I thought they said only one car, but no limit on trucks/SUVs/CUVs. Basically, they kept the Mustang and kicked all the other cars to the curb.
I thought they said only one car, but no limit on trucks/SUVs/CUVs. Basically, they kept the Mustang and kicked all the other cars to the curb.
Interesting. I did a quick Google search and found that the Department of Justice wrote a position paper on state laws that mandate auto manufacturers sell through dealerships. The paper was written all the way back in 2009, and has a ton of insight and good information. The make frequent reference to Dell Computer's direct-to-consumer model and how it benefitted consumers. They obviously saw the future convergence of the auto and computer trades. Link:
https://www.justice.gov/atr/economic-effects-state-bans-direct-manufacturer-sales-car-buyers
Key sections from conclusion:
-"One observer familiar with state auto franchise laws said several years ago that "No matter how strong franchise laws look today, I think they are one rider away from being a non-factor."
- "Just as Dell has altered its distribution model in the personal computer industry to better meet evolving consumer preferences, car customers would benefit from elimination of state bans on auto manufacturers' making direct sales to consumers."
No haggle just means pay MSRP. You've always had the ability to do that but some people are worried the guy down the street might have paid less, so they get angry at the game for some reason. Saturn was very profitable for the dealers because everyone paid sticker. I have no idea how direct to consumer with everyone paying sticker is a "benefit to the consumer"
Keith Tanner said:codrus (Forum Supporter) said:Keith Tanner said:Sounds like the experience your friends have had with the Tesla implementation have all been with the trucking aspect. Pick it up at a Tesla showroom and you sidestep them. In my case, they even offered to re-wash a pretty clean car before I road-tripped it 300 miles home through the mountains and I had the ability to do a full walkaround.
No, this was all at local Tesla dealerships in the bay area.
Then I guess the difference is in the manager of the showroom, because you're sure not describing my experience.
FWIW a friend of mine in San Mateo had such a terrible experience getting his Model 3 that it put a bad taste in his mouth and he's selling it a year into ownership and looking to move to a Polestar. Things definitely seem to be on the decline for them.
I can't help but wonder if Tesla's ascent to "status symbol" combined with Elon Musk's public antics are driving away the passionate early employees who built much of the brand's reputation, or if they're just spreading themselves too thin, or what. But I have also heard that the Tesla buying experience is only getting worse.
Steve_Jones said:No haggle just means pay MSRP. You've always had the ability to do that
Not in the past two years, you haven't.
Even before then, in 2017, I tried to buy a Hyundai Elantra Sport at MSRP + incentives and the sales people would only talk based on payment, payment, payment, and their numbers never added up to my own. Similar experience at a Honda dealer where suddenly the price grew by $2k for reasons nobody could describe to my satisfaction.
I did end up buying a CPO VW GTI from a dealer who sold it to me for the listed price without making me do a song and dance. That's all I really want. To buy a car for the listed price without the song and dance.
Steve_Jones said:No haggle just means pay MSRP. You've always had the ability to do that but some people are worried the guy down the street might have paid less, so they get angry at the game for some reason. Saturn was very profitable for the dealers because everyone paid sticker. I have no idea how direct to consumer with everyone paying sticker is a "benefit to the consumer"
- gets rid of expensive middlemen who add little to no value.
- alleviates massive inventory inefficiencies
- permits build to order at a market scale
pointofdeparture said:Keith Tanner said:codrus (Forum Supporter) said:Keith Tanner said:Sounds like the experience your friends have had with the Tesla implementation have all been with the trucking aspect. Pick it up at a Tesla showroom and you sidestep them. In my case, they even offered to re-wash a pretty clean car before I road-tripped it 300 miles home through the mountains and I had the ability to do a full walkaround.
No, this was all at local Tesla dealerships in the bay area.
Then I guess the difference is in the manager of the showroom, because you're sure not describing my experience.
FWIW a friend of mine in San Mateo had such a terrible experience getting his Model 3 that it put a bad taste in his mouth and he's selling it a year into ownership and looking to move to a Polestar. Things definitely seem to be on the decline for them.
