I opened a thread to discuss this, to avoid hijacking this one:
Health Insurance is the biggest scam. I pay premiums so I can pay my healthcare costs too.
Four years ago, I needed to buy a car quickly (mine had been totaled, and my insurance only provided a rental briefly). I had the cash in the bank. I asked advice from a friend who used to be in sales. He asked me whether I could specify an exact make, model, and option set that would suit my needs. I said yes–basically, a new version of my old car.
He sent an email to several dealers which said he was representing a client who would be buying this car (new 2017 Honda Fit, A/T, A/C, any color). He asked for the price ‘on the curb’–taxes, title, everything. The next morning, he emailed me that he’d gotten a price of $15,990 from a dealership near my workplace.
I drove to the dealer that morning with a cashier’s check and left with a new car.
I offered to pay my friend a couple hundred bucks, but he declined, accepting only that I pay his bar tab that evening. I told him he could probably make some decent extra money doing this for people.
He stressed that it’s important to pay cash, and be able to have one specific car (make/model/options) nailed down, which prevents them from swapping things around for different prices. I think it also helped that the salesmen could tell he knew the process like a professional, so they didn’t try stuff they would on a layperson. Finally, such an approach might not work as well with luxury and sport models as with a low-end commuter car.
In the early 1990s a guy on my tennis team used to do this for his network for $75. He had been a car salesperson and sales manager for 30 years, so not only did he know the ins and outs he also had connections feeding him information that wasn’t publicly available (this was pre-Internet).
But he only did this for Toyota, Honda, and Nissan. Those models would have abundant inventory in several combinations of Model/Options/Color. So he could be sure there would be multiple dealers even in The Kansas City metro who would have identical cars in inventory that matched your specification.
I bought a car through his process, and the day before I was supposed to take delivery, I got a call from the dealer asking if I would take a check for $300 and void my purchase contract. Apparently someone else wanted that exact model and color and “my” car was the only one they had. I ended up taking a different color from them for $300 less. My scam alarm was going off through the whole time I was in the dealership and I read that paperwork more carefully than my first house purchase documents. But it seemed to be on the up and up. I even met the woman who was buying the original car I had an agreement to buy. I didn’t ask her what she paid.
This was how my experience buying a Subaru in 2012 went. I found the exact base model I wanted and looked at the online inventory at the four nearest dealerships. They all had that model. They all had an equote request page. I asked for their out the door cost with all taxes, etc. The lowest one was the nearest dealership and also the one I used for my test drives. I emailed and said I’m bringing a check so I need to verify that is the exact amount and they said “yes”. Told them the time I would be by and to have the car and the paperwork ready. I think I was there 15 minutes and drove away. I didn’t have any issues with sales reps, upsells, gotta talk to the manager, etc.
That sounds decent but you still need to go to a dealership to test drive the model you are interested in and interact with scuzzball sales staff saying to you “So. What’ll it take to get you to drive this baby home today??”. I imagine there are people (and probably growing in number) who are willing to purchase a car based on the specs alone sight-unseen, but I am not quite there yet.
Has anyone purchased a Tesla? I hear that is a different sort of experience (not that I am in the market or could afford one).
As mentioned up thread, it is a different process. If there is a Tesla store near you, then you can test drive one, no problem. You can even place the order there, and that’s where you’ll pick up the car. You can also place the order online. Then you can pay for it with an ACH transfer ahead of picking it up, or bring funds to the store.
The big difference is that there is no haggling on the price. What you see is what you pay. The price may change, up or down, at any time. Generally, once you order your car, if the price drops they’ll give you the lower price (otherwise you’d just cancel and reorder).
There still can be deals to be had. I’ve heard of people placing an order, and then being called and offered a similar car that is already available at a discount.
Trade-ins with them are pretty similar. They give you a quote, and then that is the price. Unless the trade-in’s condition is not as represented, and they lower the offer, or the car is genuinely worth less (for example, you get the trade-in quote when placing your order, and then by the time your new car is delivered 6 weeks later you’ve put 10,000 more miles on the trade-in, or it’s been in an accident, etc).
We went to a Subaru and Toyota dealership. The Subaru salesman was the absolute opposite of that. We test drove a Forester and an Outback. Completely low pressure. The Toyota salesman had that air around him, but still was fairly low pressure. These are smaller town dealerships so maybe it is different at the huge lots. We had a good experience and had no haggling of any sort.
I don’t think I would ever drive an auto without a test drive. I’m not talking the exact vehicle, but at least the model I am interested in. For the motorcycles I buy, I want to test ride the one I am going to buy. I want to test ride my bicycles too.
