Stories from the Sales Frontlines

nyccarguy · February 2012

The way isellhondas likes em...

tjc78 · February 2012

A runaway shopping cart ran into her new Subie and left a dent in the right front fender above the wheel well

That just sucks! I hate taking my car to anywhere with shopping carts. There are too many ignorant people who just leave them anywhere. I hope you have a Paintless dent repair available where you are.

Just yesterday I had to run out to pick up some groceries and I parked in "no mans land" as usual. As I was walking toward the store I noticed that someone was actually parked a touch further than me and was wheeling their cart toward the car. I watched for a second to make sure they returned the cart otherwise my car would have been a sitting duck!

I've actually seen people rest the cart against someone else's car. Naturally with my big mouth I said something and moved the cart.

driver100 · February 2012

A runaway shopping cart ran into her new Subie

I try to park far away from shopping carts. But, I can park a half a mile away and when I come out of the store there will be a car parked on each side of me.

Ever notice, you can be on a parking lot, and there are about 4000 cars all parked. You go to get into your car and go to open the drivers door, and the car next to you has a passenger who is going to open their passenger door at the same time.

Or, you pull into a parking space, and a car pulls in next to you with big slobby people who couldn't care less and they just have to swing the door open completely, right into the side of your car.

Sorry to hear about the dent....some people are just ignorant. How lazy can someone be, not to take their cart to a station, or leave it where it won't run into a car?

michaellno · February 2012

A runaway shopping cart ran into her new Subie and left a dent in the right front fender above the wheel well.

Makes me glad I drive a Saturn with the polymer panels. Carts bounce off my car rather than denting it.

snakeweasel · February 2012

I know I am coming to this a bit late but this is what I did when we bought our Sonata under the same circumstances. I just offered them what I knew other dealers were selling used ones with that many miles on them.

Do your homework and hope for the best.

driver100 · February 2012

Makes me glad I drive a Saturn with the polymer panels.

Yeh, great, a car made out of Tupperware.

Actually, here is why polymer plastic panels didn't work so well:

The Saturn cars were the first to use all vertical body panels molded in thermoplastics. Saturn commercials used to show shopping carts bouncing off a Saturn without leaving any marks.

After reviewing the reasons for using plastic in the Saturn, Lutz states:

"In practice, however, the plastic panels were finicky. They took longer to produce than conventional stamped steel, and they grew and shrank when the temperature changed, requiring the cars to have wide, unappealing gaps around the doors, hood and trunk for clearance."

Plastics have a higher coefficient of linear thermal expansion (CLTE) than steel, and require more space to grow and shrink. Efforts to improve CLTE properties of plastic compounds with fillers and backbone tweaking haven't resolved the problem.

Read it all at: The truth about Saturn Plastic Body Panels

snakeweasel · February 2012

The voice is pretty good, but a French accent would be even better.

I downloaded a woman with a French accent on my Tom Tom. Even have Eric Cartman who throws an insult at you with every statement.

snakeweasel · February 2012

A dozen or so years ago I had a friend with a 90 something subie wagon (IIRC), the tranny went south with about 2,500 or so left on the warranty. Subaru went through a lot of twist and turns to avoid covering it under warranty.

snakeweasel · February 2012

On the news they said Sears was closing.

What did you expect, have you seen their stores lately?

explorerx4 · February 2012

Now I get it. Edmunds outsourced their hosting.

snakeweasel · February 2012

Don't you have something to do with tax returns (sorry, but the memory ain't so good)? Pretty early for that season to be ending. Maybe people just don't make any money these days.

Yep doing taxes. Our office is pretty busy last week of January through maybe the second or third week of February. Things die down pretty drastically afterwards and March is dead. Things then pick up again late march through the end of the season.

snakeweasel · February 2012

That said by far the most convenient place for e to buy Kenmore appliances and Craftsman tools is Kmart.

