12 ms·

Yes please. Anything that will get us closer to direct-to-consumer sales of cars. I'm ready for car dealerships to be a relic of the past.

overcast 10y ago
Seriously. My last car (BMW) from seven years ago, I did entirely through email. Sent a handful of dealerships their cost sheet with the options I wanted, until I got the price I was looking for. Few months later when it was built and shipped from Germany, I drove my old car to the dealership, and drove off with the new one. Done. As an aside, I just ordered a mattress site unseen from an online only company, and it turned out to be one of the best mattresses I've ever slept in. https://www.saatva.com/ https://www.saatva.com/ $1000 for the luxury firm Queen, and that included shipping and taking the old one.
- vvanders 10y ago
  This is the only way to do new car shopping. Get the price + windows sticker in writing over email. Send it out to all the dealers in the nearby area and tell them they have your business if you can beat the deal. Repeat 2-3x, pick the lowest price dealer and be willing to walk out the door if anything funny comes up. Also quite a few dealerships are directly or indirectly part of a franchise so they won't compete with each other. In that case you usually need to expand your radius to ~100mi. Here in PNW there's great Subaru competition but when we looked at Mazda they didn't haggle at all until we went to dealers in a different state.
  - overcast 10y ago
    Yes, when it comes to a lot of luxury European cars, cities typically only have a single dealership, and there isn't much wiggle room. Ended up with one back home 240 miles away. Picked it up my way home for Thanksgiving right off the thruway. Pulled into parents with the new ride :)
    - vvanders 10y ago
      Yeah, we were cross shopping Mazda/Ford/Subaru and it was totally obvious that all the Mazda dealerships were owned by a franchise. When we'd mention a quote they'd push us really hard on where we got it from and wouldn't come back with a counter offer or "we can't beat that". Pretty transparent and only changed once we started emailing dealers across state lines. Either way they lost our business. Subaru on the other had has a pretty diverse set of dealers and we ended up with one well below "inventory"(that's a whole nother bit of misinformation) at a dealership ~15mi away. That said Tesla still wipes the floor with any dealership experience I've had which is why I'm pretty excited to see the Model 3 hit the market and more people experience it.
    - lagadu 10y ago
      Can't you simply have the manufacturer send the car with your desired options to the dealer and you just pay them the MSRP listed for your configuration in the manufacturer's website? Any negotiation that happens is for a price reduction on that or for extra stuff. It's how it's done for new cars in Europe, if the dealer doesn't have stock (though it can require up to a couple months for the new car to get to the factory to the dealer). I did it just this year.
- andykellr 10y ago
  I did the same thing when we bought my wife's 328 wagon 2 years ago. I emailed about 5 dealerships with a PDF of the options + msrp and they all got back to me in a day or two. I sent a followup email to the others to see if they wanted to beat the best price I received and they all said they couldn't. I also ordered mine because we wanted a specific set of options like adaptive cruise control, upgraded sound system, but no navigation and a very specific color combination that we couldn't find anywhere. Our other car is a Tesla and while I prefer ordering online and checking out with a credit card, emailing multiple dealers was pretty painless. EDIT: If you're curious why we didn't want navigation, this video explains it pretty well: https://youtu.be/hCDt02UXzkQ https://youtu.be/hCDt02UXzkQ Not to mention it's really expensive, hard to input destinations, I generally know where I'm going, and phones work great.
  - overcast 10y ago
    I've actually gone back to using a new Garmin standalone device. The screens are huge, don't have issues with data networks not being available, and free up your phone, for phone stuff.
    - JBReefer 10y ago
      Don't go your phone while you drive.
      - illumin8 10y ago
        Hear hear! If you feel you need _any_ phone functions while you're driving, stop, just full on stop, don't pass go, don't collect $200... Just stop, because you're doing something stupid!
        massysett 10y ago
        Answering an incoming Bluetooth call generally takes fewer steps than tuning the radio.
  - smnscu 10y ago
- prawn 10y ago
  Do you have government/fleet auctions in the US? In Australia, government fleet vehicles are auctioned after a couple of years of use and you can pick up cars before they are grabbed by dealers and topped by margins. Last car I bought was through an online auction. Didn't actually see the car in person until I went to pick it up.
