Did you recently take on (or consider) a loan of 84 months or longer on a car purchase?
A reporter would like to speak with you about your experience; please reach out to PR@Edmunds.com by 7/25 for details.
A reporter would like to speak with you about your experience; please reach out to PR@Edmunds.com by 7/25 for details.
Options
Comments
They made an offer on your trade. If it is acceptable to you, you comply. If not, then you don't. The dealership made an offer and you made an offer. They didn't lie to anyone, they simply made an offer on your vehicle.
It's a business that negotiates. I've said it before and I'll say it again. The last person to worry about in high ticket items is going to be your car dealer. All the information you need to be informed about the purchase is online.
How about a house purchase or the folks lending you money on your loans?
I know that it can sometimes be fun to talk about "that crazy car dealer" because I like to do it myself sometimes. I just don't think this falls under the category of unscrupulous.
-moo
Did you know that I had a $22k profit deal this month? Did you know that the customer knew that? Was that unethical?
Put this whole situation in perspective guys. MSRP is the Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price. We have to start somewhere, right? I told a story once in "Sales Frontlines" about a lady who I knew was going to be tough to close. I knew she wanted to see a fantastic deal. So I marked the used car she was looking at $5k over what the normal asking price was. Why? So that I could show her a fantastic deal. I knock off $6k and she's excited!! It's all perception. It's also just business. There's good and bad, but in your situation it certainly didn't seem like a single thing was bad.
-moo
I'm talking a simple domestic car deal and your ability to justify trying to take as much money from a customer as possible. Using your logic if you offered me one dollar for a 10k vehicle and I said ok because I wasn't informed you think that is ethical. I have a problem with that , you don't so we can agree to disagree.
This sounds very familiar... and it works both ways. Salesmen and dealerships get offended if a customer makes a lowball offer on a car. Customers get offended when dealerships try to lowball their trade. It's a fine line that is walked... but both parties have to walk that line to hit the "home run" they are looking for. The problem is that this method can backfire. You offend the other party with a "ridiculous" offer in hopes of hitting that home run, and the other party may end up flipping you off and walking.
But, no ... I wouldn't say it's unethical. I would say it's bad business though when a dealership offends a customer. Business is business though, so don't let it bother you. Sounds like you did a good job in getting them to come down $8k on the otd.
Congrats and good luck with your new truck.
edited: Personally though I couldn't do it. If I were a car salesman I'd probablly get fired the first week. I couldn't tell someone their trade is worth $10k when it is worth
$18k. I'm not making a judgement on those that do... just not my thing.
That's not what the salesman did. He probably did hold on it, but he started the customer out at MSRP. Figure that there is 7k in rebate money and profit in the truck he was purchasing and the salesman only ended up holding 1k. IMO, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this.
You hit the nail on the head when you said it goes both ways. Each of the people in the transaction are making offers. They are accepted or rejected. The words that he is using imply that they are forcing him to do anything.
He walked into the dealership. He said he wanted to trade and what would they give him. He decided to stay and do business. This dealership did NOTHING wrong at all. If anything, the customer did something wrong if he did business with someone he felt was unscrupulous.
/shrug
-moo
Changing gears, aren't we? What you really said was that the LS400 is a POS. That statement pretty much says you don't know what you're talking about.
2. "Performance wise the Q beat the LS hands down."
I believe that's what I said.
3."I based my reply on performance which the LS sucks."
Next to a Vette or an M series, the Infiniti sucks. It's all relative. That doesn't make any of them a POS. POS reflects reliability, and there the Infiniti sucks big time. You either don't know anything about these cars, or you are too young to have experience. I'll just take a wild assed guess here - you haven't owned either one of them, have you? Yes, older people drive the LS 400, but so do younger ones. Infiniti miscued big time on the Q45. I bought that first because of it's performance, burgundy with a white leather interior, just enough of the gold package to match the wheels. For a somewhat ugly car, this one was sharp. And, the only way to really know what each was, was to own both. Nuff said.
