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Court: Car Dealers Can't Stop Tesla From Selling In Massachusetts
curtwoodward writes: Many states have laws that prevent car manufacturers from operating their own dealerships, a throwback to the days when Detroit tried to undercut its franchise dealers by opening company-owned shops. But dealers have taken those laws to the extreme as they battle new competition from Tesla, which is selling its cars direct to the public. In some states, dealers have succeeded in limiting Tesla's direct-sales model. But not in Massachusetts (PDF): the state's Supreme Court says the dealers don't have any right to sue Tesla for unfair competition, since they're not Tesla dealers. No harm, no foul.
I love the courts logic.
Dealer Franchise Laws were prevented to promote the Franchise model.
If a car company sells franchises in the State, it can't then open Company Stores and undercut their Franchises.
But if the Car Company has no franchises, there is no one being hurt.
Car Dealerships can't sue because they don't like a new Car Company's Sales Model.
Reality is the Franchise owners were licking their chops thinking of all the money they would make selling Teslas in their dealerships. They got butt hurt when they found out Tesla wasn't going to sell them Franchises.
Interesting tack by the court. Did Tesla try that argument in the other states as well?
If they were offering Tesla what they wanted or needed maybe tesla wouldn't see a need to bypass them.
Tesla for example likes to have their dealerships in normal store fronts where they have ONE car in the middle of the store and a lot of information. They sort of look and feel like apple stores. Very minimalistic, hip, modern. If the dealerships were willing to do that then maybe Tesla wouldn't have needed to do this.
Tesla points out that new car companies in the US tend to fail and they blame the dealership system for this because they say they're invested in existing auto companies and brands.
For Tesla to be comfortable the existing dealerships would have to be willing to commit themselves to Tesla in the same way that Tesla's company run dealerships are committed to Tesla.
And even then... Tesla doesn't have to deal with the dealerships. That whole model of sales is obviously going to come under challenge from all the other car companies now that will all ask "why do we have to deal with you when Tesla can do what they want?"
Maybe Toyota or Ford will want to have their own stores. And the dealerships are going to have to justify themselves to those organizations.
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Quoting TFS for your enjoyment:
> but not in Massachusetts. The state's supreme court says
Tesla points out that new car companies in the US tend to fail and they blame the dealership system for this because they say they're invested in existing auto companies and brands.
I blame the dealerships too. The last time I went shopping for a car, I told the salesman I was looking to replace my Chevy Malibu, and wanted something small to midize that was good in the snow. Despite the bevy of options on the lot, he walked me over to a Challenger SRT ... a rear-wheel drive boat that most likely isn't even particularly good in the rain. Looking around, though, the dealer had invested in a lot of special edition models of sports cars (2 Mustang Roushes, a GT500, the Challenger, etc) and that was what he needed to sell that day. If I was the guy making midsize sedans, I wouldn't want that guy involved in selling my cars either.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
I figure, much like Apple, Tesla wants to control the experience, from the product to the showroom and the sales people and the after sales support. If there is a problem Tesla can deal with it directly, not leave it up-to some middle man with their own agenda.
They would have to cancel all their franchises first. The State Supreme Court ruling said they couldn't sue Tesla because Tesla were not franchised Tesla dealerships. So if Ford or Toyota had franchised dealerships- they would have to get rid of them first in order to sell direct.
Tesla could open franchised dealerships and sell in the states they are restricted in. But my guess is that margins are paper thin and they do not think the markup necessary for franchised dealerships would be attractive enough to sell the cars.
Dealers are their own worst enemies.
Recently a co-worker of mine went shopping for a car and the local dealer treated her like shit. (She made the mistake of knowing what she wanted, and what she was willing to pay.) At one point the sales slime flat told her "Can I talk to your husband? I don't think you understand buying cars" - This did not fly well with the single, divorced professional woman who's been buying cars longer than that young prick has been alive.
The above scenario would not fly at a chain owned by a national or international auto outlet. One phone call to a news station and the media would be all over said auto maker for how they treat their female customers. On the other hand, people sort of expect local dealers to be corrupt, sleazy middle men. And they are. They're nothing but entrenched middlemen hiding behind old laws and inherently corrupt local politics. (Car dealers are infamous for greasing the palms of mayors, county clerks, governors, etc)
Good for Tesla. And justly bad for entrenched sleazy car dealer interests.
