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Detroit News Vehicle of the Year is a Tesla

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Re: Detroit News Vehicle of the Year is a Tesla

#41

Post by throwaway98121 »

Zhenya wrote: post #40
throwaway98121 wrote: post #3

We sold our vehicle because the monthly payment, insurance, gasoline, and parking costs were adding up to about $1000 a month. I planned on downgrading from an Infiniti to a 3 year old Honda Civic or Fit. I visited three dealerships in my area. The experience was horrible at all three. I consider myself a decent person, but I now judge people who work in car sales or car sales management and not in a good way. Anyway…

Meta question: why did you use a throwaway account for this?

I created it a while ago and just kept it since.

Re: Detroit News Vehicle of the Year is a Tesla

#42

Post by gnicholas »

joshfraser wrote: post #28
throwaway98121 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you get a decent price? My employer offers a similar service as part of the benefits program. You print out a piece of paper, take it to the dealer, and get a prenegotiated price. Sounds amazing in theory until you do more research and realize you’re still paying $1000s more.

The only way I know to get a good deal is to walk into a dealership, know exactly which car & options you want & say you're paying cash & are willing to pay $100 over the manufacturer's invoice. They'll cut the nonsense and take the deal. 90% of the games begin when you finance the vehicle at the dealership. Don't want to put $2000 down? Let's just add another year to the term. Or how about we add $50 / month to the…

> say you're paying cash & are willing to pay $100 over the manufacturer's invoice

It's good to research what the invoice price is, but this isn't their actual cost. Manufacturers offer incentives to dealerships based on all sorts of things, including hitting certain sales goals. These rebates aren't factored into the invoice price, so even buying at invoice isn't always an amazing deal. My understanding is that the rebates/incentives are bigger with some manufacturers than others, but I don't know the details.

Re: Detroit News Vehicle of the Year is a Tesla

#43

Post by phil248 »

throwaway98121 wrote: post #3

We sold our vehicle because the monthly payment, insurance, gasoline, and parking costs were adding up to about $1000 a month. I planned on downgrading from an Infiniti to a 3 year old Honda Civic or Fit. I visited three dealerships in my area. The experience was horrible at all three. I consider myself a decent person, but I now judge people who work in car sales or car sales management and not in a good way. Anyway…

As a general response to all of the hatred directed at dealerships, I'd mention that I've experienced none of this nonsense when leasing a car.

Re: Detroit News Vehicle of the Year is a Tesla

#44

Post by Jarbooski »

throwaway98121 wrote: post #3

We sold our vehicle because the monthly payment, insurance, gasoline, and parking costs were adding up to about $1000 a month. I planned on downgrading from an Infiniti to a 3 year old Honda Civic or Fit. I visited three dealerships in my area. The experience was horrible at all three. I consider myself a decent person, but I now judge people who work in car sales or car sales management and not in a good way. Anyway…

>That being said, I hope the dealership model dies and these blood sucking, anti competitive conmen have to fall to a more honest way of living

What an ignorant comment.

A huge portion of dealerships are small business owners in small towns. Honest, middle class people who care about serving customers.

This is all beside the point that Tesla has in no way proven their system works. In fact, as time goes on they are adopting dealer methods. There's a reason for that; people want to deal with locals.

Re: Detroit News Vehicle of the Year is a Tesla

#45

Post by FireBeyond »

apercu wrote: post #23
throwaway98121 wrote: post #3

We sold our vehicle because the monthly payment, insurance, gasoline, and parking costs were adding up to about $1000 a month. I planned on downgrading from an Infiniti to a 3 year old Honda Civic or Fit. I visited three dealerships in my area. The experience was horrible at all three. I consider myself a decent person, but I now judge people who work in car sales or car sales management and not in a good way. Anyway…

You have to check, recheck, and check again with stealerships and then they purposely take forever to do things to wear you down and the slip B.S. back in to the paperwork, when called on it acting like it was an accident. I hate buying cars.

Oh yes. I bought a vehicle with AudiCare. The dealership tried putting it on the invoice as "Other Aftermarket". When I went to use AudiCare the vehicle wasn't registered and they said that that fee was for a "second key" (even though it was 2-3 times the cost of a replacement key, and matched to the dollar the amount for AudiCare). Even when I showed them a photo of their breakdown pre-invoice that said, "AudiCare $xxx" and I'd signed it next to the sales managers signature they still balked at honoring it until I made enough of a loud fuss in their showroom in front of other customers.

