Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Online Car Retailer Launching Nation's First Car "Vending Machine"

Posted by samzenpus on from the correct-change-only dept.

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."

5 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. This issue was solved years ago by hessian · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Carmakers like Saturn (RIP) offered no-haggle pricing and compensated their sales staff for being consumer-oriented.

    The reason car salespeople are horrible is that they're set up to compete with the consumer for a concealed amount of money that is either in rebate or discount to the dealer.

    Thus for the consumer, it's guesswork against a predatory salesperson interested only in their commission.

    --
    Futurist Traditionalism
    1. Re:This issue was solved years ago by flyneye · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's true. Out of the plethoral diversity of jobs I've taken, car salesman was one I ducked out of for moral reasons. During the morning I shadowed experienced sales, during the afternoon, I trained from "the book". Basically , it's a book that shows you HOW to lie, what you can get away with and the techniques for prying money from innocents hands for a car that may or may not suit them. You don't care, as long as they spend MORE money than they came in to spend. I woke up one morning two weeks later, fixed breakfast, stayed home and felt good about myself. I had another job by afternoon.

      --
      *Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
    2. Re:This issue was solved years ago by Coward+Anonymous · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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

  2. The real question is... by zippo01 · · Score: 5, Funny

    If I shake it real hard will a free car fall out?

  3. This seems like solving the wrong problem... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    With some probable exceptions, car salesmen aren't genetically-engineered-dispicable-abhumans or anything, they are just what you get at the pointy end of a system designed to resist non totally-fucked-up market pricing through a mixture of social flimflam, feature obfuscation, mandatory bundling, etc. (Sort of like trying to get an actual 'price' for a nontrivial medical procedure, except that with the car you are usually conscious the entire time, making it less pleasant)

    If you aren't trying to fuck around on prices, I'd venture to guess that you'll automagically get at least apathetic salespeople, rather than overtly slimy ones. Actually good ones might require additional management and technique. However, at the same time, it's not as though there aren't dozens of ways to design confusing and abusive web interfaces for inhibiting comparison shopping, pre-filling unhelpful checkboxes, hiding useful things, and generally shoving the user around.

    Barring gross incompetence on the part of either the management or the web devs, the experience is going to follow the economics. Are you running a business moving goods you think people will want at clearly stated prices? Your humans or your website will likely be pretty easy to deal with. Are you fucking around with the user? You'll either get slimy pressure-jockeys in person, or an absurdly unhelpful and downright malicious site. The medium is not the message, in this case.