The auto dealer protection laws were put in place to prevent local dealerships / franchisees from being screwed by automotive manufacturers at one time in history. Now they themselves wield that law to screw automotive manufacturers and the consumer.
Let them be screwed by a more innovative company again, and the tables be turned to the side of the consumer for once...
I mean, what do they do for me, as a customer, when I want to buy a car?
... if Ford or Toyota had franchised dealerships- they would have to get rid of them first in order to sell direct.
Why then is it that there are no manufacturers who sell directly to customers? Or, put it another way, why do all manufactures have dealerships?
I don't have a particularly high opinion of car dealerships; since all the used dealers in the area were inflexible run by a bunch of sleaze balls I went to a Ford dealership that had been advertising how flexible they were and willing to work with anyone.
I was merely considering the possibility of getting a car in the future and since I didn't have any credit (but a rock solid job) I was merely evaluating what kind of car I wanted (not necessarily new), what would be involved and what kind of down payment would be necessary. I even told the salesman this and he absolutely insisted I talk to the manager if a deal could be worked out despite this so the manager looked at some papers the salesman had typed up, looked at me and at the papers again then literally laughed. I felt humiliated.
When I finally got in a better financial position to actually buy a car I ended up buying a Volkswagen instead but ultimately I will never go to a dealership if I can help it because I feel dealerships are there just to make car buying more expensive and complicated than it should be and any services dealerships offer tend to be an overpriced ripoff.
We have some strange anti-competitive laws. Another is that no single company can operate more than 3 liquor stores in the entire state (I think it might be up to 5 now). Guess who's pushing that... good ol' mom and pop running family package stores all over the state.
But that means that Whole Foods and Trader Joe's have to carefully choose which of its dozens of stores will have wine marts, and shoppers have to find and remember where they are (they're both very popular because they've managed to find many drinkable sub-$10 wines).
I'd generally agree. Another issue is why we have so few car companies. We could have smaller car companies that make few cars and are perhaps regional brands. Look at restaurants or ISPs or whatever that only exist in one part of the country. We could have the same thing with cars. The dealerships make getting into the car making business more complicated. They can't directly sell their cars. They can't put an AD in the paper saying "this car, with these specs, at this price, to your door... call this number." And that's wrong.
If no one has to deal with the dealerships then I think they'll be more reasonable companies because they'll understand that if they're unreasonable they'll be bypassed.
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they weren't really licking their chops that much. dealerships make most of their money on maintenance/repairs. electric cars require far less of either than IC cars.
Clearly, you went to the wrong dealer. This highlights one of the benefits of the dealer model, there are almost always a *lot* of dealers to choose from and try to get a better deal/experience/vehicle from. You've got a single place to go to get a Tesla. If you don't like them, or they don't like you, you're outta luck unless you find one on the used market.
I believe it's reasonable that if a company is too large relative to the market, then restrictions on dealership ownership & control make sense to prevent collusion and killing seller competition.
However, for a smaller car company, such rules work against it, protecting the big boys from competition, which was allegedly the reason for the dealer restrictions to begin with.
Thus, cross-sector collusion rules should be tuned to mostly apply to companies with a large market share of car manufacturing. Maybe a way can be made to make the restrictions incrementally higher per market share percentage rather than have blunt cut-off points, which is one of the criticisms of ObamaCare in relation to employee count and work-hours.
Table-ized A.I.
Historical reasons. Manufacturers could book a sale when they shiped a car to a dealership. Want to keep your dealership franchise? You'll accept X cars per month. You figure out how to sell them. So now manufacturers have stable 'sales' figures to make investors happy.
After some time, laws were passed against these abuses. But the same laws protected dealership franchises, so they persist.
Have gnu, will travel.
The big car manufacturers have been trying to use the dealership laws to prevent a competitor from bring a product to market, dealerships have been trying to use the laws to force Tesla to cut them in on their sales. This court ruling bloodies both of their noses for their foolishness, now if only more courts follow in this ones footsteps. I wonder how these laws even came into being in a society that claims to embrace free market mentality in the first place. I realize that Ford once tried to bypass the franchise model, but if they were able to provide their product to customers cheaper then what was the issue? Replace "car manufacturer" with any number of other products (corn, light bulb, TV, desk) in these laws and it becomes quite clear how foolish the whole thing is.
