Car Salespeople: Evolve, Dammit! (Mini Rant)

The BBQ Pit
21

Plus! (Jeez, I could go on for months about this, and might until I get my new car, Oct. probably.) I get pissed off that people are pissing me off, not that that makes any sense. What I mean is, to walk in and be patronized or treated like I couldn’t possibly know what I’m talking about (little lady) or so obviously bullshitted . . . all those things that individually would piss me off anyway, it further pisses me off that they do it. It’s like, fuck, could you just please not lie to me or shine me on? Because if you do that, I can’t do business with you, I just can’t. And I actually do want to give you my money, or a reasonable portion of it, so if you could just contrive to not piss me off so I don’t have to leave, that would be great. I’m thinking of going into dealerships like Dianne Weist in Bullets Over Broadway: “Don’t speak! Just don’t speak!”

And yeah, I fully intend to do 90% of my business over the internet, but I still have to go to dealerships to test drive the cars.

22

Actually, maybe not. We had a hell of a time finding the one we wanted that matched our exterior color/interior color combination exactly, plus ONE feature.

23

My sister is the baby wrangler, I mean office manager, at a used car dealership.
There is only ONE salesman that fits the typical ‘Used Car Guy’ stereotype. He has bounced around from dealership to dealership because no one can tolerate him for too long.
He will pounce on people, he will be pushy, he will verbally berate other sales people in front of clients. Buyers have been known to initially talk with him, but will purposely buy from another salesperson just so they don’t have to deal with him again.

And even then… he still has the highest sales numbers.

24

Nah, I get this, too, every time I go looking at cars. I’m a guy. “Y’like red? Green? What color are you looking for?”

I get the feeling that, even though you and I say we’re just looking right now, when we ask about a specific model, they figure we’re close to pulling the trigger on a purchase. They invariably have a few different colors of each popular model in the lot, so if magic they happen to have our favorite color of our preferred model, they hope we might go ahead and buy now.

I shopped four different dealerships for my last purchase (five years ago), and had a truly bad experience at only one, the local Toyota dealership. Here’s a hint to any dealers who could be reading: don’t laugh at your customer if your customer says he’s hoping to get a monthly payment under a given amount, especially if you’ve never bothered to find out how much of a downpayment they’re capable of paying. Mr. Pushy wouldn’t take no for an answer on their damned RAV-4 SUVs, and blew an easy $10,000 sale by laughing at my monthly-payment wishes (guess he hadn’t considered the fact that I had a $5000+ downpayment ready to go).

25

My husband has a line he uses right off. “We’re not looking to buy a car today. You can’t make a sale today. But you can lose a sale today.”

It usually – not always, for the truly clueless, but usually – puts the pushy salesperson on notice that aggressive tactics will not be tolerated. We answer the color question with either “Color is the least important factor” or “Are you kidding?”

My cousin is a former car salesman, sales manager, and general manager. He has coached me, long-distance, through several purchases. He also used to train car salespeople. That “What color do you like” is the standard line to get you to answer an easy question first, to form a rapport with the salesperson; also Student Driver’s “magic” theory above. “Why, we just happen to have a cobalt blue one over there!”

We prefer to shop at a one-price shop because we hate to haggle. We’ve bought the last three vehicles from the same dealer and hope they have something we want to buy when we shop for a replacement vehicle for my husband in the spring. They have treated us well. You’ll want to consider that the dealership you buy the vehicle from is the place you’ll want to take it in for service, because the dealer’s customers get better and faster attention in the service department (this from my cousin).

26

My experience with CarMax was somewhat different. They were great while we were just looking. They let us test drive the 3 different Volvos etc. Nice as can be.

