Why does Chris Christie hate the free market

new Jersey has some odd dealers laws.. some that the dealers actively like. One of them is that all car dealers must be closed on sunday. This is actually a law the dealers like

The truth of the matter is that no one who is making money in this market really wants a free market. The only people who want a different market are the ones who do not have it set up the way they like it.

It's not just car company/dealers. It's cable companies. Cell phone companies. Grain and corn farmers. Casino licensees. Senators. Congressmen. Judges. Lobbyists. The list goes on and on and on... (rattles sabre... mutters under breath... )

dculberson wrote: One thing to keep in mind is that auto dealers are consistently among the bottom tier of customer satisfaction and BBB ratings. They're not a positive experience for almost any of their customers. So why protect them with legislation at this point? As an industry they've proven themselves undeserving. That's as an industry - I know there are individual dealerships that aren't bad.

I wonder how much of this comes down to unrealistic expectations by consumers?

IE, people buy a Honda Civic and expect to be treated like they purchased an Aston Martin.

Those who would side with Tesla are ignoring the value added by the dealerships. Who else is going to be able to peel that protective film off the cars and sell the customer overpriced rustproofing, paint sealant, and upholstery stain guard?

In reply to Giant Purple Snorklewacker:

As a farmer I'll be damned until you pay $57 per loaf of bread, $575 more expensive tofu, and $92 more for everything that has corn products in it.....oh but wait, I forgot, the government won't allow that. The best liar in this country is in the Department of Agriculture. Droughts/floods/locusts, doesn't matter to him, BUMPER CROP(and commodities markets tank for a few weeks and then spike up rediculously with all the speculators)

Write your state level congressmen and senators. That's the only way this will ever be changed.

z31maniac wrote:

dculberson wrote: One thing to keep in mind is that auto dealers are consistently among the bottom tier of customer satisfaction and BBB ratings. They're not a positive experience for almost any of their customers. So why protect them with legislation at this point? As an industry they've proven themselves undeserving. That's as an industry - I know there are individual dealerships that aren't bad.

I wonder how much of this comes down to unrealistic expectations by consumers? IE, people buy a Honda Civic and expect to be treated like they purchased an Aston Martin.

Seriously?

Decades of sketch comedy about the salesperson going to the back room to "fight for your deal" with the manager, and you think a significant part of the dissatisfaction is down to insufficient hand-holding during color selection? Not being offered a latte?

I am dubious.

tuna55 wrote: Write your state level congressmen and senators. That's the only way this will ever be changed.

Good call. Done, at least partially. We have one Tesla dealership here, and predictably, the other dealerships are trying to shut it down. I have voiced my support for the manufacturer-direct model.

I've emailed one representative; I'm hoping that I'll get a response from an aide who may be able to tell me in which ways I've misdirected or badly explained my position before I contact others.

I find it ironic that people who are typically conservative are now arguing for government intervention in the car buying process. The government intervention being to mandate a dealership middle man by legislation. It would seem that some like the idea of the government injecting a middle man into a transaction between a citizen and a private company. How is that justified in the smaller government/free market crowd?

If conservatives were truly smaller government/free market advocates wouldn't they stop the intervention of government in this process? Isn't forcing all cars sales through for profit dealerships as socialist/fascist as forcing citizens to buy healthcare through private companies? I'm pretty sure conservatives are against the last part I mentioned about healthcare.

Wouldn't a true free market advocate be all for removing regulations legislating this type of intervention? That's the definition of a free market right? Deregulation and allowing the market to work it's magic?

Ransom wrote:

z31maniac wrote:

dculberson wrote: One thing to keep in mind is that auto dealers are consistently among the bottom tier of customer satisfaction and BBB ratings. They're not a positive experience for almost any of their customers. So why protect them with legislation at this point? As an industry they've proven themselves undeserving. That's as an industry - I know there are individual dealerships that aren't bad.

I wonder how much of this comes down to unrealistic expectations by consumers? IE, people buy a Honda Civic and expect to be treated like they purchased an Aston Martin.

Seriously? Decades of sketch comedy about the salesperson going to the back room to "fight for your deal" with the manager, and you think a significant part of the dissatisfaction is down to insufficient hand-holding during color selection? Not being offered a latte? I am dubious.

As mentioned, I've purchased 4 new cars over the last 3.5 years.

And it's been a good experience every time like I detailed on the last page. I suspect people go in like Shiny Happy People and don't understand the dealership can't give the car away.

Xceler8x wrote: I find it ironic...