  - overcast 10y ago
    Yes we have government auctions, I just don't buy into someone else's problems, even though it's significantly less in cost.
- criddell 10y ago
  I tried to buy a car via email. I picked out four different cars (a Kia Optima, a Honda Fit, a Toyota Prius, and a Subaru Outback) and emailed all the dealerships for those cars within a three hour drive. None of them would give me anything other than MSRP by email. Most of them called my phone within 15 minutes of me sending the email and all they wanted was for me to come in and talk to them. I eventually went to the Toyota dealership because although they wouldn't negotiate via email, they didn't phone me either. When I told that to the salesman, he said that he could get in trouble for that because he was supposed to call. Like every other car buying experience I've had, buying the Toyota sucked. They want to know what payment I want and all I want them to tell me is the out-the-door price. We would go back and forth and eventually they would bring some paperwork with an offer and they had accidentally changed the term from 48 to 60 months. Whoops! I think it ended up taking close to 3 hours to come to an agreement. To this day, I'm still getting emails and phone calls from some of the dealers I initially contacted and there seems to be no way to make it stop. I would happily pay a small premium to buy from Amazon or direct if I could avoid giving my details to a local dealer. That reminds me, I'm always getting junk mail and phone calls from scammers trying to sell me some aftermarket warranty. How did they get my name, phone, address, and car information? Is that a public record? The dealer swears they don't sell or share their customer lists.
  - dlubarov 10y ago
    > None of them would give me anything other than MSRP by email. Most of them called my phone within 15 minutes of me sending the email and all they wanted was for me to come in and talk to them. Maybe you weren't insistent enough? Many dealers don't like negotiating over email, but they also hate to lose a potentially valuable lead. If you make it absolutely clear that you'll only negotiate a certain way (e.g. via email with OTD price quotes), most will play ball. I'd also suggest starting with a service like TrueCar. The prices they give are generally not the best you can get, but it makes for a good starting point for the email negotiations. I also used CarWoo in the past, but they've closed down. Edmunds has a similar service, though I haven't tried it.
  - Agustus 10y ago
    They do. In all of their items they say: We will share your data with qualified partners.
- baby 10y ago
  I don't understand this trend of spending 1k for a mattress. Bought this 200$ one and it's the best bed I ever slept in: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005A4OP8Y/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005A4OP8Y/ref=oh_aui_sear...
hacknat 10y ago
Kind of. I like centralized service though. I can take my Toyota into any Toyota dealership in the US and they can bring up all the service records on my car. Within the 100k mile warranty every Toyota dealership has to fix, for free, any issue I have that isn't glass, brakes, tires, or body. It's a pretty substantial perk.
Analemma_ 10y ago
The thing is, we almost had this already with Saturn. There were dealerships, but all the cars had fixed prices- no haggling- so it was almost direct-to-consumer, with a bit of added tax for the useless middleman. It was great! But it built up too much resentment at the rest of GM so it had to be killed. It sucks that we're just now starting to get the future we already had, but better late than never.
- vvanders 10y ago
  Yup, thankfully Tesla is carrying on that torch. Went from Saturn -> Tesla and the new purchase experience was very similar(aside from ordering the Tesla on a website). I think Saturn showed that the model most consumers want is going to have to come from a non-incumbent who doesn't have the baggage of existing dealers.
  - ojosilva 10y ago
    I went to Saturn back in the day. I also knew someone that worked there. My impression was of a cold environment that did not entice me to compromise $20k on a vehicle. So, although I believe the model is appealing to some (or many), I do like the guiding hand of a salesperson to help me navigate many makes, models and options. It's more of a personal choice, and definitely it's unnecessary for say Teslas. I feel the car salesperson is not just something to be disrupted and eradicated, but to evolve into a more modern counterpart, like the people at shift.com. OTOH, car dealership mafias should definitely die.