Maybe you're not so young at that.
You're right. Same thing happened here, and look at the result. Disaster. Quite a bit more harmful than a car deal, but people believed what sales people told them, and many lost everything..
"I just don't think this falls under the category of unscrupulous."
Well it comes close enough that I can't tell the difference, but if I made my living selling, I would probably try to see it as you do. I couldn't do the job if I didn't.
That's a bit overstated. We deal with "experienced professionals" everyday who know a lot more about the product or service we're buying as well as with "experienced bureaucrats" who have one up on the people they are supposed to be serving. If you don't educate yourself for your dealings with any of them you may feel like you're being taken advantage of but who's fault is that? In reality, knowledge is power and you can save yourself a lot of aggravation by arming up.
Heck, even a simple thing like going to traffic court will be quite overwhelming since you're up against pros who deal with "transgressors" on a daily basis and whose objective is to get you in and out minus your cash in the least amount of time possible. Does that sound familiar?
tidester, host
SUVs and Smart Shopper
See post 4262 or search on 55396. I don't know why he wouldn't sell it as is, unless he didn't want a shabby example running around looking rough. I also suppose he felt he could make more money on it, but they stripped it down and did a complete repaint. I watched the progress - once I found the car. See update below. This was part the of 4262 pertaining to this car though:
' I also bought a 90 Infiniti Q45 that had been in a major ($25k) crash when 6 months old, and had a complete repaint @ 48k. I saw it before and after paint. The service record was a horror story. It was burgundy with the gold package, matching wheels, and a white leather interior. Sticker was $50k. I bought for 14k and sold it for 17k. I made the dealer throw in a 3 year extended warranty. The car drove perfectly and looked new. I only kept that one a few months and was able to sell it with a 3k profit with that extended warranty - which I normally wouldn't buy. Again, to each his own, but I can buy a more upscale car for the same money, so why not?'
I learned a few things on this deal though. After the car went for repaint, I went to the dealers body shop to see it as it progressed. Guess what? They didn't know anything about it. After playing 20 questions, they mentioned that sometimes when their shop was full, they would send it to an outside shop, and they mentioned a couple of possibilities that they had used before. Bingo, there it was at the first one I checked.
I got to know the manager there, and asked him to check the car for any past damage when it was up on the hoist. He said everything looked fine, so I thought I had that covered. Then I took the VIN to the dealer and had them print the vehicle history. LOTS of mechanical problems including a new transmission at 45k, but no accidents. It now had 48k.
So, good, that agreed with what the body shop had said. The dealer said the paint job would cost $4000, and doing it the way they did, it wouldn't be cheap, but I expect he fudged a bit. They had it for about 3 weeks. So, the dealer called - car is back. Now, before I went back, I checked back at the dealers body shop and asked IF, I buy this car, what would you charge me to put the gold package on it. They plated it there. I think it was like 100 bucks. How much do you think it would have been if I bought the car and THEN came back and asked that question when no potential car sale was to be made? Anyway, we did that.
Now, I had found the original owners name along with the company he owned in the glove compartment early on, as the car hadn't been cleaned up. Something nagged at me after the body shop switch, so I called the guy's company and asked for him. "He's not here right now. Would you like to speak with his brother?" Sure. I told him that I was considering purchasing the car. "Oh boy, I wouldn't do that." Why? " Well, he had a bad accident when it was 6 months old. $25,000 in damage."
I thanked him VERY much. So, how could this be? Clean record? Body shop didn't see a problem - or lied. This is when I learned not to believe my eyes. So, why wasn't it on the history? Well, the same reason it went to another body shop
this time, to keep it off the record. Well, I'll be damned. Fancy that. Now, this is an upscale dealership. Trust em? Not a chance in hell. The rental companies even send the rough stuff to the auction.