^Subject
Think of Tesla as the Apple of cars.
19 footnotes for a 24 page opinion, including one so long that spills over from one page onto the next. Ouch! Detracts from what is otherwise a great read, including delving into papers from the file of the acting governor at the time that the legislation at issue was passed.
I see you can learn something from this example.
The original post indicates he didn't go in uninformed. A classic negotiation tactic is to let the other side go first. Asking a salesman to show you something is a good opening move for an expensive purchase even if you know exactly why you are there and what you want to buy. When the salesperson went immediately to the product of the day, that gave away that they were acting in bad faith.
Finally some legal body has pulled its proverbial head out of it's arse..
moving past that, isnt there a Law in that state where its forbidden to engage the court system with issues of frugality? (perhaps wroing word)(friviolous)
ok isn;t there some law that states if the subject material is really not substantial (such as this, I mean comon people we are in a place where free enterprise is encouraged, competition, etc.) that being said, because this BS seems unconstitutional, isn't there penality imposed for wasting the courts time,
I would rather see the court system convict: rapists, pedophiles, molesters, and extensively abusive individuals that need a high level of supervision.
why waste the money on BS.. Lets really focus on whats important for the communiity at large, not who's pockets are full enough..
I find it amusing, in America we are free to do what we can,, but in the end we try to find ways to "phoq" others the Best we can. :(
what a shame. :( cant we all just get along?
A number of other states modified their laws. Most of them started with wording stating that companies could not compete with their own franchises, but the franchises in a number of states had the wording changed so that all car companies have to sell through franchises rather than branches.
I do not want to buy my expensive Tesla from a smelly "genius" walking around with a corporate-logo polo shirt snug around the belly that hangs over his belt, which sports an iPhone holster. I'd rather just order the damn thing on-line and have USPS deliver it to my front door.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Tesla doesn't have dealerships, which is part of the problem though. They have stores... like stores which sell soap or drugs like aspirin. That is also the point of the ruling as they are trying to tell these mega-dealerships who own the rights to every automobile brand that they simply can't add Tesla to their list.
The reason why Tesla doesn't want these dealers to have their cars is primarily because they are afraid that these dealers will throw a couple of Tesla cars in the corner of their showroom and be pushing the other brands instead. Elon Musk has explicitly stated this as his primary objection, and why he felt it was necessary to go outside of the dealership model.
You are the one who made the first mistake.
If you do that kind of research by looking stuff up on-line, reading Consumer Reports, and digging up information about the automobiles before you show up to the dealer.... what is the point of the dealer in the first place?
I agree with you so far as that is the best way to avoid getting screwed over by incompetent salesmen, but you can intelligently use sales reps to get more information about their products. This is not strictly about the automobile industry either, and I've done that with electronics, software, and even groceries.
The point of the dealership is to have a local representative who can help with compliance with local regulations. A hundred years ago, selling stuff was a whole lot more complicated in terms of trying to keep track of things each state wanted or didn't want, not to mention often even different laws for each city even in the same state. Communication was also a bit slower as well... and more importantly the system simply worked for almost everybody.
The problem is that once you have the franchisee in place, getting rid of them is nearly impossible, even if the situation has changed. This is why several historic systems still stick around years, decades, or even centuries after they are obsolete. Some places in Europe still use Roman aqueducts for their water supply... because they still work. There may be more efficient ways to get the same thing to happen now, but why change if it still sort of works?
depends on selling routine maintenance services. Teslas don't need such things. This is why GM and the other auto makers killed their electric cars in the late 1990s. How many spare parts are sold for a Tesla?
You are right about historical reasons but I believe wrong about the ones you have supplied. I believe the primary reasons are more likely to do with distance and communication.
When you were a factory in the 40s and 50s pumping out cars you were focussed on the manufacturing aspects and your business was located in a single location - ie Detroit. The idea of trying to manage a network of stores across the country when communication was by post or expensive phone calls just simply didn't make sense. It was more cost effective to outsource that work, in exactly the same way it makes more sense to outsource things like accountancy, IT services and legal in many organisations.
Selling cars is a different business to making cars. And there is no guarantee that if you are good at making cars you will be good at selling them. The original idea was that these dealer were to be your customer interface, and ideally do a better job than you could.
