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Dealership Commentator: Tesla's Going To Win In Every State
cartechboy writes Unless you've been in a coma for a while you're aware that many dealer associations have been causing headaches for Tesla in multiple states. The reason? They are scared. Tesla's new, different, and shaking up the ridiculously old way of doing things. But the thing is, Tesla keeps winning. Now Ward's commenter Jim Ziegler, president of Ziegler Supersystems in Atlanta, wrote an opinion piece that basically says Tesla's going to prevail in every state against dealer lawsuits. He says Tesla's basically busy defending what are nuisance suits. This leads to the question of whether there will be some sort of sweeping federal action in Tesla's favor.
As this is an interstate sale, federal action is actually constitutional. However, I don't see any reason we need Washington to command us how to sell cars; Tesla's approach (common sense and a bajillion dollars) seems to be working.
One thing is that in most states the laws were written to protect franchises against the car manufacturers but in this case there are no franchises to protect to often these laws don't apply.
This podcast gives a lot of insight as to why the dealerships are so anti-consumer blood sucking parasites.
http://www.thisamericanlife.or...
One other thing to keep in mind is that the dealership model has changed significantly. It used to be a bunch of mom and pop dealerships throughout the country. These aren't the dealerships complaining about Tesla. Instead it's the huge dealership conglomerates that have gobbled up and consolidated many of the smaller independent dealerships. These are also huge political donors in many states, getting laws written to protect them, often to the detriment of the automobile manufacturers.
Part of it is the way the car manufacturers have the dealerships competing against each other, giving them huge incentives to sell a certain number of cars by the end of the month, etc. The dealerships also make a lot of their money off of service, whether it be warranty service or just plain service.
Tesla does things differently. The people who work at the showrooms do not earn commissions on cars sold. Their job is to show the car, not play all these silly games pushing cars that people don't want to get their numbers.
Also, Tesla generally does not maintain an inventory of cars. Every car is built to order with only the features the buyer wants. They don't have huge lots of cars that they have to push since every car is already spoken for.
Their service is also different. They have publically stated that their goal is not to make a profit off of service. I have had to have things repaired that were not covered by warranty (I broke some clips). The cost to repair was actually fairly reasonable and was much less than what the cost would have been had the same sort of thing happened to my Prius.
My biggest complaint about service is that there is often a long wait to get an appointment because they're having trouble keeping up with the growing number of cars out there.
Tesla took a cue from Apple with the Apple stores. They want to provide a consistent experience for their customers without all of the hassles and problems often encountered at dealerships. The company has also consistently bent over backwards in favor of their customers. When news of the fires hit they quickly extended the battery warranty to cover fires caused by hitting objects then actively worked on methods to mitigate it. They retroactively increased the drive train warranty to unlimited miles.
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yes they should, but perhaps they SHOULD be required to maintain physical presence where their products are sold so that the customer does not need to be grossly inconvenienced when trying to obtain warranty service. doesn't need to be as extensive as, say, ford motor company's dealer network, but certainly more than one per state in most cases - especially given the proprietary nature of the product and its parts, and single source availability of them, as well as the lack of availability of necessary service manuals and other documentation needed to properly repair a tesla product in or out of warranty.
essentially that is what the automakers' dealer network is these days with online browsing, pricing reports, and being able to pretty much buy from whichever dealer gives the best price regardless of location --- local warranty service. the local dealer may have overpriced their product so you buy elsewhere, but that local dealer is still obligated to do the warranty service (for which they are paid quite well by the manufacturers).
I highly recommend to everyone reading this discussion to listen to this 16-minute NPR Money Matters story:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money...
Them if you have some time, This American Life tells the dealer's side of the story:
http://m.thisamericanlife.org/...
I'll warm you now that your blood may boil, and you may turn into a rage monster thinking about the sheer absurdity and stupidity of the car-buying process.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
That's a reason why you should protect dealer networks if a company decides to start with that business model.
That's not a reason to protect those dealer networks from an upstart company that never had that business model. Just because GM and Ford made a deal with the devil 50 years ago shouldn't bind a new company to that same business model. Tesla has never had a dealer franchise agreement with anyone, them selling directly does not break any contractual agreement they've entered in to. They have no obligation to respect an agreement Ford or GM made with their dealer network to not compete.
Also as a counter point, Apple sells plenty of things through the half dozen Best Buys in my town. There's also two Apple stores within a 20 minutes drive. Just because a company sells through channel partners doesn't immediately preclude them from selling direct, it depends on the agreement they made with the channel in the first place. Even car dealer arrangements started out with the dealers protected by the franchise agreements themselves, elevating them from simple contract law to specific legislative protections came later.
This