    - mixedCase 10y ago
      > So, although I believe the model is appealing to some (or many), I do like the guiding hand of a salesperson to help me navigate many makes, models and options. Then you should pay for someone to offer you that service. He would be more likely to be impartial too.
    - massysett 10y ago
      "I do like the guiding hand of a salesperson to help me navigate many makes, models and options." A good salesman would be good for this. My last salesman did not know how to operate the in-dash entertainment system. Information-wise, I would have been better off ordering my car from a kiosk.
toephu2 10y ago
This is what Tesla does.
mikeash 10y ago
Me too! I thought I had a pretty good experience the last time I dealt with one. Low pressure process, they were friendly, and I got a good deal. Then I bought a new car and attempted to trade that car in. Turns out the dealership had filed my title with a lien on it as if I had financed the purchase through them, which ended up being a gigantic multi-day hassle talking to the dealer, to the car company's financial arm, and to the local DMV office.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
bluedino 10y ago
You need the dealership to handle the trade-in of your used vehicle. Selling to a private buyer can be (but isn't always) a pain.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  Selling it yourself can also get you more money for the old car. If the dealer gets to couple the two deals, they can come down $3000 (say) on the price of the new car, if they can rip you off $3000 on the price they give you for the used one.
- billhathaway 10y ago
  You can also go to a business like Car Max which will give you a quote for your used vehicle which is good for 7 days. Take the quote with you when going to buy a new car. If the dealer doesn't want to match the Car Max quote as trade-in value, then don't trade in, and sell your car to Car Max.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    And/or if you drive cars until they have very little value like I do, just look up the Bluebook value and donate it if you can't get something in the ballpark of your tax deduction from the dealer. The bottom line is that if you have a figure in mind that's a hard floor, you can just say no; no bargaining required.
nlh 10y ago
+1 me too, of course. The problem, unfortunately, as we learned through some of Tesla's struggles, is that car dealerships are deeply embedded in a bunch of localities through legislation. There are literally written into law as the way consumers needs to buy cars. So the tough part here is that we consumers would LOVE a better way, but it's going to be a while before this takes nationwide. A few progressive municipalities will, I'm sure, adopt (and make it legal to buy via Amazon Cars), but don't hold your breath for the death of car dealerships in the next ~10 years. (PS - I deeply hope I'm wrong.)
- abawany 10y ago
  This matches my understanding too. According to Sen. Warren's book 'A Fighting Chance', the dealers lobby was able to get significant exemptions added for themselves when financial regulations were being discussed in 2013 [1]. One of these was the ability to change the rate of a loan after the sale is done.
kevincox 10y ago
While a generally agree that dealerships are awful I think the service they provide is the test drive. Car companies don't want to spend money managing "drive centers" all over the world. Since dealerships provide this "service" to them they must in turn ensure that the dealerships can survive by keeping them the most common place to buy a car. If they did all of their sales online the dealerships would go out of business.
- jedberg 10y ago
  Yet Tesla maintains "drive centers" all over the place. Also, if it weren't such a racket, you would have a single drive center that sold Chevy, Mazda, Toyota all in once place, and then the dealerships wouldn't have to worry about sending people there. They would compete for people's business.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    This single drive center you speak of sounds like an airport rental car facility :)
    - jedberg 10y ago
      Pretty much. If they would add a knowledgeable salesperson who knows the pros and cons of the different brands they'd be all set!
- astrange 10y ago
  I always thought the dealership system was mandated in the US to prevent companies from selling a car but not providing any required maintenance for it. With dealerships, they're required to give someone else the repair guides. Obviously there's much better ways this could've been done…
galdosdi 10y ago
Craigslist has offered direct-to-consumer sales of cars for years. Car dealerships are a relic already as far I'm concerned

