Nope. I don’t. Now, I can say that as a resident of a big city. I know that I won’t be left without a place do get warranty work done. Still, I was rolling my eyes at one of the tv morning news programs showing all these car dealers crying. The antiquated haggle over the price for auto sales and rip you off in the service department business model needs to end. Now, will all the remaining dealers evolve? Maybe not, but at least their foundation has been shaken. It **is **possible for a car dealer to go out of business.
I saw a few of the dealers in places I used to live on the list. No sympathy at all.
Local millionaire, or the child of the guy who bought the dealership, never worked a day in their life. Every time I bought a car they made me feel that I had been played like a rube. I even sold cars for a while. They played the salesmen like marks.
Heck with them.
Nope. A good salesman can sell anything and will land on his feat. A huckster will also probably land on his feet, as the source of rubes is never-ending. Overall, the system will adapt or die, as it should…TRM
Not much. To me, American car dealerships were the weak link in the whole process of buying a car.
What’s interesting to me is that for years and years, domestic car dealers in Michigan, particularly in the Detroit area, were closed on Saturdays. “Our salesmen want to spend time with their families” was the oft-repeated reason.
Import dealers were slow to draw customers away from the buy-American crowd, many of whom benefited from the American automakers’ family discount deals, so they began to advertise that they WERE open Saturdays. I know (admittedly only anecdotally) people who switched to foreign cars primarily for this reason. They just didn’t see the point in taking a day off work to buy a car from an American car dealer.
I’ve always bought American cars because I didn’t see the value in sending the profits from car sales to Japan, Korea, etc. That being said, the salespeople in American car dealerships were often rude, condescending or ignoring. I’ve walked out of dealerships after walking around, peering in car windows, kicking the tires, waiting, waiting…
Some sympathy for the administrative and cleaning staff. None whatsoever for the sales, service, and financing people. They have, for years, made money through a variety of dodges ranging from minor misleading to outright lies. The people taken advantage of are typically young, elderly, female, minorties, poor, or just too trusting. Not that these problems are confined to domestic dealers.
Would you have any sympathy for bankers who knowing lied to borrowers in order to get a quick commission on a really bad loan? At least with mortgages, there is some culpability on both sides-the borrower and lender both need to be greedy, self-deluding, imprudent, liars, or some combination of these. With a car dealership, in nearly every sale or service instance the customer is getting ripped off.
Is there any other business where so many people seek and dispense buying advice? The only effective strategy for the buyer is a near-paranoid assumption that everything the seller says is a lie.
Is there anything to suggest that dealership closings will do anything to move the entire system away from the deception and outright lying by the sales and service departments?
I In my youth I worked as a new car salesman for year and while it’s true it was a negotiation based process the customers walking the door were often just as devious and manipulative as the worst dealers with their shitty credit, being upside down (ie owed more than worth) in their trade ins, having the salesperson waste a few hours on them then reveal they had already committed to buy elsewhere but just wanted to test drive the car locally, on and on.
No tears for the dealers but it’s a two way street and the customers coming in the door were often just as full of crap as the dealers re their representations.
I feel bad for any employee destined to lose their job.
But I’d agree that it’s hard to feel bad for dealership owners, who willingly participate in an industry that tries to obfuscate the real price of their product and uses deception and pressure to fool their customers into paying more than the product is really worth. If a dealer came out with a policy of “We’re cutting our prices to what we’re actually willing to sell them for and will sell our cars for that price and not a penny more or less,” I’d buy there.
It’s going to be a different matter out here in the West I imagine. There is only one dealership within 50 miles of me, and after this is over there probably won’t be new car dealership closer than 150 miles away.
Our dealership used to be a Nissan dealer, as well as GM and in those days there were tons of Japanese rigs in the area. When Nissan pulled their franchise, they lost a ton of local business, as everyone started buying what they could get serviced locally again.
I suspect the corporate offices are going to create a good deal of bad blood over this. Car dealerships in smaller towns tend to be one of the bigger entities around and as such are generally a major donor to things like the Boy Scouts, FHA, foodbanks and the like.
It’ll hurt. Much more than it will help I’m thinking.
Yeah, screw people who work hard to start their own business and employ other people.
Sounds like the description of a pimp.
There are salespeople, mechanics, secretaries, accountants, janitors, & maids losing their jobs as a result of this. Real people, you know. Oftimes with families and houses and mortgages and medical bills.
So yeah, I feel sympathy.
Actually, I’m confident the mechanics and salespeople will easily find jobs elsewhere. The only people that might have a hard time are the lower level employees who detail cars or drive across town to pick up a part and do other odd jobs.
If it was those employees on the newscast, that might be different than a dealership owner who made his profits by running a business designed to screw people out of their money.
Yeah, I do. I live in Michigan. Every time something bad happens in the auto industry (so, pretty much every day), it feel worse and worse about the state of affairs in this state. Seriously, it is incredibly depressing. And I live in a sort of bubble here in Ann Arbor, because the university is still happily building and buying things and keeping the local economy afloat, and I still see it. I can only imagine how much worse it feels in other parts of Michigan.
So you think Obama is gonna spring for set of 24’s on his Limo? Hope he can find a dealer to install them.
I’m usually pretty condescending towards anyone in the automobile business. Except for when it matters, like now.
Yeah, I feel bad for everyone hurt by this. Rich owners, mechanics, office people, salesmen. Vendors that sell to auto dealers. Even customers.
Do I feel sympathy for small businesses that are being shut down? Yes, yes I do!
I can’t believe that so many people on this board seem to think that a person who’s wages come from selling a good to a buyer is automatically worthy of contempt. I have never been in car sales but I have been in print ad sales for 6 years. I worked with dealers everyday and its heartbreaking to me that these people are losing their jobs.
I would take this topic to the pit where I really say what I wanted to when I read this, but it’s just not worth the effort to try with most of you. The dealers are not the only people who are affected by these closings. Most of the dealerships that are being closed by the manufacturers are small rural operations, some of them owned by the same family for several generations. They are Mom and Pop shops. Sure they are small, but they employ office people, mechanics, salespeople and support staff.
What most of you are failing to understand is that the dealership isn’t the only business affected. The waitresses at the restaurants where these people eat lunch won’t be getting their tips. The hairdressers and barbers won’t have people in their chairs. The local governments won’t be collecting the sales taxes on the cars and service (a substantial amount) and local infrastructures suffer. Folks who bought their vehicles from these dealers will now have to drive much further away for service or warranty work.
For the record, I work in a dealership as a Finance Manager. My dealership is not closing (for the moment anyway). The owner of my store is not rich and neither am I. Right now we are all getting by. I can’t believe how callous a lot of people are being about this. It makes me sad to see this on the board, and a little bit sick to read that some of you hope I lose my job. And RickJay, there is a company out there just like you describe. I work for them.
Wow, some of these responses are pretty surprising. I’m not a terribly empathetic person, but even I feel badly for people who are about to be thrust into the uncertainty of job hunting in an ailing economy.
Closest dealer by me closed,putting 55 people on the street. I hope the members of this board get a kick out of it. I think of the wives, kids and businesses suffering because of it. It just makes me sad to see and think of how much more there is in store for us. The future is bleak.
I don’t understand the question.
A couple of days ago I bought lunch for about 7 bucks. Do you have sympathy for me, or the person who sold me lunch, or neither of us?
The point is that closing dealerships is a business transaction. Sympathy has no place in it and is a rather odd thing to talk about in this context.