I know dealers engage in deception to increase their profit. I would prefer not to do the same in my personal life. I want to live ethically and honestly.
Ten years ago, there was no real alternative. Now there is, so I just figuratively tell dealers to fuck off and take my business to a competitor that doesn't play deceptive pricing games.
first of all, if a loan allows early payoff without a penalty, then it's your prerogative to take that option anytime you feel like it with absolutely no moral qualm. that's the point of written down contracts. you are under no obligation to discuss your future financial plans with the sales staff, nor what strategy you plan to take. they in turn are free to make any deal they wish, and if they offer a deal whereby you have an option, they have offered you a deal whereby you have an option. you don't need to lie, but it's really irrelevant because the only thing that matters is the contract - if either side actually cared about something that isn't written down, then shame on them. "assumptions" is no part of it.
secondly, it factually just doesn't work that way. you could straight up tell them you want to pay it off tomorrow. they won't give a shit. if they "make money on the financing" via some incentive, they get paid when they close the loan regardless of when you pay it off. if you pay it off early they don't even know about it and could care less. and if the finance company cared, it wouldn't be an option or it would have a penalty.
you don't need to, nor should you, "stoop to their level". simply go in, pick a car you like, tell them what you want to pay. if they say "there's a better price if you finance" then either take that deal, or counter-offer the same in cash, or don't and leave. if they say, sorry i can only do that if you finance, then either take the financed deal (sometimes the rates really are quite good) or ask if it has a prepayment penalty: "so, if i pay that off in full next month, there's no penalty and you still give me this price?". then make them show you in the paperwork where it says that.
it's fine to not want to play games with deceptive dealers, but you are certainly under no moral or ethical obligation other than to hold up your end of whatever deal that is made.
I want fixed price transactions. Dealers do not give this to me. Tesla does. Therefore, I go with Tesla. You don't have to. But you can't, and you shouldn't, advise me to do something that I plainly dislike doing. I have already made it clear that the money is not the issue, it is the principle behind the thing. Lack of fixed pricing is the precise thing that I find objectionable.
If a dealer, or anyone else, gives me a different price depending on my method of payment, then I am not going to be your customer. Full stop. I'm not going to try to game your pricing. I want to know that you are engaging in this practice, not so that I can exploit it, but so that I can avoid it.
Ever since Tesla has emerged as an alternative, there's just no point in going to a dealership anymore. Tesla doesn't care how I pay them.
The person buying the car shouldn’t be shamed for prioritizing what they feel is important in the buying process. It’s being driven by the person buying the car, not the broader public.
I also mentioned buying used cars. My approach in no way limits the range of cars available for me to purchase.
If you don't like it, well, it's my life, not yours, and I detest the dealership experience. I get to live my life how I want. In a nation of entitled whiners, this is the one thing we are truly entitled to do. You can be different.
Not if you compare apples to apples. The cheapest model 3 is significantly more expensive than a Toyota or Kia with equivalent seating and trim.
People with kids will end up paying 90-100K for the model X vs minivans which are in the 35-40K range.
Tesla has a luxury premium and it’s a bit silly to claim otherwise.
Look up what the word "average" means. If you are accusing Tesla buyers of buying privileged expensive cars, then you are necessarily also accusing the vast majority of new car buyers of the same thing. There's no way around it.
Toyotas and Kias are not representative of average new cars in America. Teslas are.
For now, let's get past this initial disagreement by using a different name. I've seen people use the phrase "techno-luxury" to describe what Tesla is doing and to distinguish it from the usual notion of luxury cars.
Luxury cars, as I understand it, are characterized by some or all of the following things: physical comfort, richness of sensory experiences, quality of materials and build, noise reduction, and at the very high end of the market, "quirks and features" such as automatically opening and closing car doors, refrigerators in the back seat, umbrellas inside the door jambs, and so on. There is a category of luxury such as Ferrari or Bugatti that emphasizes performance to a certain extent, but I really really doubt that many people will take their Bugatti out to the track for a day.
Techno-luxury, on the other hand, emphasizes entirely different quirks and features: app access, long-term climate control (4 hours+) for when you're sitting in the car a long time, in-car youtube, in-car netflix, in-car video games, autonomous driving capability, built-in dashcam viewable from the app, location tracking, valet mode and other security features, and so on. There is some overlap between luxury and techno-luxury, in that some traditional luxury cars have some of these features, but Tesla still does it better than anyone else if you are specifically looking for techno-luxury, which I am.
Tesla fails all, with frequent misaligned panels, paint bubbling, ill-fitting parts, etc. It has software bells and whistels, but shitty build quality for the hardware.
20+ years ago, we did a trade-off in the datacenter, replacing single piece of expensive hardware with multiple copies of cheap hardware, with software to patch over the deficiencies. That doesn't work as well when the product is a single piece of hardware.
With some smart software, I can run 3 servers at 50% uptime each, and get 100% uptime. I can't get one nicely assembled car from two shitty ones.
You're not buying a new car every day. As long as you have one good car, it doesn't matter very much to you how badly the other ones of the same model are built.
My car is 5+ years old and still working fine.
I once got a long-term mortgage and paid it off in full within two months. The contract of course allowed me to do this without penalty. But in this case I told the underwriter that I would be doing exactly this. They were still happy to underwrite my loan.
Personally, I would rather tell the lender the truth in this instance. If they don't want my business as a result, then I want to know this information, because it affects my purchasing decision.
Edit - nevermind, you explain your reasoning in other comments, though I still can’t empathize with it.