The fact that manufacturers obviously decided that wasn't working at some point in the past and tried to open dealer owned stores is a sign that that system broke down.
Today, communication is almost instant, manufacturing processes and methodologies are more flexible than ever before and there is far more information available to your average consumer. A lot of what were "meant" to be the value adds of dealers are gone. Dealing directly with the customer allows you better control of your brand and if done well will increase profitability by removing a stage in the process.
But it can't work for every product. You still won't be buying your softdrinks direct from Coke or your shampoo from Unilever. Because in these situations the dealers (ie supermarkets) still make more sense.
Some of the issue with automobile manufactures is that the vehicles are so complex and need so much capital that almost everybody who tries to build a new manufacturing company in this industry usually goes bankrupt. Tucker and DeLorean are really good examples of this, in spite of conspiracy theories that suggest ulterior motives of existing manufacturers.
The other issue is simply complying with government regulations in the industry. Some of those regulations certainly have been established because of major screw-ups in the past, but many of them (in spite of the manufacturers complaining about them) are enacted explicitly to discourage new entrants into the industry. At the very least the existing manufacturers only offer token resistances to things like seat belt and safety laws that add complexity as long as it hits everybody in the industry equally... and keeps new companies busy trying to catch up if they tried. If somebody built an exact replica of the Ford Model T, it couldn't be driven today except as a historical re-creation for off-road usage and certainly not something for mass production.
I used Consumer Reports and other sites to find out what the dealer pays for the truck I bought. The dealer gets money back from the auto maker on every sale too. I was polite but firm in negotiating with the salesman, and the "Let me check with my manager" isn't just a line of BS. It is so the dealer doesn't take a loss from a sales person increasing their commission by making more sales.
This highlights one of the benefits of the dealer model, there are almost always a *lot* of dealers to choose from and try to get a better deal/experience/vehicle from.
I'm of the opinion that it highlights one of the disadvantages of the dealer model, you often have to go from one dealer to another, haggling and bullshitting, before finally settling on the car you want at a price you feel comfortable with. I'd rather have one place in town that sells what I want, with a clearly marked price, skip the haggling, and do a transaction. Maybe some people enjoy the car buying "experience" but I look at it like any other purchase. I want to do some research ahead of time, walk into the store, buy the product I came for, and leave. It's 2014, it's no longer reasonable to expect consumers to waste an entire weekend trying to buy a car.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
No, you're wromg. You can reasearch the abuses by, say Ford, during the Depression. Manufacturers dabbled with direct sles early on, but decided that dealerships worked better for them for many reasons. But there came a time when dealers, representing the Little Guy, needed to be protected from the Big Bad car makers because the manufacturers ran through a series of abusive practices against their own dealers. You're theory about communications speed is a nice one, but doesn't track with history.
Same. Though assuming you were Musk and were putting some stores out there for people to look around... how would you structure it?
One thing that might be a reasonable compromise is if the Tesla franchise had to be exclusive. Consider fast food franchises... they're exclusive. You can't sell subway sandwiches and Quiznos sandwiches in the same restaurant.
What is more, the corporate office can set policy, set prices, etc. Do that and you can let dealerships sell the cars while at the same time controlling how it is done.
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Agreed. If I want to comparison shop just about anything other than a car I can just do an online search by model number, see all the asking prices, and purchase one in 5 minutes. A car turns into a high-pressure negotiation on my day off. With anything else if it turns out to be defective I just return it and get my money back - not so with the car.
I can understand that it has to work this way with houses since they aren't mass-produced. The car sales model is a dinosaur, and half the tactics that are used should be illegal.
For those of you old enough to remember a time before Apple had their own stores, the Apple fan would go into most electronics stores and be lucky to find an Apple-related product. Finally, Apple basically told the Cramp-USA's of the world to take a hike and opened their own stores where people could go to get an untainted look at Macs, iPods, etc. The plan worked like a charm. IMHO, Tesla is looking at the market and the fact that many car dealers have multiple brands under the same corporate umbrella and they know they're not going to get the attention they need. Tesla wants a stage that they don't have to share with other cars or even fight for a share of the sales staff.
I believe the primary reasons are more likely to do with distance and communication.
But there's no reason to believe that.
