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There are some interesting comments in here about how tough the struggle is for car dealerships, but I don't think that necessarily justifies their existence or

• 300bps 11y ago
  I agree that the ban should be lifted. And I think car dealerships would survive without it. I recently spent some time on many car companies' websites and navigating the options is extremely difficult. They use all their marketing jargon like sDrive vs. xDrive or 4MATIC or whatever else other nonsense. They don't explain well what any of them mean, and I was left googling the definitions of everything. Then you get to being actually able to see the car with the various options that you're interested in. The article decries the fact that dealerships have "$100 billion of unsold dealer inventory" but that inventory has a purpose. Some people need a car right away and they aren't picky about it being the exact thing that they want. Some people want to actually see, feel and use the options they are considering. So I'm against the government-sanctioned ban on direct sales but I think that car dealerships would serve a purpose and survive without it.
  • Rumford 11y ago
    You're probably right. For example: Even though you can buy a Thinkpad directly from Lenovo, Best Buy still exists.
    • forgetsusername 11y ago
      >Even though you can buy a Thinkpad directly from Lenovo, Best Buy still exists For how long? It's a product an older generation that, for some reason or another, appreciates receiving the sales pitch. We're all tech savvy people here; go into Best Buy and start looking at computers. 4 out of 5 times you'll receive a sales pitch with, at least, a few elements of utter bullshit. Meanwhile, the younger generation are becoming more and more comfortable with buy things online, sight unseen. The GP said it needs to see and feel options on a vehicle. I don't. I need to know what they do, and whether they work (information I can gather from reviews). In my experience, going and playing with something for a brief period of time at a dealership or store doesn't provide enough real world information, and I'm just as likely to make the wrong choice about a feature.
      • breischl 11y ago
        >>The GP said it needs to see and feel options on a vehicle. I don't. Maybe not, though a lot of people do and you probably should. The ergonomics of a car are more important, and much more complex, than for many other items. Some of this is addressed by adjustable seats, but not all of it. Zappos solved this by doing lots of returns, but that's not a great solution for large items with high shipping costs. That said, I could easily see the value in having a single specimen at the showroom to check for fit, and then having everybody special order one with their own trim level, colors, etc.
      • xixi77 11y ago
        I would certainly not buy a laptop sight unseen -- you can't really evaluate things like how the keyboard/pointer device/etc. feel from a picture, or how the screen looks in sunlight, or if that 0.1" width reduction is worth it, etc. Much more so with cars -- e.g. how would I tell whether 0.5" less elbow space is still good enough, or how good is road visibility from the driver seat (IMO the single most important characteristic of a vehicle!), or whether the plastic feels cheap, or how clear/useful the HUD is, from looking at pictures? Thinking about it, I've picked my last car based on rear seat headrests obscuring rear visibility too much for my liking in one of the last two contenders. I wouldn't have been able to notice it without actually driving the vehicle. Sure, there are reviews & ratings, but those reviewers are not you -- if (for example) you don't care about those headrests quite as much as I do, why should you let my opinion skew yours?
    • PretzelFisch 11y ago
      Probably the better example would be even though you can buy an Iphone directly from Apple.com the Apple Store still exists.
      • xixi77 11y ago
        Aren't Apple stores owned by Apple though? If they are, when you go to an Apple store to look at things and then buy online, the store owner (Apple) is still happy because it's getting paid just the same.
  • ethbro 11y ago
    To compare and contrast the two methods of research/purchase: both online and in person feature the same marketing jargon. Online: You can perform further self-guided research to discern what these terms actually mean and whether you need those features or not. Furthermore, you can see what other people thought about those features. In Person: You can have the salesperson explain those terms to you. Except... do you really trust someone with a direct financial interest in your purchasing a new car to help you figure out whether you need features and whether this car is the right car for you?
    • JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      In person is there for one reason: so the salesperson can direct the dialog, completely control the conversation. They are heavily trained in the dance of sales, and its all in their interest and not yours. The primary reason to get the dealership out of the picture is, to get the salesperson out of the picture. You don't buy a toaster that way, or even a house. Why a car?