So, I was taking pictures of the car when the sales manager came out and asked why I was doing that. Well, I'm heading home, and I wanted to show people the one that got away. What do you mean? I told him. I'm not sure it was a surprise. Now, a Carfax Report may have caught the accident, I'm not sure. It wasn't an option at the time.
Boy, talk about a sales team going into overdrive. I finally told them that if they threw in an extended warranty, I would buy it, take it out of state far far away, and we did the deal. Why would I buy it? The car looked and drove beautiful. The previous owner had kept it quite awhile after the repair. The repair was well done. It doesn't take much to hit $25k in repair estimates on a new model where used and aftermarket parts are not available. I still wanted the experience, and the record was still clean, so that worked for my resale too. The product was solid. I believed that enough to drive it 135 MPH. I just never trusted the reliability.
So, just when you think you know how it works, here comes another lesson. Buyer beware. As Moo would probably say, what's the problem. The dealer didn't lie.' Well, Dr Phil would counter with 'Not telling the whole truth and withholding is lying. In spite of all that, the deal worked for me, and I made money on the car. It was a beauty.
Regardless back in 1990 I had owned a 300ZX TT and wouldn't consider either car. Biggest mistake that I had made was in 1993 when I purchased a Lincoln Mark VIII when I should've bought a Supra TT.
i would think that the disaster is more of a result in a massive building boom that preceded it. Around here they were building at record paces. The problem with that is that it gets to the point where there are more homes than buyers, a bloated inventory. Thats whats killing housing prices more than anything. The credit issues are more of a symptom.
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
-moo
-moo
Well, I read the entire service record and most entries had no relationship to an accident. The exception could have been the transmission, but that probably happened 40,000 miles later, so I doubt it.
Yes, they built like crazy, because for years there were buyers. one of the reasons there were buyers was of the ease of getting financing, and people were allowed to buy that shouln't have. Take a look at the huge number of foreclosures and you will see that pattern. I think it was in Oakland or Sacremento where entire neighborhoods were empty due to foreclosures. Remember the old saving and loan fiasco of the 80's? People went to jail over that one. Let's see how this one plays out. Something was rotten to let this happen. The word Greed comes to mind. Everyone was making money.
Well, $8000 is a long way from a thin line. There is a big difference between allowing yourself wiggle room and gouging, which I would submit to being the case here. Ya, they read the customer, and thought they could pull it off - or something close. With that spread they could knock off a couple of grand and be 'good guys' and still gouge the guy while telling him how good they were to him.
-moo
WOW! So it was that old rascal customer that was wrong. Turning that one around makes one sleep well at night I'll bet. No guilt here. I wonder how many left the business when they could no longer ignore business as usual, because if the customer doesn't call us on it, it's OK, and he no longer slept soo well? We can get our minds to believe most anything. At least for awhile. But then some aren't bothered by it one little bit, and they will probably do very well in the business.
I test drove one of those and was very impressed. It felt solid, handled well, and the suspension didn't break your back on rough midwest roads. Wasn't this the first car to best the Vette on a comparrison test, performance included? Motor Trend maybe? But then, I didn't own one. As you know, that's when you find out what it really is.
-moo
Legally? Nothing. It's the moral part that bothers me. If I have a product thet I got a super dear on - say I bought it for $1000, but it's value is $5000, and I sell it for $4000, I have no problem with it, because I am still selling it to someone for less than it's worth. Yes, I made a great profit, but he has the potential to turn it anound and also make a buck.
When a dealer tries to sell one customer a car for full sticker, and he regularly discounts that car $4000, I have a problem with the morality of that deal. Illegal? No Gouging? Ya think? Then, if he takes a grand of that and fluffs up the trade in price without the customer understanding it, I would call that deceptive, yet it's common practice. Remenber the buddy of mine who prefered to sell used because he could gouge the customer more and had the goal of getting the customers car for as close to nothing as possible? He was one of those that had no trouble sleeping at night. Sad.
-moo
Why would you do that to a customer if you had any regard for him? If you only view him as a number and a transaction, OK. If he understands all facets of it and is then dumb enough to go forward, OK. A fool and his money are soon parted.