overcast 10y ago

Seriously. My last car (BMW) from seven years ago, I did entirely through email. Sent a handful of dealerships their cost sheet with the options I wanted, until I got the price I was looking for. Few months later when it was built and shipped from Germany, I drove my old car to the dealership, and drove off with the new one. Done. As an aside, I just ordered a mattress site unseen from an online only company, and it turned out to be one of the best mattresses I've ever slept in. https://www.saatva.com/ https://www.saatva.com/ $1000 for the luxury firm Queen, and that included shipping and taking the old one.

vvanders 10y ago
This is the only way to do new car shopping. Get the price + windows sticker in writing over email. Send it out to all the dealers in the nearby area and tell them they have your business if you can beat the deal. Repeat 2-3x, pick the lowest price dealer and be willing to walk out the door if anything funny comes up. Also quite a few dealerships are directly or indirectly part of a franchise so they won't compete with each other. In that case you usually need to expand your radius to ~100mi. Here in PNW there's great Subaru competition but when we looked at Mazda they didn't haggle at all until we went to dealers in a different state.
- overcast 10y ago
  Yes, when it comes to a lot of luxury European cars, cities typically only have a single dealership, and there isn't much wiggle room. Ended up with one back home 240 miles away. Picked it up my way home for Thanksgiving right off the thruway. Pulled into parents with the new ride :)
  - vvanders 10y ago
    Yeah, we were cross shopping Mazda/Ford/Subaru and it was totally obvious that all the Mazda dealerships were owned by a franchise. When we'd mention a quote they'd push us really hard on where we got it from and wouldn't come back with a counter offer or "we can't beat that". Pretty transparent and only changed once we started emailing dealers across state lines. Either way they lost our business. Subaru on the other had has a pretty diverse set of dealers and we ended up with one well below "inventory"(that's a whole nother bit of misinformation) at a dealership ~15mi away. That said Tesla still wipes the floor with any dealership experience I've had which is why I'm pretty excited to see the Model 3 hit the market and more people experience it.
  - lagadu 10y ago
    Can't you simply have the manufacturer send the car with your desired options to the dealer and you just pay them the MSRP listed for your configuration in the manufacturer's website? Any negotiation that happens is for a price reduction on that or for extra stuff. It's how it's done for new cars in Europe, if the dealer doesn't have stock (though it can require up to a couple months for the new car to get to the factory to the dealer). I did it just this year.
andykellr 10y ago
I did the same thing when we bought my wife's 328 wagon 2 years ago. I emailed about 5 dealerships with a PDF of the options + msrp and they all got back to me in a day or two. I sent a followup email to the others to see if they wanted to beat the best price I received and they all said they couldn't. I also ordered mine because we wanted a specific set of options like adaptive cruise control, upgraded sound system, but no navigation and a very specific color combination that we couldn't find anywhere. Our other car is a Tesla and while I prefer ordering online and checking out with a credit card, emailing multiple dealers was pretty painless. EDIT: If you're curious why we didn't want navigation, this video explains it pretty well: https://youtu.be/hCDt02UXzkQ https://youtu.be/hCDt02UXzkQ Not to mention it's really expensive, hard to input destinations, I generally know where I'm going, and phones work great.
- overcast 10y ago
  I've actually gone back to using a new Garmin standalone device. The screens are huge, don't have issues with data networks not being available, and free up your phone, for phone stuff.
  - JBReefer 10y ago
    Don't go your phone while you drive.
    - illumin8 10y ago
      Hear hear! If you feel you need _any_ phone functions while you're driving, stop, just full on stop, don't pass go, don't collect $200... Just stop, because you're doing something stupid!
      - massysett 10y ago
        Answering an incoming Bluetooth call generally takes fewer steps than tuning the radio.
- smnscu 10y ago
prawn 10y ago
Do you have government/fleet auctions in the US? In Australia, government fleet vehicles are auctioned after a couple of years of use and you can pick up cars before they are grabbed by dealers and topped by margins. Last car I bought was through an online auction. Didn't actually see the car in person until I went to pick it up.
- overcast 10y ago
  Yes we have government auctions, I just don't buy into someone else's problems, even though it's significantly less in cost.
criddell 10y ago
I tried to buy a car via email. I picked out four different cars (a Kia Optima, a Honda Fit, a Toyota Prius, and a Subaru Outback) and emailed all the dealerships for those cars within a three hour drive. None of them would give me anything other than MSRP by email. Most of them called my phone within 15 minutes of me sending the email and all they wanted was for me to come in and talk to them. I eventually went to the Toyota dealership because although they wouldn't negotiate via email, they didn't phone me either. When I told that to the salesman, he said that he could get in trouble for that because he was supposed to call. Like every other car buying experience I've had, buying the Toyota sucked. They want to know what payment I want and all I want them to tell me is the out-the-door price. We would go back and forth and eventually they would bring some paperwork with an offer and they had accidentally changed the term from 48 to 60 months. Whoops! I think it ended up taking close to 3 hours to come to an agreement. To this day, I'm still getting emails and phone calls from some of the dealers I initially contacted and there seems to be no way to make it stop. I would happily pay a small premium to buy from Amazon or direct if I could avoid giving my details to a local dealer. That reminds me, I'm always getting junk mail and phone calls from scammers trying to sell me some aftermarket warranty. How did they get my name, phone, address, and car information? Is that a public record? The dealer swears they don't sell or share their customer lists.
- dlubarov 10y ago
  > None of them would give me anything other than MSRP by email. Most of them called my phone within 15 minutes of me sending the email and all they wanted was for me to come in and talk to them. Maybe you weren't insistent enough? Many dealers don't like negotiating over email, but they also hate to lose a potentially valuable lead. If you make it absolutely clear that you'll only negotiate a certain way (e.g. via email with OTD price quotes), most will play ball. I'd also suggest starting with a service like TrueCar. The prices they give are generally not the best you can get, but it makes for a good starting point for the email negotiations. I also used CarWoo in the past, but they've closed down. Edmunds has a similar service, though I haven't tried it.
- Agustus 10y ago
  They do. In all of their items they say: We will share your data with qualified partners.
baby 10y ago
I don't understand this trend of spending 1k for a mattress. Bought this 200$ one and it's the best bed I ever slept in: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005A4OP8Y/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005A4OP8Y/ref=oh_aui_sear...