We have a Sears hardware store near me where I can get Craftsman tools and Kenmore appliances. I rather like the place for hardware since it is pretty much an old time hardware store where you can buy nails by weight and such with very a knowledgable staff.

dino001 · February 2012

When company is bankrupt, the shaft of stockholders already occured, usually years or at least months before. At that point stockholders have no say, only creditors. Again, the essence of being bankrupt is that there is no equity left, only debt and then creditors settle for equity. That is the process. Don't blame the process, blame the previous management that run the equity to the ground.

cu503 · February 2012

I find myself awaiting a call from the body shop, my 2005 G35 was rear ended and may be beyond repair, all of a sudden possible car shopping, came across carwoo ?
Tx !

kyfdx · February 2012

That's true... Eddie Lampert bought up the discounted debt from K-Mart and used that leverage to take over the bankrupt company...

He then leveraged the real estate that K-Mart owned to buy Sears...

He knows real estate, but (evidently) very little about retailing.. It was all a real estate play for him....

Personally, I think this jump in Sears stock is misguided.. and if you own it, this would be the perfect time to get out.

Just my $0.02

verdugo · February 2012

My wife gets one of those LIVING SOCIAL DEALS or GROUPONS for a dentist in our area. They do adult as well as pediatric dentistry. $50 for a dental cleaning and X-Rays. What does she have to loose?

Was it 'Dental Care of Stamford'? They told my wife she had 11 cavities. She went to another dentist and he said she didn't have any at all.

stickguy · February 2012

A little early (since the next purchase isnt happening until year end),but they keep sending me test drive offers.

Got a $50 one from Ford at the car show (gonna pay ticket plus expenses!). Still haven't used that.

And the local Hyundai dealer keeps sending me mailers, and recently that included a $25 gas card with a test drive.

and today, toyota sent me one for some reason. Another $50 visa card for taking a test drive.

Gonna have to take a 1/2 day off work to get all these done!

And no, I don't feel like a stroke. I am doing some looking, and if they didn't want me to come in they wouldn't send the invitation!

venture · February 2012

When something malfunctions on any other area of the site, there's no one to gripe to or with

I hosted chat rooms on MSN, when they had them, for many, many years. I can feel your pain. :shades:

imidazol97 · February 2012

>where you can buy nails by weight and such with very a knowledgable staff.

I love that kind of store. Brings out the Tim Allen in me.

I can "hear" Richard in the background, mumbling to himself that, "Yeah, that fits what I thought 'bout 'im alright."

jmonroe · February 2012

I hate taking my car to anywhere with shopping carts. There are too many ignorant people who just leave them anywhere. I hope you have a Paintless dent repair available where you are.

I dont like places with carts either but you cant avoid them. Mrs. j did everything right but still got nailed. She parked next to a car to her right, a newer Lexus as best as she could tell, which was fairly far away from the entrance to the store but of course it wasnt there when she came out. The Lexus owner probably parked further away for the same reason. She also took a cart to the cart return station on her way to the store. She said she could have gotten to the runaway cart if she left her cart go but then her cart would have hit a parked car for sure. I believe her when she says she could have caught up to it because she has no problems getting to me as Im running around the dining room table.

As for a paintless dent shop, that aint gonna work. The fender was really walloped. Id say the dent is at least an inch deep and its close to a crease so I doubt one of those wonder boys can fix that. I have a nephew in-law who works for one of the best body shops in the area so Im going to talk to him and see what he thinks it will cost. Im all for leaving it alone because I know, with all the shopping that she does, its bound to happen again. To prevent another occurrence Id have to take the keys from her but Id have to man-up quite a bit before thats going to happen.

jmonroe

nyccarguy · February 2012

Yes it was dental care of Stamford!

sterlingdog · February 2012

"I can 'hear' Richard in the background..."

Don't sell me short. I'm not always what I appear to be. I love old hardware stores, even if I can't use a hammer. The garden tools, the hard candy, the old soft drinks in bottles, the flowering plants, the smell of wood barrels and bark chips are all things that I enjoy. Growing up, I had a good friend whose father owned one of those stores. We called it "the feed and seed store" though it had much more than that. As boys, we used to bake sweet potatoes on top of the old pot belly stove in the middle of the store. As you know, I do enjoy the finer things in life---which includes hardware stores. By the way, Tim Allen is one of my favorites.

Richard

sterlingdog · February 2012

"I'm all for leaving it alone..."

I find that very hard to believe. You take such wonderful care of your cars. It would drive you crazy to see that dent on a daily basis.

