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I forgot to offer some cheese to go with the wine.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Regards,
OW
We all know what the real story is. Bush didn't want the failure of US auto industry on his already dismal record. He provided a bridge loan against the will of the Democratic congress to put the problem on his successor. Obama ran with strong union support so is walking a fine line. Instead of fully caving and offering endless bailout loans, he has put the screws to GM and the unions by offering a way out if they will agree to deep concessions, while drawing a solid line in the sand. If they choose to take it then at least he gave them a chance. And they are still whining about it because it is not easy like they wanted. But it is more than they deserve.
Has he actually put the screws to the unions? If he were to do so, he would have outed Gettelfinger and made it clear he had failed in the previous negotiations to deserve bailout money and the next leader of the union would know he had to work or he would be ousted.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
He didn't need to do it directly, so why pi$$ off his constituents even more? The 60 day deadline will force the issue.
With all the ammo the internet offers consumers it only takes 15-30 minutes to gather all the ammo one needs to get a great deal on a new car. I don't see what advantage I could offer a consumer. Take last months offers for your average Joe, it was GM Supplier Discount + rebates and bonus cash. If you had a lease that expired before September 30th well you were elgible for lease to buy cash. It is that simple. It is what it is. The only deal that is better is being a elgible GM employee for "GMS" pricing. I just don't think I would make a livable income and as far as imports go well edmunds has the "invoice prices" available on there website. I hope you can see my point? I do appreciate your idea though.
Fact: 95% of all consumers today use the internet to do some fact finding before making a automobile purchase.
-Rocky
I think you have it backwards. Liberals become professors because they are too dumb to make it in the business world. Or politicians. I agree with Rocky that the higher education in this country is pretty bad. Sat on the jury with a college English Professor a few weeks back. He said the level of students he gets is pathetic. Like teaching high school remedial English. You know the same people that become UAW workers.
More on course.
Skilled, educated workers are leaving Michigan at alarming rates. As taxes continue to climb in the state and Michigan descends further into a welfare ward, this exodus will continue.
Joe LaCross drives American cars. Always has. Born and raised in the blue-collar suburbs of Detroit, this son of a welder wouldn't dream of rolling past his autoworker neighbors in a Toyota. But not long ago the 38-year-old pulled into the driveway of his Sterling Heights home in a vehicle wreaking even more havoc in his home state.
A moving van.
"I grew up here," said LaCross, as he packed to move to Florida in search of a job. "My family is here. My wife's family is here. I love everything about Michigan.
"Everything," he said, picking up a plastic storage tub, "except the economy."
People are leaving Michigan at a staggering rate. About 109,000 more people left Michigan last year than moved in. It is one of the worst rates in the nation, quadruple the loss of just eight years ago. The state loses a family every 12 minutes, and the families who are leaving -- young, well-educated high-income earners -- are the people the state desperately needs to rebuild.
Long treated as a symptom of Michigan's economic woes, outmigration has exploded into a massive problem of its own, a slow-motion Katrina splintering families, gutting state coffers and crippling an already hobbled economy, one moving van at a time.
"I never thought I'd leave," said LaCross, looking around his empty Michigan home. "What happens now?"
I know these not your run of the mill UAW workers bailing out of a FAILED economic system. Every person that stays will have to work two jobs to pay the welfare bill for the non workers still there. While this is not totally the fault of the Unions. It was not helped by their belligerant entitlement attitude. Striking GM when they were down to nothing has got to be the last nail in the Michigan UAW coffin.
You better come up with some real credible source for that FACT. I would be surprised if even 10% research anything online prior to purchase. I am the Only one in my circle of friends. They all come to me for advice on cars and computers. Mostly to fix their computers for free. Most do email and chat rooms. Not research. I always tell people that is the best source. The response is I don't have time to do that. Most people I talk to even car salesmen have never heard of Edmund's. We are in the Infancy of Internet usage.
PS
I think Kernick's idea was a great one. Start with all the old retirees from the UAW.
