yeah. I’m chronologically and ‘holiday’ challenged’. I can’t keep those straight. Last year or two years ago. Whatever. Yes I’m that bad. My Wife is good at keeping me up to date. I never miss an appointment as long as it’s not a year or so away.
Their brand new “midsize CUV.” Starts at $32,000, options can feasibly add $8000 more (looks like top option is MSRP $44,700, and savings would barely bring that one down to $45k. So possibly the 3rd of 4 trims.
I am not familiar with the OP’s vehicle. I believe the problem is with the manufacturer.
Some vehicles don’t have a straight line on them. Everything is curved. And putting a front license plate would really dick it up. VW is a good example.
Rather than dick up their vehicle, many owners, in these parts, just put the plate in the windshield. Don’t know if that is an option there.
This is a Subaru “SUV”. Style is not a concern. If it was, I would have to shoot myself.
We aren’t 18 anymore and are not going to just stick the plates in the windshield of a $40,000 vehicle. It’s not a Ferrari and we aren’t concerned if the aerodynamics break up a bit. As we have already got 52"s of snow this year, putting the plates on the dashboard is just not gonna work for defrost.
Subaru HAS a mounting plate for this brand new vehicle. Powder coated stainless steel. 6 screws. I’m not worried about ‘dicking up’ the vehicle. I am a bit pissed that they are being dicks to me. I hate to ruin peoples days, but, they may have it coming. All for bullshit.
I’ll see if they respond to my email. If not, I’ll call, find out who the GM is and go from there.
Such bullshit. I’ve invested about 10 times more time in this that it is worth to me But I don’t like being mistreated.
enipla ~ the incensed license plate avenger.
FWIW I’m in a front and back license plate state and every new car I’ve bought, including two Subarus, have had the front plate holder installed without having to ask.
A significant portion of the people in car sales can think no further ahead than the profit on this particular sale. Decades ago, when I was a young man, I sold cars for about a year. My sales manager was one of these assholes, happy to screw every penny out of a deal and give nothing away even if it meant the people drove away cursing under their breath and vowing never to do business with us again.
I once sold a top-of-the-line Holden Calais V8 (this was in Australia) to a very nice couple in their late fifties. They paid almost full sticker price for the car, and took a pretty lowball offer for their trade-in. This was probably the single highest-profit deal that the dealership did all month, possibly all year. We were going to make a whole shitload of money on this car, and my cut as the salesman was going to be pretty decent as well. The high profit on the sale also put me into a higher commission percentage for the month, based on our graduated incentive system.
One thing the guy wanted when he drove out the door was a full tank of gas. Our asshole of a sales manager had a habit of sending cars out with about a quarter of a tank. I made clear that this was the one thing that the guy had emphasized when we closed the deal, but it wasn’t actually written into the contract. That was my fault; I was only 20 and still new to the job, and silly me just assumed that spending over 40 grand on a car (in 1990) entitled you to drive away with a full gas tank.
But my sales manager said, basically, “Fuck him. We’ve already got his money.” So I filled the tank with my own money before sending the car out. I still made out great on the sale, and a nice couple went away happy with their new car. I lasted almost exactly a year before I couldn’t stand the job anymore.
I’m reminded of a story my father told me when I was a teenager. One of my dad’s friends owned the a local “Toys for Big Boys” store. They sold speed boats, jet skis, motorcycles, ATVs, etc. Their big business was definitely jet skis since we lived on the coast. So, he decided to sell the business, and it ended up being bought by his accountant, who knew how much profit the business made. So one day a very rich tourist comes into the shop, and buys about $50,000 worth of equipment. They arrange for it to be delivered, everything is great. On his way out, the new owner says, “Oh, and you’re going to need helmets for the jet skis.” The tourist says “Okay, we’ll take those two.” And the new owner says “That will be $150”. And the tourist is understandably shocked, and says “Really? I just paid you $50,000, and now you want me to pay another $150.” And the new owner said “Yes, I cannot just give you the helmets.” So the tourist cancelled the entire order, and went else where. I’m not sure why, but that story always stuck with me.
I encountered a similar situation many years ago. The Ford dealer refused to fill both tanks on a newly ordered Diesel F250. He insisted the fine print said “Full tank” not “tanks”. I wrote the regional sales manager and complained, and got free oil changes for the first 50,000 miles.
Don’t know what the regional/national setup is for Subaru, but surely there’s someone up the food chain who can fix this.
Considering 31/50 states require front and back license plates, with CO being one of them, seems like this would be standard for dealerships to already have it on there. Even if your state doesn’t require it, the vast majority will be traveling out of state sometime for the states that do.