When it came to negotiating price, it was back to that old shell game-“let me go speak to my manager” BS. It didn’t help that the salesman looked about age 12 and was cocky. We decided on one car and did the paperwork. We were to pick up the car the next day. Turns out the head of the repair/maintenance dept refused to release “our” car because the master cylinder was messed up. Yes, we own that car (they fixed mc for free, obviously), but here is what I learned from that interaction with CarMax:

They will sell you anything that moves. There are no scruples, no conscience, no “do the right thing”. IOW, they are just like all the other car salesmen out there. (and the saleswomen are worse, IMO. I’m not part of your sisterhood, sweetums).

To me, car sales are back where snake oil sales were 100 years ago. I hate getting conned and I know I’m getting conned. Like Jodi said, I am angry that I have to be angry at this. I have to admit, I go in so defensive that Fred Rogers probably couldn’t sell me a car. But my attitude didn’t spring from nowhere.

Since I have a thing about owning new cars (I will never own one again), I am stuck with Rocko (yes, an actual name of an actual salesman–who sold me my last new car. The Dodge Grand Caravan: biggest piece of shit on the roads of America), Lefty and Dwayne. <sigh> (and what is with car salesmen and nick names, anways?)

27

My favorite short conversations with car salesmen.

CS: I want to sell you this car so I can win a trip to the Bahamas!
Me: Unless you’re taking me with you I don’t care.

CS: I’m going to try to get you the price you want.
Me: I fire my employees for saying “try”. Trying is unimportant. Doing is important.

CS: Maybe we should find you something more affordable.
Me: You and I will never discuss what I can afford. We will only discuss what I am willing to spend. I can afford four of these cars but that is not important.

CS: I’ll go talk to my sales manager. (wants me to sit and stew)
Me: I’ll be walking towards my car. If I reach it before you bring me back my number, I leave.

CS: You know, the car you think about over night may be gone before you come back tomorrow.
Me: I can find another seller faster than you can find another buyer.

CS: You won’t find a better price than my offer.
Me: But I’ll keep looking and I’ll either find a better price or I’ll wear down and bring my price up. But there’s only one way that can happen here and that’s if you meet my price now.

28

A few days ago I had to go get a part for my Honda. I pulled up to the dealership and noticed one of the guys decending on my car. “Watch as I burst his bubble” I thought to myself. He approched me gave me his opening line “Hi there sir, Can I help you with something” “Why yes, you can” I said in an exagerrated tone…“Where is your parts department.”…I watched him deflate. He walked me over to the parts department, then came back a few minutes later to give me a business card* and to make sure I call him any time of the day or night if I, or any of my friends, are looking for a Honda.
*He must have been new, it was someone elses card with the name ripped off and his written on the back.

29

Why not?

-FrL-

30

The last time I bought a new car was the easiest ever. Following the model of someone on the SDMB I sent this letter to 12 Toyota dealerships:

Worked like a charm!

31

High pressure sales tactics can be nasty. I’ve only had to deal with it second-hand with friends or family since I’ve never bought a new car, only used ones. My budget has always been low enough that they’re not very excited about having me there and so they skip most of the bullshit. The best way to deal with pressure, though, is to remember that the pressure is meaningless. They need your sale more than you need to buy. BubbaDog’s responses are a great mix of verbal judo and bitchslaps. Could probably be used for a textbook in dealing with pushy salespeople.

There is a rationale besides male chauvinism for salespeaple treating men and women differently. They <gasp> look for different things in a car. Volvo’s YCC concept car was designed by a mostly female team, incorporated features that women had requested, and addressed things about cars that women considered a hassle. Customizability (i.e. color and interior), lots of storage space, low maintenance (in this case no user-accessible maintenance), easy entry, and parking assistance were some of the top features women liked. A list made by men looks a lot different.

When sales guys ask a female customer, “What color would you like?” or start talking about storage space and pointing out that the cargo doors are easy to open, it’s not necessarily because they’re being jerks. It may not match with what you, the Enlightened Über-Capable Doper Female, want to address in a car, but it’s probably what a majority of their other customers do want. Now, if they don’t adjust their attitude or focus after a couple of exchanges, then they’re being thick and may deserve to lose the sale, but if they start off with that tack it’s probably because they are attempting to tailor their approach to the customer, which I’m sure most people would say is a good thing.