hacknat 10y ago

Kind of. I like centralized service though. I can take my Toyota into any Toyota dealership in the US and they can bring up all the service records on my car. Within the 100k mile warranty every Toyota dealership has to fix, for free, any issue I have that isn't glass, brakes, tires, or body. It's a pretty substantial perk.

Analemma_ 10y ago

The thing is, we almost had this already with Saturn. There were dealerships, but all the cars had fixed prices- no haggling- so it was almost direct-to-consumer, with a bit of added tax for the useless middleman. It was great! But it built up too much resentment at the rest of GM so it had to be killed. It sucks that we're just now starting to get the future we already had, but better late than never.

vvanders 10y ago
Yup, thankfully Tesla is carrying on that torch. Went from Saturn -> Tesla and the new purchase experience was very similar(aside from ordering the Tesla on a website). I think Saturn showed that the model most consumers want is going to have to come from a non-incumbent who doesn't have the baggage of existing dealers.
- ojosilva 10y ago
  I went to Saturn back in the day. I also knew someone that worked there. My impression was of a cold environment that did not entice me to compromise $20k on a vehicle. So, although I believe the model is appealing to some (or many), I do like the guiding hand of a salesperson to help me navigate many makes, models and options. It's more of a personal choice, and definitely it's unnecessary for say Teslas. I feel the car salesperson is not just something to be disrupted and eradicated, but to evolve into a more modern counterpart, like the people at shift.com. OTOH, car dealership mafias should definitely die.
  - mixedCase 10y ago
    > So, although I believe the model is appealing to some (or many), I do like the guiding hand of a salesperson to help me navigate many makes, models and options. Then you should pay for someone to offer you that service. He would be more likely to be impartial too.
  - massysett 10y ago
    "I do like the guiding hand of a salesperson to help me navigate many makes, models and options." A good salesman would be good for this. My last salesman did not know how to operate the in-dash entertainment system. Information-wise, I would have been better off ordering my car from a kiosk.