      • jaynos 11y ago
        >so the salesperson can direct the dialog, completely control the conversation. And direct you towards something they have in inventory, not the configuration you came up with on the manufacturers website.
      • gherkin0 11y ago
        They're honestly not that bad if you keep control of the conversation (to the point of being willing to walk in response to BS) and double-check their claims. You actually have a lot of the power in that relationship, since usually the salesman needs your sale more than you need to buy from him. I actually like doing a lot of initial research face-to-face with a person. It's higher bandwidth, and the car is there in front of me, so I can get a sense of the intangibles and other facts that are hard to capture online.
• afarrell 11y ago
  Indeed, if working for a car dealership is as stressful as described, then that means that the institution of the car dealership deserves to fade into the dustbin of the market.
• venning 11y ago
  We often moan about the taxi industry, the hotel industry, or the dealer associations but, in doing so, we miss something very important. The players in that industry often existed for years or decades in a state of government-backed protection without realizing it. Taxi drivers didn't necessarily lobby for market restrictions; they took advantage of the oligopoly, sure, but not necessarily consciously. If you live in a state of believing that the market is actually fair and others have an equal shot at participating in it, then someone else entering the market in defiance of the existing protections appears to be unfair. It's hard to believe that you didn't enter into a job market and win a wage fairly. That, instead, you were unfairly advantaged by artificial pressures in that market much bigger and more entrenched than you. Essentially, the incumbents have been lied to for years and, now that new logistical realities are changing the status quo, it is very hard for them to understand why this is happening. They think someone must be cheating. --- To expand on joosters' analogy of taking a fence down elsewhere in this thread [1], it's not necessarily bad if we take the fence down, we just need to realize that doing so may have serious consequences in the near-term. Having such a strong, deep-rooted artificial pressure in a market so abruptly removed may result in a painful readjustment of the market that hurts a lot of people. (My other comments weren't meant as a defense of dealers, only intended to elucidate their operations.) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10463745 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10463745
  • grandalf 11y ago
    Car dealers are among the biggest "small business owner" donors to political campaigns in the US. The National Auto Dealers Association is a big part of most dealers' lives, and they know who is buttering their bread. I mention this b/c I don't think it's a gradual accident... The dealers forced Ford to shut down factory stores in Oklahoma not too long ago. This is a turf battle.
    • venning 11y ago
      Absolutely. Regulatory capture is a real thing and a really bad thing. I'm certainly not defending the franchise protections. I would just like to be clear: people get hurt when we uproot the status quo quickly. That isn't to say we shouldn't do it. There aren't easy answers here, particularly for the legislators who have to make those decisions.
• sliverstorm 11y ago
  If what the dealerships do is valuable enough to the customer, they would exist even without the ban on direct sales. Can you really make that assumption? Customers act selfishly, and game theory applies here. For example, you try a shoe on in the store and then buy it online for less. The store provided something valuable to you, but you still bought the shoe online. Eventually the store will go out of business if many people do this, and we lose a valuable service because we each act in our own self interest. It's not hard for me to imagine that protections could be good in some cases.
  • xacaxulu 11y ago
    Then other companies will realize that this is valuable and will let you try on multiple shoes and mail back the ones you don't like (Zappos/Amazon). This competition ends up being a net positive for the consumer.
  • nether 11y ago
    "I sure wish I could have bought my Tesla from a dealer" - no one ever.
    • tsotha 11y ago
      To be fair, most Teslas are being bought by enthusiasts. When they start selling the model 3 to people who just want a reliable car, there may in fact be some demand for the services typically offered by a dealership.
  • SilasX 11y ago
    That dynamic actually explains why all big-ticket retailers -- not just car dealers -- need to change business models to something like, "You pay for self-service showroom access to a variety of products, then make your actual purchase from [a level near] the OEM with minimal margin." The only reason I tolerate(d) any interaction with car salesmen at all is the intangibles you get from a test drive. I would much rather just have some kind of option where I can try out car models at some place that doesn't have financial incentive to make me buy one of them.