Richard

stickguy · February 2012

I did the same thing with my (former) Accord. When my front bumper skin got damaged (it was maybe 2 years old at that point), I never bothered to replace it. Would have cost $600 or so, and was purely cosmetic. And I figured as soon as I put a new one one, someone would back into that one too!

made the car easy to spot from the front at least.

michaellno · February 2012

Makes me glad I drive a Saturn with the polymer panels.

Yeh, great, a car made out of Tupperware.

Hey, I never said it was perfect, just that I don't have to worry about door dings and such.

Having owned 3 Saturns with the polymer panels (L300, VUE and ION), I can attest to the points raised in your post .. the panel gaps are wider than on other cars, and I know that they were expensive to produce.

That was one of the reasons why I think the Saturn experiment fizzled out - they couldn't mix the assembly of polymer and steel bodied cars on the same line.

michaellno · February 2012

I did the same thing with my (former) Accord. When my front bumper skin got damaged (it was maybe 2 years old at that point), I never bothered to replace it. Would have cost $600 or so, and was purely cosmetic.

I have the same issue with the ION. Got a gouge on the front bumper which also would cost about $600 to fix - I might do it before I sell or trade it in.

stickguy · February 2012

trade in they might ding you, but with your car, you are going to be way better off private sale, and for that, Ihighly doubt you will get the money back.

jmonroe · February 2012

I find that very hard to believe. You take such wonderful care of your cars. It would drive you crazy to see that dent on a daily basis.

Its her car and when I drive it Ill be sure not to come up on it from the right side so I wont even see it. Now I know what youre thinking; what about when it gets waxed? Ive got that figured out too. Her car, she waxes it. :surprise:

jmonroe

michaellno · February 2012

trade in they might ding you, but with your car, you are going to be way better off private sale, and for that, I highly doubt you will get the money back.

Yeah, I suspect most dealers would shy away from a Saturn.

When the time comes, I'll look at the delta between trade value (plus tax savings) and private sale value.

nyccarguy · February 2012

In October 2009 my best friend trades in his leased 2007 Infiniti QX56 on a brand new 2009 Chevrolet Tahoe LTZ. The QX was his wife's ride & after a year and a half she decided it was too big for her. So he starts driving it and is on pace to go WAY over the lease miles. Like $6000 over. So he buys a 2009 Chevrolet Tahoe LTZ with 0% Financing for 72 months. He was going to have to pay the $6000 whether he turned the QX in at the end of the lease or in the form of negative equity, so why not pay it off using free money for 6 years?

He loves his Tahoe so much it convinces my Dad to special order a 2010 Red Tahoe LTZ for himself.

He sends his brother in law to the dealer where he bought his 2009 Tahoe. His brother in law proceeds to buy an Avalanche, a bread truck, & 2 Express work vans. The brother in law trades in his Avalanche for a Tahoe Hybrid.

Last week my best friend's brother-in-law's Tahoe Hybrid's dahs board starts lighting up like a Christmas tree & he takes it to the dealership. Dealer says there's a problem with the Hybrids that GM is working on but doesn't have the fix yet. They'll reset the computer and hope nothing happens.

The brother-in-law says he drives from CT to Long Island every day and needs his Tahoe Hybrid to run flawlessly. The dealer says to him: "Chris, what do you want me to do for you? You're a great customer." Chris' reply was: "Either fix my truck or I want a new one." The dealer's principle owner says to him: "Come by tomorrow to pick up your new truck."

Chris tells Scott (my best friend) about what happened. He also tells Scott that they have a bunch of 2011 Leftover Tahoe LTZs with 0% APR for 72 months. Scott who now has almost 65,000 miles on his 2009 Tahoe strikes a deal for a new 2011 Tahoe LTZ.

I ask Scott to call and see what they can do for my Dad who currently has 48,000 miles on his 2 year old 2010 LTZ Tahoe. They made us an offer we couldn't refuse. Now my Dad is trading in his 2010 Tahoe LTZ for the identical 2011 Tahoe LTZ.