I can't help but wonder if Tesla's ascent to "status symbol" combined with Elon Musk's public antics are driving away the passionate early employees who built much of the brand's reputation, or if they're just spreading themselves too thin, or what. But I have also heard that the Tesla buying experience is only getting worse.
Yeah, this wasn't just one dealership, AFAICT it's all of the bay area ones. Perhaps it's because they're super popular around here and all the dealerships are slammed? Or perhaps it's just something that's changed in the three years since Keith bought his car?
Note that I bought my car right when Tesla was undergoing a big surge to meet a Q3 target. I do seem to have picked mine up at a very good time in terms of specification and there are no problems with build quality that have become apparent in the last couple of years - even my panel gaps are unremarkable. But it wasn't because they were just noodling around at the time with lots of extra time, they were in full sprint mode. I will note that my car was obviously very fresh off the assembly line, Tesla did not have a backlog of cars to choose from so their DTC strategy was working to keep inventory levels down.
Regardless, the complaints from friends and acquaintances here are not inherent in the DTC model. There's no reason why cars will show up dirty or incomplete or somehow any more maddening than they do in the dealer model. In fact, there's a much lower probability your new car was hooned by a sales person or taken to Taco Bell for lunch.
Steve_Jones said:No haggle just means pay MSRP. You've always had the ability to do that but some people are worried the guy down the street might have paid less, so they get angry at the game for some reason. Saturn was very profitable for the dealers because everyone paid sticker. I have no idea how direct to consumer with everyone paying sticker is a "benefit to the consumer"
If MSRP was a universal measure of actual value, that would be fine. But it's basically a fictional number used to start the conversation between an occasional purchaser and a team of professional negotiators. My local Chevy dealer used to have "America's #1 discounter of automobiles!" slathered across the front windows. To me, that means MSRP was an artificially high number that was never expected to be paid. Pre-pandemic, if you didn't get $10k in discounts on an F150 you weren't even looking at what was in the ads. That's the disconnect, that MSRP is a real value. It's not. GM can drop the MSRP of the Bolt by $6k but that won't affect the out-the-door price one little bit, they were probably expecting to offer $8k in rebates on the previous price anyhow. The dealers will adjust the price with mark-ups or special deals if you're looking to buy today.
The real losers are the guys who think they're smarter than the professionals and are convinced they've scored a killer deal by spending 4 hours of their life haggling after doing a bunch of research - and yet the dealerships are laughing at them when they leave. I've worked at a dealership, I've seen it. Those suckers are the ones who want the current model to continue because they're so "good" at it. It's like walking into a huge flashy Vegas casino convinced you're going to beat the house, not considering what paid for the house.
If Saturn was so profitable to the dealers, why aren't all GM vehicles fixed price? Why aren't ANY GM vehicles fixed price?
Keith Tanner said:Steve_Jones said:No haggle just means pay MSRP. You've always had the ability to do that but some people are worried the guy down the street might have paid less, so they get angry at the game for some reason. Saturn was very profitable for the dealers because everyone paid sticker. I have no idea how direct to consumer with everyone paying sticker is a "benefit to the consumer"
If Saturn was so profitable to the dealers, why aren't all GM vehicles fixed price? Why aren't ANY GM vehicles fixed price?
They can not mandate the existing dealers to be a fixed price, the only way to do it was start another brand. Toyota did the same with Scion. It gets past the existing franchise agreements. Saturns downfall was switching away from a "unique" vehicle to a rebadged GM vehicle. That's why Ford Electric is technically a different "brand".
Assume all automakers came out now and said they can only sell at msrp, is everyone ok with that once supply gets back up? If not, why not?
Steve_Jones said:Assume all automakers came out now and said they can only sell at msrp, is everyone ok with that once supply gets back up? If not, why not?
Minimum selling price (or at least "minimum advertised price") is a thing in a number of other industries that many people dislike. High end camera gear, for example.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
I seriously know of someone 2nd hand who was convicted of real estate fraud this year & ordered to pay $300k+ in restitution, and is now selling cars at a local Chevy dealer.