Well... most people are full of "principles" right up to the point where someone throws a pile of money at them...

aircooled wrote:

Xceler8x wrote: I find it ironic...

Well... most people are full of "principles" right up to the point where someone throws a pile of money at them...

And a lot of people are full of something other than principles...

z31maniac wrote: As mentioned, I've purchased 4 new cars over the last 3.5 years. And it's been a good experience every time like I detailed on the last page.

Congratulations. I think we can fit your sample size into the larger data without upsetting the impression that the process often sucks. Neither your four good experiences nor my two mediocre ones prove anything.

I suspect people go in like Shiny Happy People and don't understand the dealership can't give the car away.

So are you convinced that I'm lying when I say that I want to pay a reasonable, consistent retail markup, or that I actually don't understand what I'm saying when I say that?

I think you'd find that I'm consistently polite, pleasant, cordial, probably to the extent of it being to my detriment. I'm not a hard-ass, and without real pricing data, I really don't know what they can sell the car for, short of anecdotal evidence of what people have paid, which isn't much use once you get varations in region, options, transfer from another dealership, etc, etc, etc...

I've never paid more than I was willing to pay for a car, by definition. And I've never bullied, harassed, harangued, or otherwise been unpleasant to a salesperson. If anything, I'm pretty sure that I made their lives easy.

If you say that that's cause enough for me to be charged more than someone else, you will have made my case.

mad_machine wrote: One of them is that all car dealers must be closed on sunday. This is actually a law the dealers like

They like being closed on a day that most people have off?
I mean, I've never gone new car shopping, but I'd assume that were I to, it'd happen on my weekend.
"Here's the day most people are free, let's be closed then"

Ransom wrote: I've never paid more than I was willing to pay for a car, by definition. And I've never bullied, harassed, harangued, or otherwise been unpleasant to a salesperson. If anything, I'm pretty sure that I made their lives easy.

If you've never paid more for a car than you want, then what's your issue?

That it's not "the price is the price is the price?"

I think you're proving my point about expectations.

Guys, this has nothing to do with how good or bad dealerships are. It has nothing to do with the idea that they should or should not exist. The laws now prohibit a car manufacturer from selling to you. Why? You can buy anything else at all without a middleman.

By the way, I am a small "C" conservative libertarian and I definitely do not approve of laws like these

z31maniac wrote:

Ransom wrote: I've never paid more than I was willing to pay for a car, by definition. And I've never bullied, harassed, harangued, or otherwise been unpleasant to a salesperson. If anything, I'm pretty sure that I made their lives easy.

If you've never paid more for a car than you want, then what's your issue? That it's not "the price is the price is the price?" I think you're proving my point about expectations.

Sorry, I shouldn't have tried for a wordsmith flourish like that. I'm not the writer to pull it off.

I didn't say I'd never paid more than I wanted to. I said I never paid more than I was willing to. Again, by definition: If I bought it, I was willing to pay that.

What I was trying to get across is that I have dealt with dealers, I have reached a price where I wasn't certain that they were laughing after I walked out the door, and I was pleasant as pie to the dealer the entire time. I was not your theoretical buyer who walked in and was a dick to the dealer for not selling it to me at wholesale. Of course, I may have overpaid significantly. There's not a lot of opportunity to cross-check the drive-away price of a base WRX in the Portland metro area. I find the uncertainty to be appalling.

I really dislike that if you can't get data, some dealers are more than happy to try to sell you a car at $3k over sticker for a "market adjustment" unless you are willing to spend all day visiting different dealerships, getting offers, compiling evidence, or generally being charming enough to get back to what the car really should sell for. And the last car like that I got a firm price via a concierge service for, IIRC, $4k under MSRP, at my location, so it's not as though the market actually demanded/supported the $3k over MSRP. The statement that the local market suggested a $3 markup over MSRP was simply a lie (that's right, categorically a direct untruth) told by the dealership to give themselves what they saw as a preferable starting point for bargaining.

In reply to tuna55:

I half-agree. I agree that we shouldn't be required to buy through dealerships either way.

That said, how bad dealerships are has everything to do with how badly we are wronged by the status quo. The abuses of the existing crowd may have everything to do with showing that they are not in a position to continue to exist on the grounds of making things better for the consumer.

z31maniac wrote: If only Tesla had bought some favor, I mean donated to his campaign. More crony capitalism. It's why I'm starting to pay less and less attention to politics. It positively doesn't matter.

This. I hate them all.

I have found that the cheaper the car.. the more the dealers will try to screw you.