Kirstie_H · February 2012

I have a friend who, 11 years ago, was foolish, and managed to get her driving privileges revoked for 10 years. When it happened, she promptly sold her vehicle so as not to be tempted to drive at all. Last year, as she was coming to the end, her husband surprised her by purchasing a 2001 Honda Accord, with leather and all the goodies, with 95K miles, for $6,000 cash. It is in pristine condition. I've never seen someone so happy to have a car, and she would just go out and sit in it prior to getting her license back.

Yesterday, for whatever reason, she decided to stop by a dealership and look at vehicles. She test drove and fell in love with a 2005 Passat with 90K miles. They offered to take her car + $3,000 and it would be hers.

Well, she stopped by her husband's work, and being of sound mind, he said absolutely no when she asked him to buy it. Last night, she called me seeking corroboration that her husband was just a meanie who didn't want her to have a fun car for a $100/month car payment. Her logic? Her Accord now has 109K miles on it, and she's convinced by that alone that it will eventually need repair work. Apparently she is not familiar with what a 90K Passat might need.

I asked her why she wanted a $300/month car payment (which I know she cannot afford right now), and she reiterated that it would only be $100/month. My logic was that she would want to be putting away $200/month as a donation to the repair facility of her choice.

Am I just a big meanie like her husband?

jmonroe · February 2012

Am I just a big meanie like her husband?

Im sure you know the answer. Anytime someone who uses logic to explain why someone shouldnt get their new toy, you are going to be perceived as being a meanie and downright cruel to be more exact. When Ive been asked these questions over the years I usually say, what do you want to hear? I can say anything that makes you feel good. Then I get the tell it to me straight comment but they almost always do what they wanted to do anyhow. Only on a few occasions have I found that logic works.

jmonroe

driver100 · February 2012

Am I just a big meanie like her husband?

Definitely! The poor girl wants to get "the feel of the road" and you people are standing in her way.

At least, she has the smarts to know the Passat is going to be a lot more fun to drive. Why ruin her fun? And at $3000 it will only cost her $100 a month....for 3 years! By then, the Passat will be 10 years old and have about 150k miles on it.

But, who knows, by then she might win the lottery.

BTW, I think you are a good friend to try to talk her out of it. I wouldn't feel quite as strongly if she has a descent job, will be paying to keep the car going, and understands the difference in reliability between a Honda and a Passat.

snakeweasel · February 2012

I wouldn't feel quite as strongly if she has a descent job,

Seeing that descent is going in a downward direction I would be very worried if she had a descent job (unless it was something like rescuing mountain climbers).

Ducking and running

verdugo · February 2012

I told her it was probably left by someone who owns a POS and if they dont care about their own car do you really think theyll care about anyone elses.

I bet it was a Hyunday owner. :P

verdugo · February 2012

It was a good try though.

Thank you, I try to help you.

fezo · February 2012

Maybe your friend needs to go back to walking.

Ugh. What a day, Another day in NYC. This time to meet the social worker who'll be working with us on the transplant, get my port x-rayed and to see the infectious disease doc because I have toxoplasmosis and can't be on the thing that holds it a bay for a couple of weeks after the transplant. Worst case that could cost me my good eye. The basic news is they will flip me onto another antibiotic in the interim (the doc sais, ""we can't guarantee it will work but we can't guarantee the one you are on will work either."

Someone had said that they must have experience with someone with this and needing a bone marrow transplant. Well they were wrong. I'm the first.

sterlingdog · February 2012

No reflection on you, but I think that your friend is an ungrateful, selfish little B----! After waiting ten years to get her license back, her husband tries to do something really nice for her. He surprises her with a nice car, and it is fully paid for so that she has no payments. Oh, no. That's not good enough. She has to throw it in his face that she has found something better that she wants. She could have at least kept her trap shut for a year. I think that her husband should take the keys, sell the car, and let her walk for another ten years. Just sign me "Judge Judy". :P

Richard

sterlingdog · February 2012

I had a very nice email reponse from Mark Holthoff, Senior Manager for Consumer Support here at Edmunds. He said that though things weren't 100% fixed, they wouldn't stop trying until it was. I give him an "A" for diplomacy and effort.

Richard

sterlingdog · February 2012

"Her car, she waxes it."

As I've said before, I do admire Mrs. Jmonroe---for many reasons!