The idea of trying to manage a network of stores across the country when communication was by post or expensive phone calls just simply didn't make sense.
What? Why not? Cars are expensive items, phone calls are minimal by comparison. If you have an order for a car, you drop the form in the post. At least, they did back then.
In fact, the reasons are as stated. The manufacturers want to make cars at X dollars, which requires building Y cars. Right now there are cars which can't be sold piled up all over the world, for reasons like these and others (e.g. "the economy, stupid")
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
From what I see about Musk through interviews, articles, etc.. I can imagine that there is one obvious reason why Tesla would never enter a dealership model:
'Cause they don't want to get customers' shit on their dicks while they fuck them repeatedly for every penny they can.
You're missing one of the big downfalls of car dealers - they're middlemen who take a cut of the sale. Tesla wants to sell direct to public - not just so they can control the sales experience (which is important to their brand) but so they can have better margins than their competition.
Some parts are complex and successful company's often part out things to others. To bad most of the changes that drive up the price are cosmetic. Does every model year need new headlights and thus slightly different body panels? A different but otherwise the same stereo?
Frankly cars should be a platform. More like a piece of farm or construction equipment where refinements are made to efficiency, durability or safety. Upgrades are made where it makes sense, engine blow well might as well get the new one 15% better mileage.
No sir I dont like it.
This seems to indicate that the same laws were good then & not good now. How?
why should i research a car that i'm not interested in? why would it be my fault if a salesman tries to sell to me more than my clearly stated needs?
Apparently that is exactly what happened when Japanese cars first came onto the US market, until some very unsubtle bribes and buyouts changed things. Skills used when doing deals with organized crime such as the Yakuza were applied - that really say something about car dealerships doesn't it? The Japanese treated them as crooks and it worked.
When the salesperson went immediately to the product of the day, that gave away that they were acting in bad faith.
It's a car salesman - THEY'RE ALWAYS ACTING IN BAD FAITH! Duh!
Yep, not much at all. Just assume that the dealership gets a single base vehicle of any given model (typically in puke green) so they can advertise that they have it for $x, then load out their remaining allotment with [insert state here] Editions and sport upgrades with tons of useless bullshit that all add thousands to the base price. Then when you ask for the base version they'll either tell you they don't have it in stock, or they show you an ugly-as-fuck car. If you balk, they tell you that they don't "do" special orders and they can't tell you when they'll get a new shipment or if they'll get it in white or some other sane color.
My algorithm for buying a new car is:
1) Spend about a year deciding what I want and/or need.
2) Simultaneously, start saving the cash.
It's not like you can't tell when a car is nearing the end of time, relative to whatever your own level of love for car maintenance is.
When the time comes, you know what you want and you've got the cash, which makes the bargaining rather trivial.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
So now if they're canny MA can set itself up as a Tesla distribution centre. If your local state forbids direct sales, call the Tesla store in MA and get your car from there. Sure, there'd be a delivery charge but if they send the cars out on full car transporters it probably wouldn't be too bad (not compared with the price of the actual car anyway) and MA gets the sales tax. Perhaps once other states see all the lost sales tax flowing out of state to MA it might provide the incentive they need to change their state laws to something a bit saner.
You've just highlighted the problem - what is there for them to not like about someone, and vice versa? Do shoe shops have these problems, too? Or delis? Of course not. It's some weird thing specifically to do with car salesmen, and precisely to do with their weird way of bargaining and the "dance" that must be played just to purchase some hardware.
You do realise that it's simply not normal for how a person feels about a salesperson or vice versa to affect anything.
In addition, Tesla(whether or not you see this as an improvement is a distinct issue, it simply is so) sells cars much more like an enterprise IT hardware vendor sells hardware: at least within the warranty period, there is very much an ongoing interaction between the hardware and the vendor. System health information gets sent directly back, on site techs with specialized parts and firmware get sent out and so on. More traditional car companies are closer to buying a PC: the dealer will offer (often absurdly priced; but available) maintenance; and the vendor may become involved with certain warranty or recall cases; but they are otherwise largely out of the loop, with third parties handling the ongoing interaction with the hardware.
Unfortunately, the last two times I bought a car it was following a collision, so I didn't really have the luxury of picking and choosing the time that I made the purchase.
Keep his idea of the slick showroom, but leave out the Apple geniuses.