In reply to Steve_Jones :
I'd be fine with it. Take Honda, for example. Honda has never played the incentive game, in fact they often don't haggle and even sold for above sticker well before recent supply constraints, and they move units just fine. It's because the cars are good and the market has agreed that they are worth their asking price.
I think the only companies who would really be hurt by an "everything is MSRP now" are the Chrysler-GM-Nissan-Mitsubishi types who play the Kohl's department store game of using an inflated MSRP to give them leeway with ridiculous incentives to make consumers feel like they're getting a deal. And I don't shop in that market, so let them fail to move units until they set MSRP to be in line with market value.
Keith Tanner said:codrus (Forum Supporter) said:Keith Tanner said:Sounds like the experience your friends have had with the Tesla implementation have all been with the trucking aspect. Pick it up at a Tesla showroom and you sidestep them. In my case, they even offered to re-wash a pretty clean car before I road-tripped it 300 miles home through the mountains and I had the ability to do a full walkaround.
No, this was all at local Tesla dealerships in the bay area.
Then I guess the difference is in the manager of the showroom, because you're sure not describing my experience.
maybe it is a California thing, I have heard some horror stories
codrus (Forum Supporter) said:Steve_Jones said:Assume all automakers came out now and said they can only sell at msrp, is everyone ok with that once supply gets back up? If not, why not?
Minimum selling price (or at least "minimum advertised price") is a thing in a number of other industries that many people dislike. High end camera gear, for example.
Then only MSRP should be fair. You can't complain they're charging over "the fictional number" if you're demanding under the same fictional number when supply is fine. If it's a fake number either way, over shouldn't matter either. The market can determine what it sells for, the starting point is irrelevant.
Keith Tanner said:codrus (Forum Supporter) said:Keith Tanner said:Sounds like the experience your friends have had with the Tesla implementation have all been with the trucking aspect. Pick it up at a Tesla showroom and you sidestep them. In my case, they even offered to re-wash a pretty clean car before I road-tripped it 300 miles home through the mountains and I had the ability to do a full walkaround.
No, this was all at local Tesla dealerships in the bay area.
Then I guess the difference is in the manager of the showroom, because you're sure not describing my experience.
I agree, not my experience at all. That doesn't mean that those things didn't happen. It seems that it depends on the delivery center, similar to how there are certain dealers that people recommend staying away from due to poor customer service. The advantage of the DTC model, is that Tesla is incentivized AND has the tools to clean it up themselves.
John Welsh said:Let the lawsuits fly. The Dealers Assoc will fight this one hard. This isn't some start-up...it's Ford. This will be the battle of all battles on this front.
Interesting part is NADA is ran by a man whose main dealership is Ford.
Steve_Jones said:No haggle just means pay MSRP. You've always had the ability to do that but some people are worried the guy down the street might have paid less, so they get angry at the game for some reason. Saturn was very profitable for the dealers because everyone paid sticker. I have no idea how direct to consumer with everyone paying sticker is a "benefit to the consumer"
If Saturn was 'very profitable' the brand would still exist. In fact, the no haggle Saturn MSRP wasn't set like the traditional Chevy MSRP and included what GM considered, at the time, its typical margin per vehicle. Jim Farley said in the arstechnica article that Tesla has a 2k advantage going direct to consumer, and I suspect he has looked at the numbers.
pointofdeparture said:Keith Tanner said:codrus (Forum Supporter) said:Keith Tanner said:Sounds like the experience your friends have had with the Tesla implementation have all been with the trucking aspect. Pick it up at a Tesla showroom and you sidestep them. In my case, they even offered to re-wash a pretty clean car before I road-tripped it 300 miles home through the mountains and I had the ability to do a full walkaround.
No, this was all at local Tesla dealerships in the bay area.
Then I guess the difference is in the manager of the showroom, because you're sure not describing my experience.
FWIW a friend of mine in San Mateo had such a terrible experience getting his Model 3 that it put a bad taste in his mouth and he's selling it a year into ownership and looking to move to a Polestar. Things definitely seem to be on the decline for them.
I can't help but wonder if Tesla's ascent to "status symbol" combined with Elon Musk's public antics are driving away the passionate early employees who built much of the brand's reputation, or if they're just spreading themselves too thin, or what. But I have also heard that the Tesla buying experience is only getting worse.