Richard

driver100 · February 2012

My older brother has a 2003 Honda Civic (That is all he buys) and he finally had to get a new battery for it....the original battery, 9 years old! He has about 60k miles on the car. He wants to buy a new car because he has spent $2500 for repairs this year.

I am thinking, he will probably be able to buy a basic Civic (his old one doesn't have remote door locks) for about $18k to $20k. They will probably give him $4k for his trade in.

I just think he would have been further ahead buying a new car a few years earlier. He'd have a better more reliable car, and it wouldn't have cost much more.

Instead of preventative maintenance it is preventative -lose money fixing up a car that is going to cost you more in the long run.

jmonroe · February 2012

My older brother has a 2003 Honda Civic (That is all he buys)

Instead of preventative maintenance it is preventative -lose money fixing up a car that is going to cost you more in the long run.

Your rationale is a car salesmans dream. Just because you have had one out of the ordinary bad year with car maintenance doesnt mean that should chase you into a new car purchase. You didnt say what the repairs were. Maybe he was ripped off by going in for an oil change and being told his muffler bearing is shot. IIRC, youve mentioned that your brother is fairly fugal. It seems he doesnt like to buy new cars just because they are aging and are out of warranty.

Owning a Honda, hes holding a lot of good cards and is probably still ahead in the game.

jmonroe

imidazol97 · February 2012

>Owning a Honda

Gotta love the stereotypes that are slow changing. There are many people who bought Hondas with their perpetual transmission problems that wish they didn't have an Odyssey because of the failures. Search for keyword odyssey transmission to read the forums. There are those with VCM in their Accords that have trouble and find an unsupportive company.

My leSabre went over 8 years before I replaced the battery and it didn't need it. I was just ready because I didn't want to see if it went low one winter morning when it was parked outdoors visiting in Michigan, for example.

Just as poor reputations are perpetuated by repeating them, the good reputations are slow to change. I remember the discussion when Richard was thinking of buying a Cadillac. I had an SRX tailing me on the ramp at the major merge as I returned from a business trip. I thought of Richard and his great SRX.

When I was following Civic discussions, problems would be mentioned and the response would be that the problem is a known problem. So I decided no car is perfect. Sometimes the dealer makes the difference, as it has for me with my Buicks and my Cobalt. A good dealer is worth a little extra at purchase time if they won't come down.

The brother should sell the car outright. With the elevated reputation of the vehicle, many people are willing to buy straight from the owners at a good price for the owner. Then a replacement purchase can be made with a much clearer picture of price/profit for your brother. Dealers use the trade-in to confuse the pricing.

sterlingdog · February 2012

"I just think he would have been further ahead buying a new car a few years earlier."

I'm not so sure. He has driven the car for 9 years and had $2,500 in repairs. That's only $277 per year for repairs plus the usual maintenance. In addition, he has had at least four years with no car payments---assuming he financed his Honda for five years. He still has a car that is highly marketable to private buyers with an average mileage of only 7,000 per year for nine years. I'd say that he is ahead of the game.

Richard

imidazol97 · February 2012

>He still has a car that is highly marketable to private buyers with an average mileage of only 7,000 per year for nine years. I'd say that he is ahead of the game.

He can sell that car privately easily. To avoid Craigslist, read and decide how much he wants for it. Put out feelers at church, the saloon, the wife's card clubs, garden club, etc., anywhere they have friends. Friends will tell friends who will have someone looking. Just don't let them use the friend connection to lower your price.

I know when the Hondaphile across the road wanted a used Civic for his high school daughter because he was happy with the Acuras he owned, he couldn't find one. He bought a small Acura version of the Civic.

sterlingdog · February 2012

"Just as poor reputations are perpetuated by repeating them..."

Good point. I spread a lot of poison about my first Cadillac experience, only to end up with the perfect one later. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, perhaps it isn't always a duck.