What I have a problem with is when he doesn't know, and you ain't gonna tell him.
Before I sterted selling cars for living - I used to sell my own cars. Lost my shirt one the first, broke even on the second, gave away the third one. nand then I had a fairly nice Volvo, that I decided to sell pivately. Blue Book for wholesale was about $6K, these cars get about $2k at the aucion, and you could buy one privately for about $3K-4K. I posted it for $8.5K, and sold it for $8K. Now, who got screwed? The customer? Who is the customer? Me or him?
If you were thinking about selling your car, and someone on the street ask you to sell it, and offered $10K over book - would would you do? Would you say " Oh no, it's way to much, give me the fair Market value"?
You list an item on Ebay for bidding. It is an item that might sell in the store for $400, but somebody comes along and bids it up to $500 by auction end and sends you the money. You say you will feel bad about it and refund $100??
I find that very hard to believe.
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '98 Alfa 156 2.0TS; '08 Maser QP; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '11 Mini Cooper S
If he wants no haggle everyone pays the same price, go to Saturn or CarMax. There are venues for people like him to buy at.
I don't think he likes the system and then declares it corrupt. Each individual customer dictates what he's going to be paying for a vehicle. This dictation is called "market value". I would think he would be happy that he didn't have to spend $8k more than he had to pay. The negotiation system allowed him to save additional money. Some people choose not to negotiate for any number of reasons, but that's not him.
-moo
Again, this person is OFFERING $500. The seller is not ASKING for it. That's the difference.
Now, you can spin it any way you want, but that's all I'm saying. I can't count how many times someone has tried that on me so I know how often it happens. Fortunately, there are tools available today, and a prospective buyer should use them. Unfortunately, the ones who need them most, don't understand how to use them. When they get taken advantage of, I really do get upset. Too many in the business don't see a problem with that.
No, not if he is selling a premium product and he treats everyone the same way. Within reason of course. If he holds it there because he has a naive fish, but drops it way down for everyone else, that's another story. Capitalism? Sure. Legal? Sure. Will he get by with it? Sure. Is it right? Of course not. I know that the seller has to have it in their mind that there is nothing wrong with this. Depends which side of the fence you're standing on.
Now, let me ask you this. You go to see your mother. She says - I met this wonderful young man today and he said I deserved/needed/would look good in, whatever, and he was just so nice to me that I traded. You look at the deal and see that she paid $10,000 more than she should have. So, what do you think of that nice young man? Wanna get your hands around his neck for what he did to your own dear mother? Too bad. He did nothing illegal. Can you relate to that one? I can. It happened to my mother. She didn't have a clue about these things. He came to her home and talked her into something that she didn't need, and wasn't as good as what she had.
But like everyone has said, to each his own. At the end of the day all that matters is if you feel like you got a good deal.
Asking price = offering price. Same deal. Buy low, sell high: works for consumers and dealers.
This isn't 1957 before Monroney stickers and the internet where people didn't have a clue what was going on when they set foot in the dealer (although Consumer Reports did exist back then for the few that consulted it).
Today, there's a wealth of information available on how to buy a car. Just look at Edmunds alone. It's the consumer's fault if they paid too much. Or maybe they wanted to be the first on the block to have a PT Cruiser or '05 Mustang and didn't care.
How is the dealer holding almost all of the cards? I would say it's the other way around. The customer holds, or at least should, hold most of the cards in this type of transaction.
A) Internet. Do your research about the car you want to buy and trade in values for your car
You want to talk about morally wrong, how about one of the Jeep dealers near me that had $9000 in ADM on an 08 Grand Cherokee while at the same time Jeep was offering almost $4000 in rebates?
In our society there are two things that the consumer gets that people in other parts of the word only dream of, 1) personal freedom of choice 2) protection against unfair business practices and unsafe/or unfit products. With that said, for the sake of this discussion, lets assume that when you walk into a car dealership the dealer is obeying all state and federal laws and the product they are offering is safe and up to the standards that the manufacturer claims.
