The only problem with car dealers is the talent pool they have to choose from....

....it is populated by humans....

...some good....some bad....some could go either way....

I try to treat everyone I do business with the same way.

If you are above the board with me, I will do business with you.

If you mislead me, treat me rudely or talk down to me I will thank you for your time and leave. My money will go elsewhere.

If you make a mistake, I will allow you to try and rectify it. If I make a mistake I will try to do right by you.

I too am only human.

Man, this home brew beer is good....makes me very philosophical....


So, Socrates or Descartes, which was better?

Plato

I have had some dishonest salespeople work for me, but not for long. I now work alongside a salesperson who is one of the biggest B.S. artists I ever met; totally unbelievable crap comes out of his mouth, and for no apparent reason.

But of all the dishonest, lying, BS-spewing salespeople I have known over the years, none of them even comes close to the stories I can tell you about customers.

Not just BS, but total lies, basically every day. Made-up excuses, lies about the condition of their trade, lies about what another dealer told them, lies about their credit-worthiness, I mean it goes on and on all the time. If customers would be up-front and honest it would be much easier to sell them a vehicle on their terms that they could live with.

But you can't sell a car to a customer by calling him a liar, so we bite our tongues and do the best we can to appease them and spend 3 or 4 hours to make a couple hundred dollar commission.



Does that make all you folks liars and cheats?

Maybe that is food for thought.

Troop, it's okay for the customer to lie about all you just said, because they "know" we are just out there to rip them off. It's just self defense for them. By the way, the negotiating started with the customer, if you want a better price on peas you go to a different store, you don't fight over the listed price. Cars have a MSRP, you are allowed to pay that with no "games". Even on "no haggle" lots the customers demand to negotiate.

I never heard the term, "buyers are liars" until I got into the car business.

And yes, I did experience it first-hand.



As a salesman co-worker once said, "treat fire with fire"...



Which was first, the chicken or the egg???

You think you get lied to as car dealers? Try being an auto insurance adjuster. If everyone you talk to in a day doesn't flat out tell a lie, they leave out facts. Either way, in 10 years I think I only had about 5 people be completely honest with me. And of course, only about 5 people I ever met thought I wasn't there to cheat them. The single biggest comment I used to get: "Wow, you were really fair, I didn't think this could be so pleasant."

When my oldest was at school in TN, a major tornado hit the campus. Her car had big time hail damage, including on the sides. Now I know this car was pretty perfect bodywise before the tornado but the ins adjuster insisted the damage to the side was not from the hail/tornando cause hail does not travel sideways. Well it does in a tornado dipshit. It's all about the $$$, no matter what side of the fence you're on and both side want theirs.

See, that's more like it!

(Must have been an inexperienced appraiser. Cause when you look at hail damaged cars every year, like I have, you realize it does all sorts of things. Especially in a tornado situation)

I dealt with adjustors when my son got hit last spring, which totalled his car.

I can honestly say they earned their reputation as low lifes. Every step of the way I told my wife exactly what they would do next - And they did.

First, they were hesitant to admit any fault - when it was perfectly obvious.

Second, they lowballed an offer to replace my son's car.

Third, they lied to me about inspecting the car and producing a "condition report" - because nobody that had actually seen the car would have produced that report - for example it said "significant surface rust and paint fading" when there was none whatsoever.

Fourth, The report had comps from six month old newspaper classified ads in towns 200 miles away. Hardly recent retail sales comps.

Fifth, they refused to update and correct the report

Sixth, They threatened me to release the car to a junkyard before we had agreed on the value - when I did, they went silent on me and stopped returning my calls.

Seventh, They finally came up to a value that was minimally acceptable - I found a replacement car that wasn't quite in as good a shape and only lost a few hundred dollars.

All the while I was honest. I didn't file a lawsuit for fictitious injuries - even though I was inundated with attorney contacts suggesting I do so. I didn't try to cheat the company - just wanted a comparable replacement car.

I'm glad I don't have to deal with those shysters very often.

are all lawyers ambulance chasers like the lying, cheating, John Edwards? I don't think so. But, hey let's all call them crooks, anyway. Even though our previous post said he was inundated with calls to file a law suit.

Of the last four vehicles I bought, two times I was decieved about the vehicle/options, and it was only due to the lack of knowledge by the saleman. Both times, the problem was corrected to a fair medium, IMO.
The two good experiences had very little to do with the salesman whatsoever. Each time, the guy handed me the keys and said bring it back when you are ready to talk. The used car I bought, the salesman actually said, "It's off lease, I know nothing about it, you are free to take it to your mechanic of choice to have it checked." Very honest guy, no haggle price, very competitive in the market.
Being in sales myself, I can usually tell when someone is lying or just doesn't know. Personally, if I have to lie, I would rather not get the sale. And it is always easier to say, "I'll have to find out."

with used cars it is very hard to "know" the history, unless you check with all the prev. owners, and they all tell the truth, it's at best an educated guess.

I've been looking at used for my daughter. It's rare, but sometimes Carfax will show everytime it's been in for service at the dealer, it's not specific, but it shows "serviced". Sometimes it will even list the dealer name.
I just found a 1-owner 2001 on AutoTrader that had a free Carfax report, it showed the dealers name and every service done to it. I looked up the dealer on the net, called the service dept., and gave him the VIN #. The guy was cool enough to spend 15 mins. on the phone with me going through everything that has been done on the car and any trouble spots they found.

A little research goes a long way.

many service records are not on carfax, only franchised dealers. So if you wanted to save a little money and use your buddy's garage down the block and have your oil changed every 2000 miles, it would never show up.

another carfax fallacy, I had a car in the shop for a new tranny, it couldn't be moved when the river rose. Water got in to wet the carpet, no electrical or mechanicals were wet. I called the insurance Co. and they totaled the car. I bought it back for $300 and the title came back clear, carfax was clear. I would not sell it on my lot that way and took it to an auction and announced it as minor flood damage but clear title, it sold for average money. What would you all have done?