32

Sales people can sucker themselves. If you make it clear to a Ford sales person that you absolutely will not be buying a car until you have test driven a Chevy, s/he will move heaven, earth, and the price to sell you that car BEFORE you test drive the Chevy.

But I’m surprised at some of these posts; in my experience, car sales people alway (to be vulgar) ‘pitch to the bitch’. They snow the guys with jabber about ‘ponies’ and such, but very carefully point out reliability, cargo space, safety features, handling, mileage, and acceleration to women.

They also, IME, accept, 'I’m sorry, that’s too expensive", from women. YMMV.

33

Couple of reasons. I don’t want to pay for a new something that will depreciate as soon as I drive it off the lot. Because I have had bad experience with new cars. The last new car I bought was the Dodge Grand Caravan, which was a horrible car, in almost ever way. I had to fight with the dealership to get the warranty repairs done and covered by them (5 star service, my ass). Because I have had solid, good used cars more often than new cars. Rocko sold me my last new car–his personality matched his name, down to the pinkie ring.

But if I win the lottery or someone leaves me a lot of money, I might reconsider.

34

I like buying cars from Hertz’s used car lots. They sell their rental cars after about 20-30k miles and keep them in excellent working condition, and they have fixed prices. You might find a better price somewhere else, but you will also have to deal with all the bullshit.

35

Unfortunately, a lot of dealers haven’t figured out all the information is at my fingertips either. I was buying a car on behalf of my sister a while back: there was a specific model {a Toyota Corsa} she wanted, which wasn’t at my favourite yard, so I found half-a-dozen of them at various places, and kept an eye on them for a couple of weeks to see what the prices were doing. One looked as if it had been sitting on a lot for a while because they’d dropped the price from $5K to $4K: it was probably a good quality trade-in that didn’t quite fit the expensive European run of the place and wasn’t moving. Bargain, thinks I.

So I go in to check it, take it for a drive, it looks and sounds pretty good: I’m ready to buy the fucking thing if it just checks out straight, so I tell the salesman it looks OK but I want a mechanic to check it, and it was going to take a couple of hours for him to get there: I’d call him and then go and get some lunch and come back later, and if the car checked out we could talk about a price.

You could see the cogs turning in this guy’s little salesman head: “If he leaves the lot, I’ve lost the sale!”. Next thing he’s telling me some story about how he’d been innundated with interest in this particular car, and there was a woman calling from Germany who was this close to buying it, and if I’d just put a deposit on it or sign the papers to clinch the deal he personally would arrange to fix any faults the mechanic found, and if not this car - which I knew had been sitting on the lot for a month and had had the price slashed to get rid of it - might just drive out of my life forever.

I just laughed at the guy, told him he’d lost a virtually guaranteed sale for bullshitting and that I knew how just long the car had been there and that the price had been dropped, showed him my sheaf of printouts with each car I’d been keeping an eye on, and walked out of his life and on to the next dealership. It was like some kind of weird fucking fable: I wanted to give the guy money and he wanted to sell me a car: all he had to do to get $4000 odd dollars was to say “OK, see you later” when I went off to lunch, but he just couldn’t stop his reflexive lying salesman instinct.

36

You’d be wrong. It happens quite often. :smiley:

37

Hertz used car lot?

<off to google>

38

Car shopping in our household is a truly irritating prospect. We’re essentially obliged to do it in person.

It’s like this: my husband is a very, very large man. Over 6’4, built like a linebacker. He flat-out doesn’t fit * in a substantial portion of cars on the road. He also does most of the driving. I hate SUVs with a passion - won’t own one. I don’t like the way they look, their average MPG, their handling, or the fact that they always seem tippy to me. We live on Long Island, so a truck is just silliness. This slaps a fairly hard limit on the cars we were even willing to contemplate owning. It also means we couldn’t really do much shopping online - whether or not his legs will reliably fit under the steering column is something you sort of have to experience in person.