You have told us how bad it was in Texas...last time I checked, we had a few more states than just Michigan and Texas...some are out of reach, like Alaska and Hawaii, but there HAS to be at least one other state where your talents can be converted into an income...
While I like GA, I could probably survive in TN, NC, AL, MS as far as climate...whether I could earn money is soemthing else, but I am quite sure they have auto accident victims and bankruptcy clients...
Makes you question if he is looking for palm trees more than a job. :shades:
Michigan's exodus is one of the state's best known but least understood problems. Long ignored or downplayed, outmigration has been shrugged off partly because it was assumed that those who were leaving were unemployed blue-collar workers and retirees, groups that, in economic terms, don't cripple the state with their departure.
But a Detroit News analysis of U.S. Census Bureau and Internal Revenue Service data reveals that every day, Michigan gets less populated, less educated, and poorer because of outmigration.
The rest of the story
Rocky, you are too honest, up to the point bieng gullible. You need to be more business oriented.
As I say in my busines, it is not the time it takes to turn the screw. It is the knowledge of knowing which screw to turn which determines my earning.
At this point, I have no idea what a GM car costs. But let us say I was in the market because my car totalled. Now I do not have the time to research all the options that are at my disposal due to the insurance paperwork that follows. A buyer like you would be able to do that for me. Get it?
If that was the case, then no salesman would have a story of how he clubbed a baby seal
The Big 3 were just that...they wielded clubs while everyone else had rubber bands and paper clips...their plants probably paid most of the property taxes in the counties where they were located...but, as the layoffs grew and grew, the "infection" was festering beneath the surface...
Michigan was either boom or bust...but each bust was getting larger and larger in its effect...
The mystery bubble has popped permanently, and the only one who cannot see it is rocky...Michigan will turn into Haiti, if not worse...
Detroit was corrupt when I was there in 1980, it is much worse now, and mostly for obvious reasons we cannot discuss here...all Detroit had were slums, but the suburbs of Oakland and Macomb Counties were nice places to live...the fungus of Detroit will quickly grow into those counties, just like the fungus of the Bronx grew and spread into Yonkers, making Yonkers just another slum of NYC...
While it always seemed that Detroit would bounce back, the handwriting is on the wall, in fluorescent paint so you can see it at night as well as day...the Big 3 WILL survive, probably with 10-20% of the workers they had back in 1979...
While I wish harm on no one, and economic success for everyone, it appears that floorsweepers will finally be paid what the job is actually worth, not some inflated figure that some idiot called "skilled labor"
They brought it on themselves...I saw it in the 80s, and it took over 20 years for the infection (UAW) to kill the host (Big 3), but they succeeded, far beyond their wildest dreams...
What field of work could someone in Rocky's age group and work experience come to Atlanta and apply for work in and have a good expectation of getting a job after a couple of weeks? Auto sales, new, used? Cell phone sales? Security?
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Used cars vary by market. A lot of factors determine why dealers sell them at certain prices. I can tell you some of the best deals on the market used are trade-ins and is why some dealers are lower on price than others. Buying a car off the auction right now is tough for a dealer. The used car values are $1500-$2500 higher than they were 4 months ago. Some cars on the auction are going for retail and because KBB and NADA aren't up to date despite us dealers complaining well it is both art and science I'm afraid.
-Rocky
-Rocky
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
PS
I think Kernick's idea was a great one. Start with all the old retirees from the UAW.
Gagrice, helping retired autoworkers buying cars is pointless. There price on any make and model is set and they are entitled to all available rebates. A GM Employee can go to any dealership in america and will pay the same price everywhere. If the dealer sweetens the deal at all on the price or try's to charge more they can have there license revoked or suspended. It has happened before trust me!!! The 95% data came from management regarding consumers shopping on the internet. I can tell you from experience most people looking for a new or used car saw it on the internet in our inventory. Anyone buying a used car has looked on autotrader and is why they showed up in the first place. We used a system called V-Auto that tracked all cars with similar equipment, year, make, model, and it would tell our management if we were priced competitive by color codes. Green was below market price. Yellow was average. Red, said we were too high. However in rare circumstances we could get away with being a little high if there wasn't many like it. Our prices would go up or down depending on the market. I had some used cars jump up a grand or two because there wasn't any like it in a given radius. We also would have loser deals because we had too much into certain cars. You win some and lose some.
