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Comment by millzlane | Hacker News Reader

Honestly you can't trust a lot you see in ads. You can't even trust your manufacturer or the dealership selling the cars. Some brand new cars are sold with TSBs that haven't been fixed or addressed.

I use https://www.carcomplaints.com/ when I'm shopping for a car to know which used cars to avoid.

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TSBs are just that, technical service bulletins on how to fix a common issue. There's no requirement for a dealership to perform the TSB on a new car, a majority of cars with outstanding TSBs won't ever experience the problem the TSB addresses.

There IS however a requirement to fix any recalls before a car can be sold, at least in the USA. But there are MANY more TSBs than recalls.

My Honda Odyssey has a TSB for the transmission basically eating itself. The fix is a full transmission fluid change (3x drain and fill) and a firmware flash. My van is beyond the mileage where the dealer would do this under an extended warranty specific to this TSB, but I've never actually experienced any of the symptoms mentioned in the TSB. Van is a 2016 with 115k miles on it.

Often, the salespeople don’t actually know anything about the vehicles they’re selling either. I’ve had salespeople who don’t know the engine or transmission configurations of the cars on their lots. I spent a long many emails recently trying to explain to a Toyota sales rep how payload capacity works. Even after meeting him in person and explaining it to him again, I was totally unable to get the real payload numbers of a vehicle I wanted to buy.

I love it when people go out of their way to try to make someone feel dumb. Why would you waste your time like that? You asked a question, and they responded in a way that doesn't answer the question. Do you think going through some sort of lecture is going to suddenly improve the answer?

That's like asking the average person to provide the answer to some differential calculus question but they don't know. You then give them a 5 minute dissertation on what differential calculus is, and immediately expect them to provide the answer by immediately asking them to solve the same equation.

I don't see how anybody is going out of their way to make anybody feel dumb in that situation.

They explained their automotive needs to a salesperson at a Toyota dealership and gave them ample opportunity to do some basic research to make a sale of them. Payload capacity is hardly a topic as exotic differential calculus at a car dealership.

>I don't see how anybody is going out of their way to make anybody feel dumb in that situation.

you're essentially giving a pass to mansplaining

I’d define mansplaining as unwanted and unwarranted explanation — it might be unwanted in the above situation, but unwarranted?

A explanation of payload capacity at a car dealership when it’s a key selling point for the customer explaining the topic and their related need? I just don’t see it being an issue.

I might not have conveyed myself very well, but I really wasn’t trying to make the salesman feel dumb. Really, he was being a salesman, and by that I mean bullshitting me. I’d ask what the payload of the Tacoma was, and he’d come up with an answer I knew to be wrong. Whether or not I wanted to purchase the truck depended on that payload number. So, when I kept sending the question back to him, I was just trying to find a way to get a true payload rating for the truck. I needed that information to inform my purchase, and wasn’t able to get that information. (The truck was on a boat in Mexico, and I’d have to reserve the purchase. I couldn’t just visit the dealership and look at the payload sticker on the door.)

In any case, I definitely didn’t want him to feel bad. When I met him, I had a really pleasant interaction — he was a nice person. But, he just wanted to sell me the truck, and really didn’t care if he could provide me correct information or not. Ultimately I gave up on the purchase because I couldn’t get the information I needed.

you are free to talk to any sales person, so after recognizing this particular sales person wasn't being helpful, you can talk to someone else including managers. if a sales manager realizes that answering one question is what's standing between you making a purchase or not, they will find you the answer. these people are all about "crushing it, bro" on their sales numbers. you can even go to a different dealership. there's also the internet.

Because they don't have to. There is no legal requirement of them telling you the truth, in fact, when you sign a purchase contract, you literally sign a piece of paper that states you cannot derive any rights to what the salesperson told you.

Their job is not to inform you. Their job is to sell cars.

I'm not sure I'd fully trust carcomplaints either, from my brief perusal of it. Many vehicles on the site show a large number of complaints for "Soy-Based Wiring Chewed by Rodents". But the idea that soy-based wiring is particularly appetizing to rodents is urban legend. Car owners have gone to court a few times, and AFAIK every time have lost for lack of evidence. Scientific studies have also failed to show any difference between rodents' tendencies to chew elastomer wiring and bioplastic wiring.

https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/2018/07/03/toyota-win...

Rodents may very well chew bioplastic wires, but they also chew non-bioplastic wires. The fact that users on carcomplaints are convinced that this is a major issue with specific vehicles I think highlights the unreliable nature of self-reports.

My brother in law was in the market for a new notebook the other day and the one he ended up deciding on did come with a bunch of stickers suggesting it was "award winning" (although that luckily didn't factor into his decision). Upon closer inspection the only actual award was for the manufacturer's customer support. None were related to the model itself.

So I'd say, no, unless the award is a specific industry standard certification relevant to what you're looking for, awards mean nothing.

I'm also reminded of the movie poster that made the rounds recently showing a bunch of five star reviews as well as a single one star review conveniently placed in such a way that it looked like the poster art was obscuring the four missing stars so as to make it look like another five star review.

I don't know if I trust this website. Like it rates the 2019 rav4 as one of the least reliable vehicles with

Hesitates And Lurches At Slower Speeds 2019 RAV4

Average Cost to Fix: $20,000 Average Mileage: 3,000 mi

I'm not sure I believe the "average mileage" of any problem is 3,000, and if it were, it'd be well under warranty. This data also doesn't align with NHTSA complaints.

Garbarge in, garbage out. If this site contains bad data it's worse than having no site, because it could move you in the wrong direction.

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