When they say that they have to get the manager’s approval, I pointedly look at my watch, then to the door. And then I say that after five minutes, I’m walking out the door.
It’s absolutely amazing how fast a salesperson can find and persuade a manager to accept a deal if you give a firm time limit to start.
William Ury (world-renowned negotiator, mediator, and bestselling author, William Ury directs the Global Negotiation Project at Harvard University) in his classic Getting Past No addresses this. Never negotiate if you have authority and the other claims to not.
The only time I’ve had this attempted on me, I told the guy it was either straight up or down. If the guy didn’t have authority to approve the deal he had just negotiated then it was his problem, not mine. In business, we all are aware if the other party has final approval or not, and if not, then all parties have the ability to review any deal. The manager came back with a counter offer so I left. I had spend an hour negotiating and wasn’t going to spend any more time on it.
Since this is a fairly common tactic, I let them know ahead of time that until the guy has authority, I don’t want to deal with him. I use nicer words, of course.
Some people don’t want to do that so I just go elsewhere. It’s better to find out ahead of time.
Not if he’s buying a traverse on a trade in.
How much do you want to bet that they don’t have a repeat occurence anytime soon?
Depending on the size of the dealership (selling 13,000 cars/year) 2 million might be what it takes to get them to notice.
Not a lot, but that doesn’t mean much. I would bet that any given business wouldn’t have a customer arrested on a frivolous charge already.
I own a small business. I had a customer who was behaving “erratically”. She made my employees nervous, and so I asked her to leave. In front of multiple witnesses she grabbed merchandise (about $12.00 retail) and ran out the door. She drove off.
I called the police. We had done business with her previously and someone went through old paperwork and got her name from a credit card transaction. The cop (PA State Police) pulled up her driver’s license picture on his car screen. And began laughing.
He recognized her picture, having arrested her a few times on various drug related charges. I signed a complaint. I was out around $7.00. Add to that a half day of work missed to testify (she entered a not guilty plea and defended herself). She was found guilty.
So, my business had someone arrested on a frivolous charge. You didn’t state a specific sum in your bet, but you can PayPal me whatever you think appropriate.
I don’t think you are using the same definintion of “frivolous charge” as is being used here.
Well, I missed half a day of work and had to give a statement to the police and also the prosecutor. All over seven dollars. But, hey.
I think the “frivolous charge” in the car situation is more of a prevarication.
Frivolous: not having any serious purpose or value.
Prevarication: a statement that deviates from or perverts the truth.
What do you think a “serious purpose” is? 
I was using the legal definition (“not having a reasonable basis in law or fact”), but the lay definition works just as well.
OK, I see your point. IANAL. If the police arrest the guy who reported the “car theft” what would the charge be?
When I reported the theft of a minor item, to me, that seemed frivolous, while the car theft report seemed a straight out lie.
(No, English is not my second language, why do you ask?)
The dealer is 100% in the wrong for calling the cops, it was his fault and the car wasn’t stolen. He should be thrown in jail for making false accusations and fined for wasting police time.
However, and I think I’m in the severe minority here, but I think the customer should have come back and signed off on the new and higher price. The dealer made an honest mistake, he wasn’t trying to cheat the customer. I would feel bad if I essentially took advantage of a mistake and a legitimate business lost a lot of money because of me. I think of it like finding a wallet on the street. Sure, I’m tempted to keep the money, but I would feel bad and would rather return it.
For car dealerships, they have such a low respectability already that I think people think they are simply evening up the universe by screwing them. Obviously, if I had known this guy was a douche and would call the cops on me, I wouldn’t have returned. But if a guy made an honest mistake, I think any decent person should go back and return the money. Or maybe renegotiate and have to return half the money.
Maybe I think this way because its happened to me. It was one of my first jobs. I worked at a small computer store and helped with deliveries and loading. I loaded up a customer’s computer into his car. Instead of asking him to go back inside and finish the transaction with my manager, I said he was done and he could leave. Well it turns out that he hadn’t paid for it, so we were out about $1100 dollars. I felt horrible, and if the guy never returned, I would have voluntarily given back my paycheck to make up for it (the owner was a friend of a relative, so they didn’t immediately fire me or demand I pay the money back). However, the customer later realized he didn’t pay and came back and paid for it. So yeah, that’s my story
“Filing a false police report”. A quick bit of googling tells me that in Virginia (which I believe is where this took place), it’s a misdemeanor with a maximum sentence of 1 year in prison.