Richard

jmonroe · February 2012

Gotta love the stereotypes that are slow changing.

driver said his brother has a 2003 Civic. At that time GM was not making reliable cars compared to Honda so I dont fault his thinking back then about not wanting a GM car. Up until 2005 when I bought my first Hyundai, the infamous XG350, I never, even once, owned a car that wasnt a GM. What made me go away from them is how they wouldnt stand behind a shedding paint job on my 95 Bonneville and then when my 95 Monte Carlo starting drinking water due to a bad intake manifold gasket with 68K miles on it in 05, I had enough. There was no way I was going to buy anything that was built by GM in 05. Today I would be willing to try them again. In fact, before we bought the 12 Subie Legacy we drove a 12 Regal Turbo and considered it but in the end Mrs. j liked the idea of AWD but Buick didnt offer it in the Regal. I said try the La Crosse because AWD was available in that car but she didnt like the looks of the La Crosse. It didnt bother me but she didnt like it.

There are those with VCM in their Accords that have trouble and find an unsupportive company.

You dont have to tell me about an unsupportive company. The regulars here know all about how Hyundai stabbed me when the engine in the XG350 blew up with less than 43K miles on it in November of 2011 while still being under a so called 10 year 100K mile warranty.

Just as poor reputations are perpetuated by repeating them, the good reputations are slow to change.

No doubt about that. The poor reputations that GM and Hyundai had at one time were very well deserved. It seems that Hyundai has climbed out of that hole and GM is on their way but still not quite there.

Sometimes the dealer makes the difference, as it has for me with my Buicks and my Cobalt. A good dealer is worth a little extra at purchase time if they won't come down.

I agree with that too. The Hyundai dealer I was dealing with had none of traits that you would like a dealer to have but its still a craps shoot that things wont change for the worse. I can bet a lot of safe money that the Hyundai dealer that I was dealing with wont change for the better.

I never thought that I would ever consider a GM car again but times have changed for the better in GMs case. I still may own another one before I check out. The best car I ever had was an 80 Park Ave that I had until 97 and it still looked good but the tranny finally started to go. I told that tale a few times; it still gives me tears.

jmonroe

[Deleted User] · February 2012

Wow, your brother averages less than 7,000 miles of driving a year. I'm curious what all the expensive repairs were about on such a young Civic. The '03 model year has a solid reputation and should be mostly trouble-free, though other years have struggled with failed transmissions and cracked engine blocks (you know, minor stuff that shouldn't affect Honda's reputation :mad: ). Only the very rare Hybrids in that model year were troublesome across the board with failed transmissions. Hmmm, bad transmissions in Civics, Pilots, Odysseys, and Accords, and cracked engine blocks in Civics. Remind me why Honda is the solid performer in reliability again?

Personally I'd rather drive the '03 versus the '12 Civic given how fun the older generations were and how bland the current generation has become. Any chance you could pass along his impressions of the new model?

-Ty

imidazol97 · February 2012

>I spread a lot of poison about my first Cadillac experience,

I have spent about $175 per year as maintenance on my 98 leSabre, tires, brakes ,and all else sans oil changes which I do myself.

There has been a tendency to over glamorize the foreign makes at the expense of US brands. All have their problems, and to speak to GM they too have had problems. But things change. There's a movement of folk who bought foreign brands in the 80s, 90s, who continually discredit GM without recent knowledge of their newer products. They cut their teeth with HoToy brands when they were smaller and simpler vehicles with less to go wrong and less did. On the other hand, some things were repaired by the dealer before/outside warranty so they didn't become failures. GM didn't have that profit margin per car because of management and UAW, but that's a whole other forum topic.

imidazol97 · February 2012

>driver said his brother has a 2003 Civic. GM was not making reliable cars compared to Honda

I have an 03 leSabre that I would try to replace with a similar leSabre Celebration model in red metallic pearl if it got smashed and totalled. I would do that over replacing with a full size car at the moment because I love the vehicle.

Honda did not have a good competitor in the _small_ Civic sized cars. I know we agree on more of this. GM's problem was they would neither spend to replace things or update things that were weak under warranty nor replace things out of warranty. They didn't have the money due to management costs, inefficiencies, and the UAW's wages and retirement grand styles.

I've had fun the last couple of years watching the guy up the road get cars for his now graduated high school daughter. He bought a Neon. It wasn't long till the hood was up and it was in and out. Then it was replaced with an older Civic. Hood up some but not as much. But it did seem to leave for a week for service of some kind. Both these were used.

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