Put all the data online and populate the store with the equivalent of well-trained booth-babes from both genders. Have a kiosk for payment. Low overhead. Have a couple of cars for test driving.
By the way, I finally drove a Tesla a little bit. They're really nice. The chair of my wife's department at the University bought one and he had us out to the house for a BBQ a few weeks ago. Let me cruise around his tony suburb for a little bit. I love driving a car without engine noise.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I do not want to buy my expensive Tesla from a smelly "genius" walking around with a corporate-logo polo shirt snug around the belly that hangs over his belt, which sports an iPhone holster. I'd rather just order the damn thing on-line and have USPS deliver it to my front door.
Same. Though assuming you were Musk and were putting some stores out there for people to look around... how would you structure it?
One thing that might be a reasonable compromise is if the Tesla franchise had to be exclusive. Consider fast food franchises... they're exclusive. You can't sell subway sandwiches and Quiznos sandwiches in the same restaurant.
What is more, the corporate office can set policy, set prices, etc. Do that and you can let dealerships sell the cars while at the same time controlling how it is done.
Putting the condescension aside that is positively dripping off of the GP post, why should there have to be a compromise? Where the hell do car dealers get off whining about this? As far as I can tell Tesla went for these Tesla stores because the good hard working folks of the car dealing industry put very little effort into selling their cars so it's the car dealers own bloody fault Tesla went for this solution in the first place and as far as I can tell Tesla is well within it's rights to do so. I don't see anybody legislating against Apple for selling their stuff directly in Apple stores owned by Apple, and the same goes for Sony and their Sony centers, I distinctly remember reading that Microsoft has Microsoft stores and now Samsung is starting to set up Samsung centers in Europe where this manufacturer owned or franchised retail store model is just as well known as in the US. You don't see electronics retailers whining about Apple, Sony and Samsung having their own retail stores, perhaps because they, unlike US car dealers, don't have any hangups about selling Apple, Sony and Samsung products with as much vigor as the rest of their inventory. Why can't there be a chain of Tesla centers without every car dealer in the USA whining about it like petulant child? We all know what the answer is, the car dealers are hopelessly corrupt and are into the bargain in the pockets of certain companies who feel threatened by Tesla.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I've been trying to buy a new car. It may just be the southern tier of NY, but finding a Subaru dealer that
a) knows even close as much about the car I want as what I know *from the Subaru web site* and the *Subaru Drive Magazine* is basically impossible.
b) Is willing to quote me a price (why can't I call, e-mail or even walk in and just list the car + options and GET A PRICE? This is as bad as the phone companies.). Granted, many have prices on what they have in stock...
c) Will actually order what I want.
I had one dealer order a car (that didn't have the Eyesight feature that I made clear was the *REASON* I wanted this car), and try and sell it to me. When I walked when it didn't have the Eyesight feature, they didn't understand why I didn't want the car. Hello? I came to you and listed specific features I wanted, you got a car without them (after I waited 2 months) and wonder why I didn't buy it?
I wish I could just order from Subaru like I do from Lenovo... Hell, I wish there was a pricewatch for cars and it was easier to get one delivered...
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
Let a car guy clue you in. You should never buy a car in an apple-like store. Cars are not computers. You need to take the car out. More than once. Especially if it costs $70K or more. You have to be sure of your purchase as you will most likely be using this car for at least 3 years. So, yes, although the idea of an apple store for cars sounds good, how do you do that when your product line has 10+ models and you need to have samples for test drives for people who just walk in? Although we can berate car dealers for their litany of offenses against consumers, their sales paradigm is what it is because it has evolved to service the american consumer. ( I am going to ignore the finance aspect of it as that is plain ridiculous ).
Dont be a fucking feminist, we males also get to be treated poorly by car dealers. When buying my current car, I asked the car dealer to pay me attention, and give me a rundown, and was there with my girlfriend driving a (very expensive) car. To be fair, I was looking at the cheapest car in the show, that was not what I wanted. He basically ignored me, and handed me a couple of fliers, when I knew exactly what I wanted if he cared to have a 5 minute talk with me. I also did not bother much, I wont pay the salary of a jerk ignoring me and not doing his job. I went to a dealer of the same brand in my hometown, the guy was superb and we made the deal in 15 minutes after having a test ride in the car, and paid full cash. So at the end of the day, a stupid salesman only has himself to blame.