Datsun1500 wrote:

tuna55 wrote: Guys, this has nothing to do with how good or bad dealerships are. It has nothing to do with the idea that they should or should not exist. The laws now prohibit a car manufacturer from selling to you. Why? You can buy anything else at all without a middleman. By the way, I am a small "C" conservative libertarian and I definitely do not approve of laws like these

I can buy anything without a middleman? Where do I buy a TV, camera, or refrigerator direct from the manufacturer? How about groceries? Can I buy cereal direct from Kelloggs?

There are factory outlet stores in pretty much all of those categories. I don't know about Kellogg's but there are food outlets owned by some of the manufacturers.

And computers: there's Apple stores in dang near every city.

The thing that keeps you from buying much of those products from the manufacturers is will on the manufacturer's side, not law.

mad_machine wrote: I have found that the cheaper the car.. the more the dealers will try to screw you.

From what I understand, the cheaper the car, the smaller the profit margin, so there is more than just a little incentive for the salesperson to eek out as much as they can. If you figure the sales guy might make a few hundred on a sale. Maybe. While that sounds great - a few hundred for a hour or so of work, think about how many hours he sits at his desk not selling anything? How many days sometimes? Seems like a rough way to make a living. I couldn't do it.

Ransom wrote:

z31maniac wrote:

Ransom wrote: I've never paid more than I was willing to pay for a car, by definition. And I've never bullied, harassed, harangued, or otherwise been unpleasant to a salesperson. If anything, I'm pretty sure that I made their lives easy.

If you've never paid more for a car than you want, then what's your issue? That it's not "the price is the price is the price?" I think you're proving my point about expectations.

Sorry, I shouldn't have tried for a wordsmith flourish like that. I'm not the writer to pull it off. I didn't say I'd never paid more than I *wanted* to. I said I never paid more than I was *willing* to. Again, by definition: If I bought it, I was willing to pay that. What I was trying to get across is that I have dealt with dealers, I have reached a price where I wasn't *certain* that they were laughing after I walked out the door, and I was pleasant as pie to the dealer the entire time. I was not your theoretical buyer who walked in and was a dick to the dealer for not selling it to me at wholesale. Of course, I *may* have overpaid significantly. There's not a lot of opportunity to cross-check the drive-away price of a base WRX in the Portland metro area. I find the uncertainty to be appalling. I really dislike that if you can't get data, some dealers are more than happy to try to sell you a car at $3k over sticker for a "market adjustment" unless you are willing to spend all day visiting different dealerships, getting offers, compiling evidence, or generally being charming enough to get back to what the car really should sell for. And the last car like that I got a firm price via a concierge service for, IIRC, $4k *under* MSRP, at my location, so it's not as though the market actually demanded/supported the $3k over MSRP. The statement that the local market suggested a $3 markup over MSRP was simply a **lie** (that's right, categorically a direct untruth) told by the dealership to give themselves what they saw as a preferable starting point for bargaining.

When you buy a TV do you shop around for best price?

Or would rather every retailer HAS to sell for the exact same price?

Ransom wrote: And the last car like that I got a firm price via a concierge service for, IIRC, $4k *under* MSRP, at my location, so it's not as though the market actually demanded/supported the $3k over MSRP. The statement that the local market suggested a $3 markup over MSRP was simply a **lie** (that's right, categorically a direct untruth) told by the dealership to give themselves what they saw as a preferable starting point for bargaining.

Umm... what lie?

A purchase through a concierge service is not the same market as a purchase from a dealer.

You can't define "market" by your zip code.

Perhaps the "market" was specifically people who lived within a 4 block radius of the local pub, had purple hair, AND were willing to pay $3K more than MSRP.

If the dealer was capable of adding $3K, and people were paying it, then yes, the market value is MSRP +$3K.

z31maniac wrote: When you buy a TV do you shop around for best price? Or would rather every retailer HAS to sell for the exact same price?

When I shop for a TV, I have some reasonable expectation that the price in the ad or on the website is close to or exactly what I will pay to walk out with it, rather than the beginning of a three-hour ordeal of negotiations. With that in mind, I can comparison shop easily.

I do not want to go through negotiations at multiple dealerships to find out what their actual prices are, and the prices on the ads and/or windshields are not what anybody expects to pay in the end. That's the starting point for negotiations.

I know you picked out model and told the local dealers you were shopping on price for that model. That means you picked a model without knowing exactly what the best price you could get on one of those was to compare to the best price you could get on a competing car. Unless you also did the same thing to all the local dealers for that car as well. Which starts to sound like an unreasonable amount of research for "what does this item cost?" At least it seems unnecessary to me.