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Comment by geph2021 | Hacker News Reader

geph2021

In my experience[1], interacting with the salesperson and agreeing on the cars' price is about 25% of the sale process (and hassle). The salesperson nails down price, model/unit, with the customer, which already involves all manner of sleazy games on pricing.

After the "sale", there's a much longer gauntlet of pitfalls and traps to navigate: extended warranties, add-ons (roof racks, floor mats, etc...), financing, trade-in value, anti-theft, pre-paid maintenance, etc, etc... (it goes on and on, it's exhausting).

I'm going to guess, just based on the amount of manhours the dealership spends on the initial sale agreement, versus all the other crap, that the true money is not made by the dealership on the actual car sale, but on all these add-ons after the sale.

[1] - fairly limited, bought 3 cars over the ~15 years, 1 used, 2 new, and it's been about 8 years since my last purchase, not sure how much its changed since then.

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I agree, the "finance person" that technically does your paperwork and pitches you all those aftermarket products is the biggest crook in the industry (right next to the service advisors that tell you what service your car needs and the price).

I would sometimes fill in for finance on a rainy day, and even though I was top 0.3% in the country when it came to car sales, I Couldn't sell that garbage even with a gun pointed at me. I just can't lie like that.

It seems somewhat simple to just stand firm with the finance person and refuse all the add-ons, but how does one figure out what services are actually needed when the service adviser comes to you with a list of issues?

> how does one figure out what services are actually needed when the service adviser comes to you with a list of issues?

As a basic set of rules:

a) say no to everything.

b) look at the service intervals in the book (or what the maintenance minder in the car says).

c) ask them if the factory service plan would cover it

d) ask them if it's critical to safety, and if so, explain what would happen if you didn't do it, how you would notice it was an issue, and how you should respond while it's happening on the road.

e) as soon as you run out of factory service, and maybe factory warranty, use an independent mechanic

Now, sometimes the factory service intervals are wrong, and sometimes there's stuff you probably should do that the factory doesn't say to do ever; but for the most part, the factory schedule is a good baseline, and dealer service wants to do extra frivolous stuff. Some independents do too, I have never seen a next oil change sticker printed with factory intervals.

These are good questions to ask if you assume you would get truthful and non-misleading answers. I wouldn't trust a salesperson to answer these truthfully.

Is there any magic phrase you can say to this person to get them to stop? I've leased 5 or 6 cars from the same dealership which is all around great except for this one part.

For example the green energy clipboard person trying to get you to switch power companies, you can tell them that you rent and there is no comeback.

I've bought several cars at dealerships in recent years. I found that simply saying "I feel lucky" with a slight grin, when presented with the warranty, pre-maintenance, tire damage and so on, works well. The finance person laughs (sometimes weakly, sometimes genuinely) and we move on to complete signing the forms. A couple of times they pressed the issue, so I said "I feel really lucky" and that did the trick.

Everyone checks KBB, edmunds, and all the others before buying a car. Thus everyone knows exactly what the dealer is paying for the car before walking in. Nobody is willing to leave the dealer a reasonable profit margin or the salesman a living wage. There are plenty of other dealers and nobody is loyal so odds are they won't see you again no matter how good the experience is (if you are a corporation buying for a fleet you get different service). As such dealers look to other places to make money.

If people would decide to allow the dealers a reasonable profit margin things could change. Right now though dealers just see a sucker when someone does that though. I'm not hopeful things will change, but that is the first key.

I personally don't think what the dealer paid matters. If a car is desirable, a few are available, we're going to sell for as much as possible.

If a car is undesirable, and many are available and we need to move them, we will sell them for a loss.

I don't blame people for buying cars we sell for at a loss (although sometimes I wonder why these people don't stop and wonder why this car is so heavily discounted). And they shouldn't blame us for charging more for something many people want and is in short supply.

You could probably make a post on dealer allocations by manufacturers. Dealers are effectively obligated to move the cars sent to them, the crap and the gold.

Then there’s the gold that only gets short-listed to customers that have been long-time customers and sometimes helped you move the crap (but that’s probably only on the higher-end of things).

> Thus everyone knows exactly what the dealer is paying for the car before walking in.

Myth, I think. That information (the real wholesale cost) is not public.

And hard to genuinely calculate with the Hollywood accounting that goes on with promos/rebates/incentives for the dealers themselves.

How do you allocate a $x promo for selling Y cars in a month, when some of those cars were unpopular crap and others sold themselves?

Beyond even what you mentioned, there's crazy payment bonus (holdback) structures based on so many variables it really doesn't make much sense to try to figure out what a dealer paid for a car.

A dealer for example will get more back per car sold, if they have the most modern building style. (a way manufacturers entice dealerships to remodel to latest corporate recommended aesthetics/experience).

They also pay more if your dealership is stand alone. A joint VW/Audi/Porsche dealership will end up paying more for cars (getting less money back technically) than a standalone dealership.

I could go on and on about the various metrics for getting more or less rebate money back.

Would you really pay more for your car because a dealership paid more because they hadn't remodeled recently? Of course not. You compare to what others are doing and that should be enough, unless you really want to try and randomly guess just how low they might go that day and walk and try again everywhere?

The cost is known, dealers leak this.

As others have said things like holdbacks and incentives are not known. (And since incentives depend on number sold they can't be known) Still buyers have good information and take advantage of that.

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