Yeah my last purchase I negotiated with four dealerships remotely. After I got one to agree to an acceptable price, I came in, took a test drive, signed the paperwork. Iām not spending all day at a dealership doing the ālet me talk to the managerā game bullshit.
In other news, no real negotiating to be had rn, so our next vehicle purchase will probably be a custom order from a dealership that will charge MSRP for the wife. Then eventually Iāll get my number called off the wait list for my next car
Itās going to be interesting to see how the prices of these EVās goes at the tax credits get reduced, like Niner Central said if you canāt negotiate might as well order what you want. Over the next year if things start slowing down will they go back to have plenty of cars/suvās on the lots and you can get a deal or is the order what you want going to be the futureā¦ doānt know if you really need a salesperson if I can just order what I want on the computer and go pick it up when itās ready.
If the entire industry moves to ordering I can see they happening. The reason why dealerships donāt like the ordering model is if you order it from me you can still go down to another dealership see what ya want and buy it and cancel the order. No dealership wants to lose the sale so they have giant lots of cars that they are making payments in. The manufacturer doesnāt really care because once the dealer has the car itās sold as far as corporate is concerned.
Now if the industry basically moves to dealerships being the fulfillment center and maintenance that would be interesting. Order the car it comes into center gets cleaned and final inspection then sent out to customer and has the necessary few mechanics and I guess tech support to help with the vehicle.
Thatās a good point, I assumed when you order a car online you have to put some sort of deposit down, has anyone ordered exactly what they wanted and had to wait for it? I know when the supply chains had issues you had to do that for Tesla, I imagine you would have to put down at least 1k so they know you are seriousā¦
For the corvette Im on the list for you have to put a deposit down just to get on the wait list, then you have to pay 5% of the purchase price when the build sheet goes to GM.
If you have a model with two down payment steps people arenāt going to pop down the street. I think the real issue with ordering is two fold. A lot of people donāt really know what they want and they actually want to be pushed into something in inventory and have no desire to order. Second is either by desire or ānecessityā people want to get a car same day. Which is kind of wild if you think about it how easy it is for someone making $60k a year to go spend $45k they donāt haveā¦
The ordering model def works with low volume models like the vet. The high volume though. I mentioned it above itās how the manufacturers manage the lines. If you want 10 explorers you have to take 10 escapes too. So now the dealer has all these cars sitting on a lot they are paying on. Custom ordering you an explorer doesnāt help move their inventory. They want you to buy one on the lot or to negotiate a trade with another dealer.
Ford knows they are going to make X number of models which enables their plants to run on scale and work their supply chain appropriately.
The build everything to order works with low volume models and lines. If Tesla wants to keep the no dealer model itās going to be more difficult as they attempt to grow production numbers.
You are right about buyers habits though for sure. The upside down guy that buys every three years and wants a car today. He aināt ordering anything.
My most recent car was an order with Subaru I had to wait about 6 weeks for. My order went to the factory next day supposedly. It was more like 7 weeks before I got it.
It was a good experience because I paid MSRP which I felt was fair and I got none of the extra crap that dealers tack on.
I had to put 1000 down which went towards the purchase of course.
Iām not sure if I could have gotten it cheaper if Iād negotiated for something on the lot or not, but they didnāt have what I wanted and I felt fine with the price on the website and thatās exactly what I paid, and I didnāt have to deal with the negotiation BS.
Yeah just wanting a car is fine but buying one of the hottest cars in a hot over priced market when you didnāt actually need said car and then complaining about the price basically makes ya a moron.
Going to be ordering a truck next month from GM. $1K non-refundable at time of order and the rest due upon delivery via cash/credit. Corvettes are a different animal when ordering from the standard.
