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Comment by ur-whale | Hacker News Reader

What would you do differently if you owned a dealership ?

Arguing from the perspective of maximizing benefit to the producer/seller instead of the public at large speaks to a deep social epidemic. What would you do differently if you owned a cigarette factory? What if you owned Boeing?

Sell it and enter a better business that isn’t legacy rent seeking?

Take all those customers looking for reasonably priced, reasonably sized cars and put the other guys out of business.

All prices of all components are listed, thus I have no reason to hire salesmen. You pick the components as if you are building a PC. There is a huge demand for this, and the savings from fewer middlemen can go elsewhere.

Of course there are several laws and policies on national and statewide levels enshrining the current anti-consumer model because it "creates jobs".

Wasn’t this the business model of Saturn?

Nobody would buy all weather floor mats for 600$ or protective finish applications if you could remove them. That’s why they bundle features you want with those you don’t

You're confusing dealer-added options with factory option packages. Cars bundle features together because they get better economies of scale by making only a few different versions of a model ("trim levels"), instead of letting everyone mix-and-match parts. Factories don't work that well when all the units aren't the same.

Dealer-added options aren't added at a factory, they're added at the dealership, solely for the reason of inflating profit and convincing customers to roll the cost into their loan.

Salesmen are not an expense, they're a profit center. Every company knows this. They will sell more expensive cars and increase the dealer's profit, that's why this model persists.

Except in my imaginary scenario, me being the only dealership doing that would bring me much more from beating the competition. So others would need to adopt my model to compete if I were legally able to do what I claim (see my earlier post.)

What's the added value of dealerships? They feel like parasites.

The mere idea of having to negotiate prices like in an flea market is disturbing and disgusting to me.

I want to be treated fairly and as well as the next guy.

Fixed & open construtor prices and warranties, online customisation and ordering should be the only norm.

Warranty repair is the only advantage.

That's not an advantage: in countries where the manufacturers own the dealerships (i.e., every country not named "USA"), they do warranty repair there too.

There really is no advantage to independently-owned dealerships, except maybe in bribes to local politicians.

During normal times they add no value and create negative value for everyone. But during a downturn or when a manufacturer makes a dud model dealers can be forced to buy up excess and slowly feed it into the market as well as absorb the losses

Dealerships are owned by rich people and they contribute a lot of money to local politicians. That's why they won't go away even though they are nothing but parasites.

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