Such is the difference between should and must.
The customer *should *have gone back and paid the proper price. That would have been the right and honest thing to do. The dealer screwed up, but wasn’t trying to cheat the customer. However, the customer didn’t have to go back. The contract had been signed, and the deal was done.
The dealer had an uncool customer, but that doesn’t excuse his being an asshole.
Sorry, why is the customer the asshole here? All parties agreed on a price. The deal was signed. The dealer doesn’t get to yell “backsies!” afterward.
What if the dealership actually put a higher price and the customer didn’t notice? Do you really think you can go back to the dealer the next day and say “Hey, I want a refund”. You’re screwed*. Read the contract.
As I know from first hand experience when my mentally ill uncle got it in his head that he wanted to buy a truck. He got screwed royally with no recourse. The dealer laughed in our faces the next day. Of course he filed bankruptcy a few years later and lost the truck.
I did not say the customer was an asshole. I said he was uncool. He likely knew that he was buying the car at the wrong price. I do not see much of a difference between that and switching price tags at Target.
I don’t think either party was right. The dealer, however, took the lion’s share of the jerk-wad pie. He also licked his finger and touched the tops of the cock-nozzle rolls.
My brother was taken in by an asshole car dealer, too, so I sympathize.
I remember negotiating with a car salesman once. They sent the obvious junior up first who started writing numbers on a piece of paper and showing it to me like we were in a bad mob movie.
I kept on telling him that I didn’t care about monthly payments. The monthly payments would be handled by my bank as part of my loan terms, whose size would be determined by the actual price fo the car. And that’s what I wanted, god damn it! .
Give me a friggin number representing the amount of money for which I can walk away with this car! He came back with - “I can go as low as $250”.
ARGH!
Finally they sent in the guy with a little more experience. He started to write numbers on the SAME piece of paper, also a monthly payment, except HIGHER than what the other guy had offered me.
Jeebus, why do people negotiate the monthly payment? It’s not a lease. I’m purchasing. I want to know how much the car will cost me in total.
What??? He’s a car dealer, of course he is trying to cheat the customer.
Not any more than usual!
If the deal had gone the other way, if the customer had mistakenly signed a contract that would indicate that he owed way more than was a fair deal, do you REALLY that the dealership would say “Oh, we’ll tear up the the old contract and write up a new one”? Really? I think that the dealership would give the HA ha laugh and tell the customer that he signed the contract, he gets to pay it.
This is quite different from a customer not paying ANYTHING for a large purchase.
More years ago than I like to remember I was looking to buy a double bed of unusual character. I found two dealers who could order the bed (neither had one in stock) and the first quoted me a price. I said I was going to check at the other and did so. There the price was about $40 more and the salesman seemed quite astonished when I told him dealer 1 had quoted a lower price. Back to 1, paid the amount asked for and waited about a week for delivery. When I came in to pick it up, the owner, not the son who’d quoted the price, came up looking quite apologetic and said the kid had quoted the price for a single, not a double bed and they would lose money on the deal. Without asking what the price should have been, I told him what the dealer 2’s price was and said since the thing was in and ready to pick up, I’d even add $10 on top of that; was that enough for him? Otherwise I’d just get a refund and start over with dealer 2. He allowed that it was and the deal was done. No arrests, no lawsuits, and I got the bed a week sooner that I would have.
Hi Kinthalis. Here’s a long, interesting article from Edmunds that answers that question and many others. Confessions of a Car Salesman. Edmunds hires a writer (with essentially no sales experience) and sends him to get a job at a dealership.
The process begins by asking the customer how much they want for a monthly payment. Usually, they say, about $300. "Then, you just say, ‘$300… up to?’
It was originally published in 2001, so some things are done differently due to the rise of on-line car shopping.