Oh yeah, the Tesla car buying experience was low-pressure, but in my experience, every time I walk through the door of a Tesla store somebody will try to sell me solar with high pressure techniques. I also get 1-2 solar sales people at the door every month, so maybe it has something to do with solar, and not Tesla.
Good point. That was not an issue for me, because I was familiar with the make and model of car I was buying.
I do dread interacting with those idiots. Before I decided to follow my ex-salesman friend’s advice four years ago, I did visit a Ford dealer. They handed me off to a kid who couldn’t have been 21. It soon became clear they were using me to train him–I thought about sending them a bill. He didn’t know the answers to any of my questions about models and options (or claimed not to–really establishes trust when you have to wonder, “Are you crooked, or just stupid?”). He wouldn’t take my word that because I’d just had an eye exam a test drive was out of the question, despite my eyes being dilated and ghastly from a burst blood vessel I’d received in the accident, but kept trying to get his hands on my driver’s license to photocopy it. (That actually caught me off guard, since it’s been almost twenty years since I test drove a car at a dealer–was it always required? That would give me nightmares to know that those bastards have my information.)
The last time I bought a car at a Ford dealership, I had to run a bloody gauntlet of people and threaten to walk out the door twice before I finally got the car at the price they had originally offered.
"Okay, the paperwork is almost done. We just need you to sit down with the sales manager, who will try to convince you that you really need the extended warranty. Done that? Good. Now there’s just the signoff with the service guy. He’s going to insist that you understand what a great deal the undercoating and fabric protection is. Then the legal guy is going to do your paperwork, and explain to you how important VIN etching is for your insurance. Oh, and he’ll also explain the mandatory documentation fees (which aren’t).
I went to a timeshare presentation once, and the hard-sell they try to pull on you is only slightly more annoying than what I got from that dealerahip. Having to deal with the process of buying a car is one of the reasons I tend to drive my cars for a decade or more.
So yeah, ripe for disruption.
I think I just realized for the first time that we never test drove a Tesla before buying one. We sat in one at the store. We rode in one as an Uber once. But we never actually drove one. (It was offered at the store but they didn’t have one available to test drive at the time we were looking). First drive was when we picked it up. Luckily, no surprises.
How about de-siloing dental and vision from overall health insurance?
My basic health plan at work includes a yearly vision exam. But doesn’t cover glasses or contacts.
Last time I bought a car (I drive a 2016) I used Roadster when it was still a more or less brand-new startup. Basically a CA-exclusive concierge service, before it shifted to just a software company for dealerships. The price was reasonable, there was essentially no contact with the dealership other than post-purchase e-mail solicitations for servicing and it was a direct to door service with about five minutes of paperwork when it was dropped off.
It was a great experience compared to the multi-hour battles I used to have to wage at dealerships. Worth overpaying a couple hundred bucks. Of course they changed focus quickly - the concierge service was not a profitable enough or scalable enough model I suppose. It’s a shame.
Yeah, I guess we are spoiled in CA. Not only do the higher-end super-markets in my area have decent wine, craft beer and liquor selections, but BevMo is pretty ubiquitous in my area. Smaller wine shops also abound, but of course Wine Country is very close at hand. My buddy that owned a second home in Washington state (where he has now retired to) used to stock up on booze in CA before driving up as availability and prices were far, far worse up there.
If Bevmo doesn’t have it, I head to the little grocery store down the street from my middle school. That Beer Cave is something else.
Well, at least they won’t have to worry about health insurance.
I consider my purchase of over-priced food sort of an additional fee when I can afford it. I’d rather pay too much for some popcorn and a drink and still have the theater around than have no theater at all. Not that my past miniscule contributions had much to do with anything. When we used to take the whole family of four to movies my wife would easily spend $35-$50 getting stuff for everybody. Our food bill last time at Alamo broke $100 IIRC.
That’s something that Trump tried to change. Not surprisingly, the hospitals are deeply unhappy about it. Some of them are not yet complying with the new rules requiring them to list their prices.
Even a seemingly-simple change is hard to implement.
A huge part of the problem is that the hospitals don’t have “a price”; they have multiple prices, negotiated with Blue Cross or Medicare or Aetna or whatever, plus a different price for cash (uninsured) patients. Oh, by the way, the price they charge your insurance has only slight relationship to the price YOU have to pay after taking into account your deductibles and co-pays and so forth. A mere listing of the base price doesn’t help patients figure out what they’ll end up paying. Some insurance companies work with “smart shopper” or similar programs to figure out the actual charges a particular person is likely to be charged at various locations, but those aren’t especially new.