toephu2 10y ago

This is what Tesla does.

mikeash 10y ago

Me too! I thought I had a pretty good experience the last time I dealt with one. Low pressure process, they were friendly, and I got a good deal. Then I bought a new car and attempted to trade that car in. Turns out the dealership had filed my title with a lien on it as if I had financed the purchase through them, which ended up being a gigantic multi-day hassle talking to the dealer, to the car company's financial arm, and to the local DMV office.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

bluedino 10y ago

You need the dealership to handle the trade-in of your used vehicle. Selling to a private buyer can be (but isn't always) a pain.

AnimalMuppet 10y ago
Selling it yourself can also get you more money for the old car. If the dealer gets to couple the two deals, they can come down $3000 (say) on the price of the new car, if they can rip you off $3000 on the price they give you for the used one.
billhathaway 10y ago
You can also go to a business like Car Max which will give you a quote for your used vehicle which is good for 7 days. Take the quote with you when going to buy a new car. If the dealer doesn't want to match the Car Max quote as trade-in value, then don't trade in, and sell your car to Car Max.
- ghaff 10y ago
  And/or if you drive cars until they have very little value like I do, just look up the Bluebook value and donate it if you can't get something in the ballpark of your tax deduction from the dealer. The bottom line is that if you have a figure in mind that's a hard floor, you can just say no; no bargaining required.

nlh 10y ago

+1 me too, of course. The problem, unfortunately, as we learned through some of Tesla's struggles, is that car dealerships are deeply embedded in a bunch of localities through legislation. There are literally written into law as the way consumers needs to buy cars. So the tough part here is that we consumers would LOVE a better way, but it's going to be a while before this takes nationwide. A few progressive municipalities will, I'm sure, adopt (and make it legal to buy via Amazon Cars), but don't hold your breath for the death of car dealerships in the next ~10 years. (PS - I deeply hope I'm wrong.)

abawany 10y ago
This matches my understanding too. According to Sen. Warren's book 'A Fighting Chance', the dealers lobby was able to get significant exemptions added for themselves when financial regulations were being discussed in 2013 [1]. One of these was the ability to change the rate of a loan after the sale is done.

kevincox 10y ago

While a generally agree that dealerships are awful I think the service they provide is the test drive. Car companies don't want to spend money managing "drive centers" all over the world. Since dealerships provide this "service" to them they must in turn ensure that the dealerships can survive by keeping them the most common place to buy a car. If they did all of their sales online the dealerships would go out of business.

jedberg 10y ago
Yet Tesla maintains "drive centers" all over the place. Also, if it weren't such a racket, you would have a single drive center that sold Chevy, Mazda, Toyota all in once place, and then the dealerships wouldn't have to worry about sending people there. They would compete for people's business.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  This single drive center you speak of sounds like an airport rental car facility :)
  - jedberg 10y ago
    Pretty much. If they would add a knowledgeable salesperson who knows the pros and cons of the different brands they'd be all set!
astrange 10y ago
I always thought the dealership system was mandated in the US to prevent companies from selling a car but not providing any required maintenance for it. With dealerships, they're required to give someone else the repair guides. Obviously there's much better ways this could've been done…

galdosdi 10y ago

Craigslist has offered direct-to-consumer sales of cars for years. Car dealerships are a relic already as far I'm concerned