all, it seems like in the major metro areas (Washington DC in this case) dealers have given up trying to make a big profit on new cars that are not in high demand if the customer contacts them via the internet. They go straight to the bone and they don’t care if it is a local customer or not, they just want to move that puppy. There could be a couple hundred left on the table, but usually it is not enough to shop around for. It looks like they are concentrating more on used cars and service to generate their profit. They are much more aggressive on the trade-ins appraisals. I used to be able to get dealers to give me above the Black book for my trade-ins 80% of the time. On the last two transactions I couldn’t get them even close to the Black book (and one of the trade-ins was an Accord). Needless to say, I didn’t trade on my last two transactions.
Secondly, service departments don’t seem to care where you bought the car, they want your business. They are getting much friendlier and more accommodating regardless if it is warranty work or not. They are hoping that you will continue to come there and spend $400 for 30K maintenance.
Also, it is possible to sell a car to a dealer without purchasing a new one. After the Acura dealer refused to give me anything of substance for my Explorer, I took it to the local Ford dealer used car department, and they bought it on the spot offering me $200 more than the Carmax.
Just my opinion, please take as such.
you have now brought up mycar.com over a half dozen times. why would you give a competitor free advertising? its for 1 of 2 reasons:
1. it IS your site.
2. your not smart enough to realize you are doing it.
All you are doing is going round and round, aren't you getting dizzy from chasing your tail??
Can you believe this guy?
I won't go into details, because it's nobody's business, but I have no fear that anyone's going to get the vehicles I'm getting for any less. If they can, more power to 'em!
That you didn't get quotes from other dealers. No its not none of my business. My question was though how do you know you have the best deal without comparing other dealer quotes to bowkes offer. Your research only gives you an "IDEA" hence the words "GUIDE BOOK".
If you didn't compare then you really don't have a clue if you could save any more money. And as for you having no fear I guess I wouldn't either if I could afford to loose money. Maybe its just me but I would rather take that $500 or $1000 or what ever I saved and invest it into some kind of mutual fund or maybe buy season Six Flag passes for my kids rather than just give it away to a car dealer because I "FELT LIKE" I have the best deal instead of "KNOWING" I have the best deal lol. Just doesn't make sense to me why anyone would want to throw money away. But hey I guess if you make as much as Drift does then you can afford it.
Bill
BTW, to me, this single post of your contained more information (in both a formal and informal sense) than the last several pages of postings, no offense to other contributors.
I'm assuming a guy whose profile reads:
"I'm a licensed appraiser with over 15,000 vehicles bought, sold and other wise evaluated, and an ASE-certified technician/service manager."
isn't getting rooked on a car deal anytime soon.
Great way for free advertising though, too bad no one is interested.
No, my deal's not getting beat, unless you work at the Ford plant.
Bill, quit assuming - do you remember Walter Matthau's line from the Bad News Bears about assuming?
Any ways as for Priceline.com if I can recall right maybe I am wrong here and I will admit if I am but if I recall right you tell them what you will pay and they will have dealers come back and tell you if they will accept your offer!
Reverse Auctions are a little different. You tell them what you want to buy and dealers come in and tells you their quote. Now every time a dealer submits a new "LOW" quote all the other participating dealers will be informed of this so they can have a chance (if they want) to beat the current lowest quote. Does price line work this way? Just wondering...
As for having a chance I could agree with you if it was just myself and my back end programmer. But again you might of missed it but I have two other partners who is playing a huge role in getting our operations up and running. The two credit unions (100,000 strong) I was talking about some time ago have agreed to do business with us. They are simply waiting on us to finish the website. Our planned release date to the public is 15 June 04. With two credit unions backing us I see no problems with dealers wanting to earn some of this business.
Bill
Bill
But without comparing he still doesn't have a clue if he could of saved some extra money. And that's a "FACT"!
I'm getting supplier pricing - there is NO better deal, and you don't shop it dealer to dealer - you assumed I shopped like everyone else, and I don't.
See what assuming gets you? It's gets you WRONG (again).
Also, I don't appreciate you continually stating that I "don't have a clue". Obviously, I do, or I wouldn't be doing my job(s), and it's my belief and opinion that the clueless in this case is the accuser.
The best price doesn't always mean that is the best deal.
Your absolutely right. If you get the best price but you missed out on the best interest rate because a dealer inflated it then your not getting the best deal. If you get the best price but the dealer low balled you on your trade your not getting the best deal.
If you know your credit score, your debt to income ratio and how that effects your loan rate and you do your homework by finding out what the guide books "CLAIMS" is invoice, and you do the math (is rebates better with the lower interest rate or should I take the 0%) and if you know what your trade is actually worth to a dealer (WHOLESALE) not guide book trade in figures and you have compared prices from dealer to dealer now I can honestly say you have the best deal!
I agree price does not make the best deal! But it helps out your bottom line as a buyer to get the lowest price by comparison shopping.
Bill
just better.