Face it, every time you walk into a dealership to 'check prices' or 'check customer service', it's a 2-3 hour ordeal. You are lucky to get through 3-4 dealers in 1 day.
Haha... same here. Last weekend my wife and I set out to test drive the brand new Sequoia. We made a bet before we got out of the car... I bet we wouldn't be able to walk from our car to the new car before being assailed by a hungry salesman, she bet that we wouldn't even see a salesman. She won the bet, and we were ignored for 30 minutes while we poked and prodded the SUV, and then we walked back to our car and drove away without a test drive since nobody gave two shits about us. The dealership model is dead.
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
I do not want to buy my expensive Tesla from a smelly "genius" walking around with a corporate-logo polo shirt snug around the belly that hangs over his belt, which sports an iPhone holster. I'd rather just order the damn thing on-line and have USPS deliver it to my front door.
You don't want to deal with a "smelly genius", but you want your sweaty mail carrier to drive your brand new car?
I blame the dealerships too. The last time I went shopping for a car, I told the salesman I was looking to replace my Chevy Malibu, and wanted something small to midize that was good in the snow. Despite the bevy of options on the lot, he walked me over to a Challenger SRT ... a rear-wheel drive boat that most likely isn't even particularly good in the rain.
Oh come on. It's only got 475 pound feet of torque. It'll be great in the snow! ;-)
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
What you just built is a Tesla place you want. Not one good for most people.
You need to have people on hand to answer the questions, because most people won't research data on line.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
" The chair of my wife's department at the University bought one"
I can't imagine why university costs are skyrocketing.
"Dont[sic] be a fucking feminist"
so... she should just be in the kitchen all day? WTF
Women get treated far worse them men in dealerships. You were ignored, but where you treated like you where stupid? Talked down to? If you asked about an engine would they change the subject to talk about color? Where you hit on? Did someone imply you would get a better deal if you went to the back room for a bit?
You're post comes off making you look like a misogynistic idiot.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Let her go by herself and see what happens.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Have a subaru with an eyesight.
I will say that after dealing with 2 of them, one of whom actually insulted by wife--then proceeded to make excuses and argue with me about it, this is the last Subaru I'm going to buy.
Everyone gets treated like shit by salespeople, just because women get treated like shit differently doesn't mean that their shit treatment is more or less shitty and it isn't misogynistic to point that out.
Here's how the setup went back then:
1) Manufacturers didn't *want* to start up their own sales locations because it was expensive and risky. As a result, they start franchising agreements.
2) Eventually, various markets are proven, and the manufacturers want to start selling in *those* markets. The franchisees literally *cannot* compete with their own suppliers. They sue with unfair competition claims and lobby to prevent the manufacturers from trying it again.
Some states ended up with laws requiring franchising for car sales.
Other states ended up with laws preventing auto manufacturers from direct sales where they had franchisees.
Thanks for the sane comment, pity you are posting as AC. The political (in)correctness bores me and frankly, it is annoying.
What the fossil car industry doesn't understand, is that their effort to stop Tesla from selling their cars, actually increases the public's interest in Tesla's cars!
'What is it about this car based upon new technology, making "everyone else" selling cars based upon old technology, trying to stop them selling it?"
Have you not heard of Van Bortel?
No I hadn't, I'm 2.5hrs from Rochester / Victor, and never thought about looking there before. If the sale in Elmira falls through, I'll consider calling there.
Honestly, I think Subaru *needs* to get their Dealers in line, or it will kill them. Their cars are decent if you want affordable AWD that's awesome, but they're not all that for much else. And bad Dealer experiences will hurt their sales...
Every bit as complicated as an ESPN special
This is the same court that first said it was legal for two queers to marry. After 3,000 years of human history where no society had ever done that before, the Mass SJC decided the voters of Mass weren't smart enough to make up their own minds. Oddly, the one homosexual judge voted against it.
I'm in northern California and visited several dealers when I was going to buy my Subaru. Eventually I got a quote in the first email response from a dealer's internet sales department -- and the price was better than the price I could get haggling hard in their store. These days some things change. BTW, Eyesight is really a good reason to buy a Subaru...
When did Slashdot become a hub for whiny MRAs?