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This is a first step before Amazon secures dealership licenses in 48 states and puts brick and mortar operations out of business in yet another vertical.
by henriquez 3y ago
This is a first step before Amazon secures dealership licenses in 48 states and puts brick and mortar operations out of business in yet another vertical.
- seattle_spring 3y agoSounds good to me. Almost literally any model is better than the current dealership scam.
- lastofthemojito 3y agoI mean, it could be an ugly, convoluted solution to a problem. Car sales seems fairly broken these days - horror stories abound, not just about dealer markups in general, but time-wasting nonsense like dealers allowing folks to factory-order a car at an agreed-upon price and then changing their mind - demanding a markup at delivery time, or selling the ordered car to someone else who is willing to pay more. Automakers have been trying to coerce dealers to cut it out with the markups, threatening to allocate fewer vehicles to dealers who play games, but at the end of the day if enough dealerships refuse to comply, automakers are going to do what they have to do to keep moving metal. Idealists have been clamoring for changing dealership franchise laws en masse and allowing automakers to sell directly, but that seems unlikely in the near term. So if Amazon becomes a mega-dealer and forms a tight bond with one or more automakers, essentially guaranteeing good behavior (up-front pricing, no deceptive fees, etc), then the automakers can tell the PITA legacy dealerships to take a walk, sell the cars online in a high-quality, nicely branded portal with consistent pricing, and everyone is happy (except for the legacy dealerships).