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Online Car Retailer Launching Nation's First Car "Vending Machine"
cartechboy writes "Last year's Gallup poll showed that car salespeople are the least trusted professionals in America, ranking even below members of Congress. Enter, Carvana, an online dealership operating in Atlanta, Georgia. They allow customers to shop for cars online, secure loans online, and pay for cars online. Now they have gone one step farther and are claiming to remove the despised car salesperson from test drives and even post-purchase pickup by creating, yes, a giant auto vending machine. The facility, which will open at the end of November, will be a fully digital, 24-7 interactive 'vehicle-delivery center' designed to offer customers pick-up options after purchasing a vehicle online. They'll have floor-to-ceiling windows, custom LED lighting, flat screen TV's plus interactive keypads that identify customers based on unique buyer credentials. There will be three car pickup bays to allow for simultaneous pickups. One thing they won't have: car sales people (Note: there will be customer service reps there to answer questions). Carvana plans to expand on the idea, presumably if this Atlanta facility works."
No, the real reason the whole car buying experience is horrific is that there is no competition, by law. Car dealerships have indefinite, irrevocable monopolies in the regions they cover due to historical events that occurred 90 years ago. The real solution is to erase outdated laws, break the monopolies and open the market to real competition.
Here is a podcast about it:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/19/172402376/why-buying-a-car-never-changes
I work at a dealership, didn't watch your video, but there are some reasons it is like this.
Manufactureres want to keep quality control. To do warranty work you have to be certified by the manufacturer. They don't want any yahoo with a socket set doing warranty work or recalls and making things worse for the customer. It hurts the customer experience and their reputation. The manufacturers also can't monitor everyone who wants to do warranty work, or have enough parts in every possible dealership for that work. They plan for extra parts, say 100 fuel pumps in each state, which will meet the demand but if everyone can do it suddenly they need to make 5000 fuel pumps per state so each can keep in their warehouse, but they know only 100 will ever be used, this is even worse for recalls because they will need to take back that extra inventory on parts.
Sales is similar in that they don't want to supply each area with 5x the number of vehicles that will sell in the area and have a glut of extra units that will never sell because everyone wants to sell the new car model.
I will ALSO say we work with one manufacturer that doesn't have those deals and they guy two blocks away can sell the same new vehicles as us. So saying it is based on laws is obviously a lie, its based on what the manufacturers think is best for them. The ones we deal with want to make the best vehicles they can and not deal with selling them or fixing them and leave that to th dealerships.
Tesla, for example, is taking this to the extreme level and only allowing themselves ownership of the dealerships for the reasons stated above.
Just saying its not a black and white issue like people seem to think it is.
Actually, that used to be possible. There were some shops that rented out bays and tools, and had mechanics on staff to assist if you wanted it. Great for those easy jobs that you get ripped off on, say like brake jobs, $2500 quote for all for wheels for my AMG.. fancy car aside, I did it myself with $1k in parts, rotors are kinda pricey, a jack, and about 2 hours, and most of that time was jacking the car up and down. Would have been nice to have a lift I could have rented, took me 5 min per wheel for parts swap.
However, most of those shops that used that business model in the DC/MD/VA area are no longer in business, so guessing the business model was not profitable. There also used to be some shops that rented out the bays and lifts on weekends when they were closed, but they stopped due to liability issues.
Maybe it will catch on again in the future, but for now.. I'm stuck with jacks and jack stands.. or spend $4k and get a portable half high lift.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped