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Amazon Vehicles

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Re: Amazon Vehicles

#101

Post by jedberg »

kevincox wrote: post #93
hardwaresofton wrote: post #27

Yes please. Anything that will get us closer to direct-to-consumer sales of cars. I'm ready for car dealerships to be a relic of the past.

While a generally agree that dealerships are awful I think the service they provide is the test drive. Car companies don't want to spend money managing "drive centers" all over the world. Since dealerships provide this "service" to them they must in turn ensure that the dealerships can survive by keeping them the most common place to buy a car. If they did all of their sales online the dealerships would go out of bus…

Yet Tesla maintains "drive centers" all over the place.

Also, if it weren't such a racket, you would have a single drive center that sold Chevy, Mazda, Toyota all in once place, and then the dealerships wouldn't have to worry about sending people there. They would compete for people's business.

Re: Amazon Vehicles

#102

Post by rargulati »

paulrosenzweig wrote: post #7

I wonder if once Tesla fights back all the local monopoly regulation around dealerships, this will naturally transition to an online car dealership. They'll have to figure out test drives though.

That's a good thought. Seems as if it's happening: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12362457

Re: Amazon Vehicles

#103

Post by crazcarl »

simonsarris wrote: post #4

Before you laugh that you'd never use this to buy a car, it may be worth taking the time to find your make/model and add it to your "Garage" on amazon. Amazon will then try to confirm or not if the cabin air filter you are about to buy is a correct fit for your car. Amazon tries to do the same thing with camera gear. At least, that's the theory. In practice you still need to do 100% of the due diligence or you'll end…

I bought a new headlight for my car that Amazon said would fit. It did not. Maybe it was a problem with a 3rd party that is selling through Amazon, but it was Amazon that told me it would fit and they lost my trust on car parts.

Re: Amazon Vehicles

#105

Post by dboreham »

simonsarris wrote: post #4

Before you laugh that you'd never use this to buy a car, it may be worth taking the time to find your make/model and add it to your "Garage" on amazon. Amazon will then try to confirm or not if the cabin air filter you are about to buy is a correct fit for your car. Amazon tries to do the same thing with camera gear. At least, that's the theory. In practice you still need to do 100% of the due diligence or you'll end…

Somewhat surprising the manufacturers were still selling two different engines in 2004.

My pet peeve with Amazon is a similar "nice but not quite good enough feature" : their selling of fasteners. Nuts, bolts, etc fall into a clear if quite complex N-space of sizes and features. This can be represented nicely in a web site, for example : http://www.mcmaster.com/ however even though Amazon acquired a nuts-n-bolts retailer some years ago, their site is a horrible mess for this kind of item. I'm not sure if this is because there are no humans curating the catalog, or because Bezos doesn't do his own maker projects and vehicle maintenance...

Re: Amazon Vehicles

#108

Post by rusabd »

rudedogg wrote: post #88

Has anyone used Costco to buy a new vehicle? Their program isn't direct or anything, but you're supposed to get better prices than working with a dealership directly. I've been curious how much below invoice they are. The closest one is 4 hours away from me, so I'm not a member (and can't see prices).

costco doesn't show members tje prices. You will be referred to the dealership where they give you the pricelist. I've done this once and it saved me a lot of time.

On other hand you can always ask for "costco" price in the dealership, would they honor it I don't know.

Re: Amazon Vehicles

#109

Post by vvanders »

rudedogg wrote: post #88

Has anyone used Costco to buy a new vehicle? Their program isn't direct or anything, but you're supposed to get better prices than working with a dealership directly. I've been curious how much below invoice they are. The closest one is 4 hours away from me, so I'm not a member (and can't see prices).

We weren't overly impressed. Costco price was ~$2k above what we ended up negotiating separately.

Re: Amazon Vehicles

#110

Post by toomuchtodo »

jedberg wrote: post #101
kevincox wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While a generally agree that dealerships are awful I think the service they provide is the test drive. Car companies don't want to spend money managing "drive centers" all over the world. Since dealerships provide this "service" to them they must in turn ensure that the dealerships can survive by keeping them the most common place to buy a car. If they did all of their sales online the dealerships would go out of bus…

Yet Tesla maintains "drive centers" all over the place. Also, if it weren't such a racket, you would have a single drive center that sold Chevy, Mazda, Toyota all in once place, and then the dealerships wouldn't have to worry about sending people there. They would compete for people's business.

This single drive center you speak of sounds like an airport rental car facility :)
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