Quote:
Originally Posted by Jake
Didn't mean that as an insult Pylon.
My most recent car buying experience was terrible. The dealership had accepted and signed an offer. All of the money for the car was transferred to the dealer. They then proceeded to deny delivery of the car since they wanted to reduce the value of a trade-in, after the offer and money was accepted. They wanted $3000 more. They only gave me the car when I said I would take the signed paper work to a judge.
I'm sure there are a lot of stand up guys in the industry. Based on experience though, I know there are some that are the exact opposite. I understand they just want to make a profit, but there is a line.
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And you did the right thing. No dealer should back out of a signed deal. Unless a time caveat has expired on it. Especially if the funds had already changed hands, there is no excuse whatsoever.
Look, I am not denying that there is still some BS that goes on. The big difference though is, Joe public has the backing of AMVIC now, so if aything gets out of hand, they will have your back. But it goes both ways. Dealers have, and will call them in as well when they feel they have been wronged or cheated.
All I know is our dealer / dealer group takes AMVIC and its regulations very seriously. For the few cases we have lost with them, there have been countless others where they have saved us from potential fraud coming our way. You can never keep every single customer happy. Especially when you're dealing in intricate machines with thousands of moving parts and electronic components. There are just too many variables that are out of our control. A lot of people forget, we don't build the thing, we just sell it.
The fact that cars are as reliable as they are is a miracle considering their complexity nowadays. Imagine if your car was as unreliable as your PC??! How can you anticipate some faulty gizmobang powering the whirlyspronk that doesn't show up on a diagnostic scan of any kind, is keeping a car holed up in the shop for three weeks? Those are the frustrating ones, and it sucks for both the customer and us.
However, I agree with you that sometimes we could do a better job at making the transaction itself a little less complex. But unfortunately, the way the industry has evolved with the total lack of trust from the customer side, and the information age where everyone knows our bottom line now, it has made a a lot of these fees, and add-ons, necessities. Sometimes its the only way a lot of dealers have left to make a buck on a sale, especially new car dealers dealing in margins that are in the hundreds of dollars on some of their models now, margins set by the manufacturer none the less. Saturn had it right, and so did toyota. It was fair for both sides. The dealer could make a fair margin, and your neighbor couldn't walk in and get a better deal than you simply because he was a better haggler. And it was awesome for resale value for the customers, as rebates, which are black book killers were pretty much non existent. Cars were being sold in real dollars, not inflated fictionalized ones.
Of course though... a small group in the public threatened to sue Toyota for collusion practices, and Access Toyota, which actually saved the customer more money on average, was ruined by that small group, that felt their given right to save an extra 200 bucks was being violated. And Toyota didn't think it was worth the fight. It was almost like your parents cancelling your birthday party because you were a jerk. A great thing for the masses, was ruined by a small group of idiots. The dealers loved it, the customers loved it, and most transactions were butter smooth on both ends. Had Access Toyota survived as a business model, it could have revolutionized the car industry and cleaned it up in N/A as most manufacturers would have followed suit.