You’d be amazed at the number of salespeople who’d try to fit my husband into a compact car. We’d let them rattle on about how fabulous their car was, and then we’d try to fit my husband behind the wheel, generally fail, and then look sad at the salesman while we moved on to another car. The quick ones caught on fairly fast, but we had one guy at a Toyota dealership who went through this with us on no fewer than 5 different models. We gave up on him when he started trying to fit my husband into different colors of the same model. Because the blue one would have more legroom than the black one?

However, the Subaru guy listened to us run down what we were looking for, looked my husband up and down, turned to me and asked “Are you going to be doing most of the driving?”, and when I said no, told us he didn’t sell anything my husband would fit into that wasn’t an SUV and referred us to a guy he knew at a Dodge dealership. Elapsed time, less than five minutes. Plus, the Dodge guy was actually really good. We went in, told him what we wanted in a car and what we were willing to pay and he showed us six cars that were more-or-less a match (none right out but some of them were in the nature of a 5/6 match, say) and didn’t play the stupid hard selling tricks. It was refreshing. We actually bought the car from there. And got a ridiculously good deal - 7 years, 0%, $6,000 off sticker, $2,500 down, free oil change for life, free roadside assistance for life, guaranteed loaner car for any repairs, free extended warranty. March 31st is a really good day to go car shopping.**

*This is a public service on my part, actually. I’m a hideously bad driver. I’m competant enough, but I have seriously scary road rage and a lead foot. Also, I’m really, really aggressive. Therefore, I do my best not to drive. I can keep my tendencies under control, especially over short distances, but I know what they are and it’s better for everyone if I just avoid driving as much as possible.

**End of month, end of quarter, and on April 1, the dealership was required to ship any unsold old-model year vehicles back to the mothership and take a loss on them.

39

When we were looking for the Corolla, it was basically for me, and I did a lot of the legwork and test driving, and I never had a problem getting away from the salesmen by saying I had to run it by my husband (which was more true than not, since both of our incomes would be taken into account for the financing, but usually I was just trying cars on with no intention of buying). My husband told me that he would have had a lot more problems getting away from them by saying that he’d have to run it by me - they would start questioning his masculinity and bullshit like that.

Another reason for buying used (or lightly used) is because the resources used to make the car have already been used - they’re recycled cars. Plus there’s the whole saving thousands of dollars for basically the same car (our car was about 10 months old when we bought it, with a handful of kilometers on it, but it was much less than a brand new one of the same kind).

40

My last car buying experience was a dream, and will probably never be repeated (sadly). We were looking for a Pontiac Solstice, back when they first came out. Very few dealerships had them, and those that did were marking them up ridiculous amounts that we weren’t willing to pay. So I got on the net and found just what we were looking for at a dealership about 50 miles from where we live.

I called the dealership, got a very nice salesman, and asked him if the car was available. He said it was. I asked him if there was a markup. He said there wasn’t. I told him we were 50 miles away, and if we came up there to look at the car and it magically grew a markup, we wouldn’t be happy. He assured me that there was no markup.

We drove up there the next day (it was already late when I called) and got there when the dealership opened. The salesman turned out to be an older gentleman, and the dealership an older, family-owned lot. The guy was everything I wanted in a car salesman–he wasn’t pushy, he didn’t urge us to do anything we didn’t want to do–just let us test drive the car, answered our questions, and took care of the paperwork (we had our own financing arranged already). Even the sales manager was nice, helpful, non-pushy, and non-chauvinistic. I couldn’t believe it! I tend to be a bit prejudiced initially regarding car salesmen, because many I’ve encountered have been rather slimy. But this guy was a breath of fresh air. If I was in the market for another car his lot sold, I’d drive 50 miles to get it in a heartbeat.