Simply being a consumer does not entitle you to the "best" or even a "fair" deal. It entitles you to the deal of your choice. Nothing more and nothing less.
A car salesman or dealership owner are just as their title's indicate. They are not financial advisors, accountants, personal life coaches, or "good samaritans". They are regular working folks who are also moms and dads and tax payers. If not having the ability or want to educate yourself before making a purchase is the retailers fault and society would be better off if everyone got the "deal they deserve," why don't we all drive the same reasonably priced, safe vehicle of the government's choosing?
Simple, because being an American is about choice and freedom. Ignorance does not excuse your from your freedom to spend your dollars on what you want, when, you want, where you want, regardless of "is it a good deal?"
That's a horse of a different color. He knows he is paying a premium and doesn't care because he has to be first to impress himself, or more likely someone else. Look at the idiots (my opinion as always) that form a line around the block in zero degree weather and waits hours if not overnight for the latest gadget when he could wait a day and just walk in and buy it. Makes no sense to me. Apparently it does to them. Well, more likely they just want it. Oh well. Takes all kinds, and probably happens at certain points in ones life.
Sorry to say, but it's your Mom's own fault. She has nobody else to blame but herself. Well, maybe she can blame you too for not helping her out (ducks)
I see this advice all the time and it confuses the crap out of me. If Oct, Nov, and Dec, are THE BEST times to buy a car then why are they not our busiest months? :confuse:
Using this logic July, August, and September would be the worst time to buy a car, yet they are our busiest months. :confuse:
Buy toward the end of the day during the middle days of the week
Buy at the end of the day on my shift and you are going to get the bums rush, one price and good night. My philosophy is if I can't get it done in a 14 hour day then it don't need doin.
I will give you the end of the month thing. It is busier because so many people think they can get a better deal.
" A car salesman or dealership owner are just as their title's indicate. They are not financial advisors, accountants, personal life coaches, or "good samaritans".
A car dealer is trained to be a professional 'closer'. He is taught various ways to do that, some of them probably borderline. Same with the finance guy who throws so much information at you that it probably comes down to 'Oh I don't know. Lets see, I guess I'll take A'. The dealer is so far ahead of the consumer on the details that even if the consumer has the numbers, good salesman can still turn it his way. And, I know you won't agree with that. Seems that there was a book out there 'Confessions Of A Car Salesman' or used car salesman. Prospective buyers should check it out. Of course, I'm sure that is all 'old school' and would never happen today.
I’m waaay late to this discussion but if I were buying a car and we started out being $8K apart on anything close to a family sedan, I would have left. I’m sure if I stayed and negotiated, I could have done better than their starting offer but since we were so far apart I would have known that I was dealing with someone who likes playing games. Since I don’t like to do business with people like that I would have been gone as soon as the words were out of his mouth.
That kind of car selling is old school and since there are so many dealers today who don’t play games like this, why waste your time? Of course that’s assuming you don’t live many miles from competing dealers.
Remember, playing games is a culture at dealerships like you described. If it’s played on the sales floor, do you really think it won’t be played in the service, parts and body departments?
Unethical, that all depends on what side of the fence you’re on. It’s your money that’s being spent so you have to watch out for yourself. From what you described, they sure know how to take care of themselves.
jmonroe
'15 Genesis V8 with Ultimate Package and '18 Legacy Limited 6 cyl
You know, there are many reputable sales people out there. The problem is with the shady ones, and you know that they are there. So, they pull one on someone. The buyer realizes it after the fact, swears he will never go back to that dealer again, and tells everyone he knows. Well, the salesman has his commission. He may now be at another dealership, or couldn't take the pressure and now does something else - maybe sells insurance, The customer still hates the dealer, even though the guy is long gone. Too bad. But then the dealer allowed, if not encouraged, him to operate that way. OK, I'm ducking. ;-)