So yeah I personally believe that 95% of people at least in Michigan buy cars based on research acquired from the internet. It might not be so high in San Diego, do to "older" people who can barely operate a remote control to there TV, let alone run a computer. :P ....Or the redneck hick in some parts of the south where the only technology they have is a satelitte dish that is gathering a signal to broadcast the Jerry Springer show. :P
-Rocky
-Rocky
-Rocky
-Rocky
-Rocky
Let me ask you a question. How is your contempt for people in the South or China any different than my contempt for the UAW and the lazy workforce that has destroyed the Domestic Auto industry? :confuse: By the way, I get jokes from an 89 year old friend on a daily basis. Lots of older people are into computers. Lots of young people are not. My son in Alaska never uses their computer. He is too busy with work or his band.
I don't consider searching the want ads on auto trader or Craigslist researching cars. I consider research finding out how well people like the new Malibu or Camry. What problems they have had with a given model as shown on the NHTSA site. Going onto Edmund's and seeing what people say about any given vehicle. I would not buy without doing all that. My guess is 95% of people DO NOT research any given model before they buy. They let some slick salesman talk them into whatever he has on the lot. Part of the reason you got fired. You did not sell people on what you had available. While that may be your view of integrity. It is not the way salesmen make their living.
-Rocky
Because people in the south in general are very ignorant and poorly educated and believe what the baught and paid for preacher who is anti-union says on Sunday's that the UAW is the symbol of the devil. They also believe that there company will take care of them. Why else do you think these foreign companies put these businesses in the south? They knew they could take advantage of them and the laws on the books in those states have always been rigged for business.
By the way, I get jokes from an 89 year old friend on a daily basis. Lots of older people are into computers. Lots of young people are not. My son in Alaska never uses their computer. He is too busy with work or his band.
Well I was saying in general. Sure the exception to the rule can be found everywhere.
I don't consider searching the want ads on auto trader or Craigslist researching cars. I consider research finding out how well people like the new Malibu or Camry. What problems they have had with a given model as shown on the NHTSA site. Going onto Edmund's and seeing what people say about any given vehicle. I would not buy without doing all that. My guess is 95% of people DO NOT research any given model before they buy. They let some slick salesman talk them into whatever he has on the lot. Part of the reason you got fired. You did not sell people on what you had available. While that may be your view of integrity. It is not the way salesmen make their living.
You can't sell people what they do not want. I refuse to lie to make a sale. I had people that knew things about new cars on our lot that I didn't even know. Especially when it came to trucks. If you think a slickster salesman will survive in todays market you are very mistaken. The Slick Rick salesman has no credibility in todays market. He has been replaced by successful honest people. A coworker of mine tried to bump the price $800 and the customer caught him in a lie and said she will never do business with our dealership again. That happened just Tuesday. You are being very naive to think that 95% of people don't shop on the internet. It's more like 95% of people don't read the automotive section in the Sunday paper because the internet is easier to find what you want. I really encourage you to speak to other sales consultant gagrice and get back to me.
-Rocky
P.S. What we had available in our inventory was [non-permissible content removed]!!! If it was so wonderful why in the hell didn't others sell it??? 4 new cars in February and 10 in March. All but a couple of those deals were dealertrades. Tell me again who is right???
You better consider bailing out of Michigan. Unless you want to be left paying all the bills. Or considered an uneducated and unskilled welfare case.
Since 2001, migration has cost Michigan 465,000 people, the equivalent of the combined populations of Grand Rapids, Warren and Sterling Heights -- the state's second-, third- and fourth-largest cities.
Population loss of that magnitude is so rare that its impact has never been studied. But The News' analysis discovered some sobering trends:
Those leaving Michigan are the people the state most needs to keep -- young and college-educated. The state suffered a net loss to migration of 18,000 adults with a bachelor's degree or higher in 2007 alone -- the equivalent of half the staff of the University of Michigan crossing the state line.
