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Old 09-26-2020, 07:11 PM   #341
clyde
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Sorry to hear! Meanwhile, on a related-ish note, it looks like my neighbor has gotten her 1990s Jaguar convertible moving again. It’s been in her garage since I moved next door six months ago. What vintage is the one you have from your dad?
1998. Decorating since 8/2016.
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Old 09-26-2020, 07:15 PM   #342
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1998. Decorating since 8/2016.
I suspect a similar vintage. My neighbor’s has been a garage ornament for some time. It’s a gold color.
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Old 09-27-2020, 09:07 AM   #343
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So, I sent an email to the dealership group GM. Message was essentially, “I’m trying to buy a car that you have. Your team won’t talk to me. I still want to buy it. Can you please help?”
.
Clyde what is the story with this ? Why wouldn’t sales people talk to you at a dealership ?
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Old 09-27-2020, 10:18 AM   #344
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Clyde what is the story with this ? Why wouldn’t sales people talk to you at a dealership ?
I have no fucking idea!

The original inquiry yesterday was “is this car still available?”

I imagine they have enough foot traffic that they don’t feel like they need to pay any attention to internet leads. As FIL often points out, people in he store are more likely to buy and internet leads are most likely to disappear.

In this case at this time, I’m perfectly willing to visit their store if the car is available, but fuck them if I’m supposed to make a 100 mile round trip just find out.
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Old 09-29-2020, 12:12 AM   #345
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I doubt the email to the GM was seen, but I did wind up speaking with a salesman, sales manager and the general sales manager this evening and it was every bit the shit experience you can imagine.

They all read the same script. “Your presence is your leverage. We don’t talk about price on the phone or email because it’s too easy for you to take our pricing to beat up another dealer. Our website pricing is very aggressive. We sell over 300 cars a month. I understand it’s a long trip for you to visit, but we will make it worth your time to come in. It’s the end of the month in a couple days and the website pricing WILL change due to expiring Chevrolet incentives. What time can we expect you?”

What pisses me off second most is their website pricing is pretty competitive compared to everyone else even when re-adding $1k destination (which they, like about half the other Chevy dealers, include in the “discount” from MSRP and then add back in the small print) and $900 in doc fees.

The biggest part that pisses me off is that my guess is that I probably won’t be able to strike a better deal on a new one anytime soon.

Anyone want to guess how much “make it worth [my] while” equals in dollars?

Feeling like I’m going to have hold my nose and take solace in giving hem 1s across the board on the survey.
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Old 09-29-2020, 07:26 AM   #346
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Take this with a grain of salt since I've never purchased a new car (though I was part of the process when Marisa bought the Mazdas) but this sounds horrible. I guess because all of the dealers play that game, they get away with it?

I've purchased exactly one new vehicle in my lifetime, a motorcycle. The closest dealer (still 30 miles away) played me almost the exact same tune as you received. MSRP was $8500-ish, but none of these bikes sold for that. They wouldn't give me a price over the phone, despite my insistence that I'd be happy to give them a deposit over the phone if the price was competitive. A dealer in Virginia roughly 45 miles away (and two painful trips over the American Legion) happily gave me an out-the-door price over the phone, I drove down the next day and picked the bike up with no surprise charges.
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Old 09-29-2020, 08:37 AM   #347
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One of these days I’ll have to dig up some of the old sales scripts our dealer group paid a lot of money for and indoctrinated everyone with. They made me want to gag.

Trying to go off memory here

Ring ring...

“Thanks for calling ABC Motors....

you picked a great time to call about that XXX....

are you a current XXX owner?.... No?...

are you looking to trade that YYY in? I’ll tell you what, that would make a great (student/commuter/other bullshit category) car and what I mean by that is we have ALOT of (schools, traffic,...) in the area so we get a lot of customers coming in to buy a safe car for their (kids/wife) to drive to (school/works) - so because of that our used car manager pays a lot of money for those cars since he knows he can sell them quick.

When would you be able to come in so we can have him take a look at it.... would later today work? How about tomorrow?”
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Old 09-29-2020, 10:59 AM   #348
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Yeah.

Leaving the industry discussion aside for a moment and narrowing it to my situation:

They're the only dealer with a car I want to buy in within the range I'm willing to travel.

I don't want to do business with them.

I don't *need* the car today. Or next week.

I don't want to waste 4+ hours of my life pursuing a deal that I "knew" wasn't going to happen.

If I had confidence that I could buy the car from them at a price I'm happy with, I'd be willing to go visit.

My experience with the dealer thus far is that they are straight up old school sleaze. I read some Yelp reviews last night. Everything reinforced that impression.

That doesn't mean the right deal can't be had without some effort on my part...I'm just trying to figure out if it's worth making the effort.

My expectation is a trip to their store will be a minimum of four frustrated hours of my life I'll never get back and no car to show for it.

My second best guess is that I wind up buying the car at a price I'm not happy with, but can live with just to get it done, after a lot of time playing their games and fending off multiple attempts by them to stick their hands further down my pockets with an excruciatingly painful financing adventure. (A bunch of Yelp reviews describe what appears to be a concerted strategy to force buyers into using captive financing at sky high rates by refusing to provide buyers orders so purchasers can arrange outside financing.)

To be clear, if there were other immediate choices, I wouldn't even consider them. But they are literally the only game in town today...and probably will be for at least 6 and possibly as many as 12 more weeks based on what it looks like new production is coming.
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Old 09-29-2020, 11:05 AM   #349
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Originally Posted by clyde View Post
Yeah.

Leaving the industry discussion aside for a moment and narrowing it to my situation:

They're the only dealer with a car I want to buy in within the range I'm willing to travel.

I don't want to do business with them.

I don't *need* the car today. Or next week.

I don't want to waste 4+ hours of my life pursuing a deal that I "knew" wasn't going to happen.

If I had confidence that I could buy the car from them at a price I'm happy with, I'd be willing to go visit.

My experience with the dealer thus far is that they are straight up old school sleaze. I read some Yelp reviews last night. Everything reinforced that impression.

That doesn't mean the right deal can't be had without some effort on my part...I'm just trying to figure out if it's worth making the effort.

My expectation is a trip to their store will be a minimum of four frustrated hours of my life I'll never get back and no car to show for it.

My second best guess is that I wind up buying the car at a price I'm not happy with, but can live with just to get it done, after a lot of time playing their games and fending off multiple attempts by them to stick their hands further down my pockets with an excruciatingly painful financing adventure. (A bunch of Yelp reviews describe what appears to be a concerted strategy to force buyers into using captive financing at sky high rates by refusing to provide buyers orders so purchasers can arrange outside financing.)

To be clear, if there were other immediate choices, I wouldn't even consider them. But they are literally the only game in town today...and probably will be for at least 6 and possibly as many as 12 more weeks based on what it looks like new production is coming.
Would you use a car buying service? That's the only out I can think of. And, BTW, apparently USAA is exiting that business.
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Old 09-29-2020, 11:25 AM   #350
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Would you use a car buying service? That's the only out I can think of. And, BTW, apparently USAA is exiting that business.
Doesn't Costco offer a car buying service ?
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