In the big sheme of things, not that big of a deal, but if you got a little free time, I hope you’ll pursue the proper channels and have them stick with that they agreed too. A phone call to the higher ups in the dealership should do it, I rarely have trouble getting through to the general manager. Be friendly, tell them it’s a 200 mile round trip which is one of the reasons you hadn’t gotten to it sooner, but ask him why their salesman won’t honor his original word. Mention he never said there was a time limit, if that is the case.
If no success there, a little bit of negative publicity can come their way, starting with the BBB should do the trick. I bet you’ll get that license frame as they agreed too.
Or if you really want to get their attention, go on the Tom Martino radio show. My friend uses him regularly, and she always gets immediate results.
Newspaper? BBB? TV?
All pointless in my opinion. Tell them if you have to pay you’re going to tell the story on Facebook for your friends amusement, to get your $30 worth!
That’s all it will take. They will fall all over themselves to keep that from happening. (It’s important that you are amused, not angry or threatening!) Good Luck!
Try it and see.
Something like that happened to me when I was selling professional lighting equipment. A customer came in looking for a large quantity of fixtures. The fixtures he needed were what we called “cans”, no optics, no lenses, just a glorified holder for a light bulb. With some equipment quality is a factor but this product was truly a price driven commodity.
I waited on the customer but I couldn’t meet his price point. I went back to the boss but he just kept tellling me to emphasize the quality of the product, which made no sense. Basically it came down to whether we would include the mounting hardware for free. Which shouldn’t have been a big deal, considering the size of the order.
So my boss came out of his office to, in his words, “show me how it’s done”. And he double talked the crap out of the guy “yes, we can include the mounting clamps”. And the guy said yes and my boss got that smug self-satisfied look that I hated. And he had the warehouse guys move 200 boxes from the warehouse to the sales floor. Then he wrote the ticket. And he charged extra for the clamps. Like he thought the customer wouldn’t freaking notice.
So then I hear my boss say smugly “Yes, I told you I could give you the clamps. I didn’t tell you they’d be free”. I guess the implication was that I was such a bad salesperson that I was refusing to SELL the guy the clamps while I was waiting on him.
And the customer said “ Fuck you for wasting my time” and left. The warehouse guys had to come retrieve the 200 large boxes that were stacked on the sales floor. I laughed.
Thanks all for your stories and encouragement. It’s stunning what some companies will do in the name of ‘profit’. Or just how god dam lazy they are after the sale. I’m going to wait to see if I get any response from the email I sent. I sent the email through the companies ‘Contact Us’ link on their web page so I really don’t no what rabbit whole it went down. I’d rather keep this to email, and reproducible records so would rather not just call the GM.
I’m gonna see if I can puzzle out some better contact info. As said, they do have FaceBook, but I’d rather not go that route. I do have an account, but never use it. I might be able to dig through their FB and find an email that we can start communicating on though.
It IS my Wife’s car, and I think she would rather I drop it at this point. But this shit just pisses me off.
The front tag requirement only applies to vehicles licensed in that state, not to every vehicle that travels through it.
I think I got through to them on their FaceBook contacts. Wasn’t a chat bot. The person said they would have a manager contact me through email (I want a record of this, no phone calls).
We shall see. I should start charging them by the hour.
Still, their cars sell in enough places that require front license plates that I would expect the cars to come with the brackets, or at least with the mounting points already in place. I’m slightly amazed that they don’t.
There are a couple of BARELY visible dimples in the front bumper. This is where the mounting bracket attaches. You drive screws into those dimples to mount the bracket, and then the license plate is mounted to the bracket with 4 more screws.
The bracket that they now want to charge me $30 for.
This is SO stupid.
I’m surprised the dealer even let you drive the car off the lot without the front mounting bracket installed. They knew you were going to need it. I would think that should fall under the “dealer prep” category of stuff they do before they ever even hand you the keys.
Map is not accurate for at least one and I suspect several states:
"You must display both plates if the vehicle is designed for a front plate or if the manufacturer offers an add-on bracket or frame.
Front plates are optional only if 1) the vehicle was not designed for a front plate and 2) the manufacturer did not provide an add-on bracket or other means of displaying the front plate."
:shrug: Frankly, salesman don’t know shit about the cars they are selling. I have learned this. They are salesman, not car guys. That’s OK. And this car was a brand new model.
Still, I agree that that should have been part of the dealer prep. Someone should have a checklist at least.
Yep. I learned that pretty quickly when I sold cars.
I went into car sales as a young man becauseI was a car guy. I liked the idea of working around cars for a living. But I soon realized that being a car guy was, for the most part, pretty irrelevant to selling cars. The other sales people didn’t give a shit about cars; they might as well have been selling refrigerators or power tools or tractors. And to be honest, my knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, the cars themselves didn’t really seem to help me very much in the sales part of the job.