-Rocky
-Rocky
-Rocky
Also I don't understand how anyone that can defend the union can be so quick to insult the south. A lot of good hard working people live in the south. Detroit meanwhile is the common but of jokes. Remember how many sports reporters were upset at the Super Bowl being held in Detroit.
If anyone could find the data, I'm sure grade schools in Georgia rank higher than in Michigan.
I can imagine that the housing crisis would have been nearly as bad if people would have just dong some basic research. www.zillow.com
And only a total buffoon needs a salesman to sell him a car. Next time I want to buy a car I will talk to the GM of the dealership. Or better still, I will talk to the CEO of Honda/Toyota/Chevy/Hyundai whatever the case maybe :sick:
-Rocky
Internet shopping is NOT research. The newspapers are all but dead. The classifieds in the papers are all but gone. Looking for the best price does not tell you if what you are wanting is worth a hoot. You are confused on what research is. I know you are capable of research. I don't think that many people are. The smart car shopper will email all the dealers with what they want in a vehicle. Then only talk to the dealers that email a price. I will not even visit a dealership that refuses to put their best price in an email. I had a Toyota dealer call that had a Sequoia I could be happy with. I told him you would not give me your bottom price in an email and I dropped you from my list. He said they were not allowed to. I said the dealer that did email the best price got the sale. I do not play one against the other. I tell them all in the email I send that I will buy from the dealer with the best price.
-Rocky
Isn't Detroit known for it's super high crime rate, a horrible football team, and corrupt mayors?
http://www.michigan.gov/documents/hal/lm_census_County_0008_271319_7.pdf
Not sure where the Detroit newspaper got their stats. I can believe the smart ones are leaving.
When I purchased a car I usually skipped over the salesman part and went straight to the sales manager because I had little use for the salesman when it came to GM cars because I knew more about it than he/she did. I understand that not everyone is me and I can appreciate someone needing some advice and I'm more than happy to give it. If I don't know something I'm not going to lie to give you a answer just to make myself look smart.
-Rocky
-Rocky
-Rocky
-Rocky
You know, to book travel you used to have to use a travel agent. With the internet, who uses travel agents anymore? I guess the GM and C bailouts do give you some extra leverage.
I know many people are drunk on the import Kool-Aid and if they are that stupid to pay sticker then you must know a lot of very stupid people. Perhaps now you see why I'm so confident that the midwest is the beacon of this country for intellegence.
Well to me that is Pure Ignorance. So even if you went in as a Consultant for say $500 fee you could save that person that would pay MSRP money.
So you are suggesting I move to a southern state and use my Michigan education to teach the toothless, redneck hicks how to buy cars???
Come-on gagrice there can't be that many dumb hillbilly's out there. I would be embarrased.
I don't think somebody from even Alanta, Georgia, needs me to hold his/hers hand on buying a Tata. :P
You now know all the slimy tricks of the trade.
I actually don't. Most of those dealers went under thus not many people to pass on the trade left.
Say, this gentleman wants that car out there. He will pay this amount. Either write it up or we go elsewhere. Most people just cannot be that aggressive. You have to be or you get screwed by the dealer.
Well some people have such high expectations like the couple that wanted a $33K Traverse for $18K O.T.D. and those are the type of clients and expectations I would be asked to do. It sounds like a great idea but I don't want to put up with peoples B.S. and unrealistic expectations. At least as a salesman I can broom them and move on to the next guy with some sense.
I am not talking those that get employee discount. I am talking the millions of people that were not born into the UAW. They don't have the big bucks to toss around. They need the best deal they can get. You could get it for them. Then you could feel good about what you are doing.
Well the millions of people around here are elgible for special pricing because they or a relative work at a supplier plant. If I were to move out of state what would I do for money until this consulting business got off the ground??? Go flip burgers and live in a cardboard box? The UAW workers aren't driving big ticket items like you Teamster retirees.
-Rocky