I don't know if Tesla is 0n the decline, but I think the fact that you have a minimum 6 month wait for their 4 door sedan that was introduced in 2018, indicates that they have strong products in the market. The Bolt currently has 6k in cash on the hood and the Polestar has inventory I can get within couple of weeks, or right now if my local dealer has one in stock and several do.
The big auto companies aren't splitting off the EV companies because of branding. The dealerships have contracts with old companies not the new ones. The dealers can't sue the new company for breach of contract when there is no contract. I think this is why the VW dealers are freaking about Scot brand. Maybe VW won't be beholden to the dealers with a new brand.
In reply to mattm :
Oh I'm not questioning Tesla's demand for its vehicles or it's ability to move units; they are absolutely on the ascent to becoming the affluent upper-middle class car of choice in the 21st century, for better or for worse (that is not an insult to any owners here, they truly are becoming a consumer status symbol in the eyes of many).
I just know that with that kind of growth comes growth problems, and a common growth problem in any organization is losing core people and/struggling to maintain end-to-end quality as scale increases. So to hear that people are increasingly PO'ed at Tesla as they have grown feels somewhat predicable.
I do agree that Tesla's particular struggles aren't (or at least shouldn't be) reflective of the merits of DTC auto sales.
mattm said:Steve_Jones said:No haggle just means pay MSRP. You've always had the ability to do that but some people are worried the guy down the street might have paid less, so they get angry at the game for some reason. Saturn was very profitable for the dealers because everyone paid sticker. I have no idea how direct to consumer with everyone paying sticker is a "benefit to the consumer"
If Saturn was 'very profitable' the brand would still exist. In fact, the no haggle Saturn MSRP wasn't set like the traditional Chevy MSRP and included what GM considered, at the time, its typical margin per vehicle. Jim Farley said in the arstechnica article that Tesla has a 2k advantage going direct to consumer, and I suspect he has looked at the numbers.
Notice I said profitable for the dealer, not necessarily the manufacturer...
There was more markup in a Saturn than any other similar GM. $800 markup in a Cavalier, $190o in a SL2, etc. Saturn died when they just went to rebadged GMs vs making them look different than other cars. When the Saturn Relay minivan was $24,850 and no negotiation, but the Chevrolet Uplander was $22,750 AND you could get it for less, people bought the Chevrolet, pretty much killing the brand.
The dealership parts experience is all over the map. My local Honda dealership is great, discounts off of MSRP, and based on the fact that I'm an established customer, will give me steeper discounts on more expensive parts ($500-$700 range). I don't expect them to match online prices, but they seem to be able to come close. And when I order something through them, communication is great, and it's there the next morning. Always the same two guys at the counter, it's a great experience.
Toyota is a mess. Parts are always MSRP, it's a pain to order stuff, they never call you when stuff comes in, and there's no discounting on big dollar parts. I ordered an OEM hitch online, paid $100 in shipping, and it was still $200 less than at my local dealer. I showed them the online price + shipping cost, said match it and I'll buy it from you, and they stuck with the $200 higher price. As a result, I only use them when I absolutely have to.
I'm a very small customer for them, but it sets the tone for the whole dealership experience.
ShinnyGroove (Forum Supporter) said:Steve_Jones said:No haggle just means pay MSRP. You've always had the ability to do that but some people are worried the guy down the street might have paid less, so they get angry at the game for some reason. Saturn was very profitable for the dealers because everyone paid sticker. I have no idea how direct to consumer with everyone paying sticker is a "benefit to the consumer"
- gets rid of expensive middlemen who add little to no value.
- alleviates massive inventory inefficiencies
- permits build to order at a market scale
the plants aren't setup to really to build to order at scale like this.
Will add a level of difficulty. Most buyers are willing to allow great profit on their trade in. Not to have to deal with looky loos, tire kicking and another trade in.
Without a dealer net work establishing a used market things will really slow down.
That or we suddenly all start dealing with used car buyers.
Plus arranging our own financing?
Then there is the whole issue of service. Believe it or not even EV's will occasionally need some service.
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