Re: Detroit News Vehicle of the Year is a Tesla

#46

Post by [deleted] »

Jarbooski wrote: post #44
throwaway98121 wrote: post #3

We sold our vehicle because the monthly payment, insurance, gasoline, and parking costs were adding up to about $1000 a month. I planned on downgrading from an Infiniti to a 3 year old Honda Civic or Fit. I visited three dealerships in my area. The experience was horrible at all three. I consider myself a decent person, but I now judge people who work in car sales or car sales management and not in a good way. Anyway…

> That being said, I hope the dealership model dies and these blood sucking, anti competitive conmen have to fall to a more honest way of living What an ignorant comment. A huge portion of dealerships are small business owners in small towns. Honest, middle class people who care about serving customers. This is all beside the point that Tesla has in no way proven their system works. In fact, as time goes on they are…

[deleted]

Re: Detroit News Vehicle of the Year is a Tesla

#47

Post by Jarbooski »

Zanni wrote: post #34
throwaway98121 wrote: post #3

We sold our vehicle because the monthly payment, insurance, gasoline, and parking costs were adding up to about $1000 a month. I planned on downgrading from an Infiniti to a 3 year old Honda Civic or Fit. I visited three dealerships in my area. The experience was horrible at all three. I consider myself a decent person, but I now judge people who work in car sales or car sales management and not in a good way. Anyway…

For those that haven't had the Tesla experience, it's a refreshing change of pace. They don't have dealerships, only showrooms and service centers. You can schedule a test drive at a showroom (or online), and your rep will be happy to help you configure your car right there if you decide to buy, but you can also go home and leisurely plan your configuration over the internet. You can see the price of every option bef…

So how come I read people on Twitter asking Elon why they were forced to sign papers before being able to see the car they bought? Or having to follow a delivery damage checklist to make sure they don't buy damaged goods? That's unheard of in my life of buying cars from anyone else.

Re: Detroit News Vehicle of the Year is a Tesla

#48

Post by csa »

lflux wrote: post #15
hueving wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're willing to pay the dealer's quote, then car salesmen will love you and you'll have a great time at a dealership anyway. The entire bullshit process begins when you try to get a price that doesn't have thousands of extra dollars in for the dealership.

Sure, if the quote is out the door, but it never seems to be from what I've seen. This was "Here's the price excluding title transfer including delivery"

Here is what I do, and it works well:

1. Call the dealer and ask for the internet sales manager.

2. Tell the manager exactly what you want (many people are not able to do this accurately and consistently).

3. Ask for the out-the-door price.

4. Repeat for any number of dealers that you are willing to drive to.

5. Buy from the dealer you choose.

I usually get several quotes within $100 or so of each other. At that point, I just pick the place with a low price and in a location that I prefer to pick up my car.

Re: Detroit News Vehicle of the Year is a Tesla

#49

Post by Jarbooski »

hueving wrote: post #11
lflux wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had my credit union's car purchasing department handle my car purchase. Did everything over email - I told them what I wanted and in what color, they did the legwork to find a dealer that had what I wanted. Emailed me a quote, then the dealer delivered it to my door. No haggling, no visiting dealers, just email and signing some papers.

If you're willing to pay the dealer's quote, then car salesmen will love you and you'll have a great time at a dealership anyway. The entire bullshit process begins when you try to get a price that doesn't have thousands of extra dollars in for the dealership.

And how is that different than paying full pin at Tesla?

Re: Detroit News Vehicle of the Year is a Tesla

#50

Post by FireBeyond »

throwaway98121 wrote: post #22
clircle wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on your horrible experience? I bought a new car for the first time this year. I went to the Toyota dealer with my wife, we drove three cars, and decided the Corolla iM would be enough for 95% of our needs. We came back the next day and filled out all the paper work. Of course, they did try to get us to buy a bunch of pointles s addons and insurances, so it was annoying to have to say "No" over and o…

I knew what car I wanted and had looked around online to figure out what was a great price vs an acceptable one price. I called three dealerships in my area and confirmed if they still had the vehicles I’d seen in their inventory on their website. They did and wanted me to come down immediately. I gave my email address and asked if we could continue over email. I made clear I wanted to settle in the final out the doo…

> I called three dealerships in my area and confirmed if they still had the vehicles I’d seen in their inventory on their website.

A new bait and switch technique I saw with a friend. Once they had him interested, they changed the location of the vehicle on AutoTrader to be about 250 miles away (so it wouldn't show up in default searches) and they could claim "they didn't have it any more" (and then of course say "no, you're mistaken, it's not that price", or "I'm not seeing the car you thought you were looking at...").

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