Slashdot Mirror
Are Car Dealers a Business Worth Keeping? (vox.com)
schwit1 writes: An opinion piece at Vox argues that "car dealers are awful," and the efforts to protect them against direct sales from Tesla and other manufacturers are misguided. "Buying a car involves going from dealer to dealer, each of whom has his own inventory. One guy only has blue paint. The other guy doesn't have the blue paint, and also only has dark gray seats. And each has his own fake sticker prices and complicated cash-back offers. It's no wonder 83 percent consumers say they would rather skip the haggling, and a third of people say doing taxes is less annoying than working with a car dealer.
But it's not just the hassle. State bans on direct sales turn out to cost consumers an enormous amount of cash. It's an enormous problem, and it warrants a federal solution. Cars are the most expensive consumer product that the typical consumer buys. And while it may seem obvious that cars are expensive due to the material and labor required to build them, the logistics of distributing cars is actually a very expensive part of the process. Research by Eric Marti, Garth Saloner, and Michael Spence has concluded that as much as 30 percent of the cost of a car is the cost of distribution.
But it's not just the hassle. State bans on direct sales turn out to cost consumers an enormous amount of cash. It's an enormous problem, and it warrants a federal solution. Cars are the most expensive consumer product that the typical consumer buys. And while it may seem obvious that cars are expensive due to the material and labor required to build them, the logistics of distributing cars is actually a very expensive part of the process. Research by Eric Marti, Garth Saloner, and Michael Spence has concluded that as much as 30 percent of the cost of a car is the cost of distribution.
I've noticed something interesting: all these stories breaking on Slashdot seem to break on Hacker News 2-3 hours prior to finding its way to Slashdot.
That's a pretty freaky coincidence.
Slashdot is getting less and less worth reading these days. For real News for Nerds, I just head over to Hacker News instead.
As soon as the warranty ended, I never went back. My local shop is much better then the dealer. If yours is not, find another one.
The biggest chain of dealerships in the country is owned by Berkshire Hathaway. The "family owned dealership" is about as realistic as the "family owned farm". If the family you are talking about is Warren Buffet's family, then yeah, I guess so, but otherwise, no.
This is why you ALWAYS buy a car at the end of the month... because some stealership somewhere is DYING to make their sales goal, and will practially GIVE you the car in order to make that goal. There's an excellent This American Life podcast about it.
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
You are not limited by dealer's inventory.
You normally order a fully customized car, which is built specially for you.
It normally takes 2-6 weeks to manufacture and deliver it.