Why You Can't Buy a New Car Online
alternet.org
alternet.org
Then again, maybe I'm just weird. I think people who buy condominiums before construction starts are crazy, too.
One wouldn't need to. One could test drive a car at a dealership.
I'm not sure how that's a simpler reason than the fact that selling new cars without a dealer is banned in the US.
Most buyers research their new cars on the internet even though they can't test drive them on the internet. Since they're on it already, ordering a car would not be difficult to swallow (there are already laws that allow buyers to return a new car for any reason within a certain time frame.)
Programmers are taught to try to cut out waste and save time and money, and they've tried to do so here. From what I recall reading, web sites had been shut down because they tried to skip the dealers. This shows that it is not a lack of customer confidence, but the force of the law that is keeping things as-is.
Finally, the argument that "one can't test-drive cars online" would be an important enough deterrent to an all-online purchase process does not consider that a new approach might be developed to allow potential buyers to test drive a car (such as for a price). More realistically, consumers will test drive the cars of their friends, that were already highly rated on the internet, such as... the cars that are already popular today.
A downside is that with fewer dealerships and the new development of getting charged to test drive a car, cars will become less fun to drive and more feature- and safety-oriented. But, that is already the trend. Luxury car manufacturers will still have dealerships for that reason.
Would it be safe to say that people tend to keep cars for a long time because cars are expensive? If cars were sold the way Dell laptop computers are sold (no test drive, shipped to you door), they might be less expensive. If cars were not built to last so long, they might be less expensive. If people were to buy cars more often, they might be less expensive. If people were less willing to keep old cars on life support, new cars might be less expensive.
If I'm going to spend $30k
Not every car costs $30,000. There are cars that cost $4,000. http://www.google.com/search?q=india+popular+cars Even in America, there are cars that cost as little as $10,000, which is less than a Dell laptop computer can cost.
Old car is for sale on craigslist now.
Where was "there"? Do you generally do some negotiation after you get "there" when you buy a book on Amazon.com?
drove off the lot with the new car
Why was it not delivered to your home or office, like Amazon.com purchases are?
This dealership would have driven it if I asked them. But people typically want to drive their own new car.
It is also one of the cheapest ways to buy a new car.
In America you may not be able to buy a new car online, but the world is a lot larger.
The article is about it being impossible to buy a car straight from the manufacturer.
"In America you may not be able to buy a new car online, but the world is a lot larger."
As the first word in the entire article is Americans ("Americans can buy virtually anything over the Internet, (...) but a new car"), I don't think the author was trying to write about the situation on the global scale. But even ignoring that, articles of American origins often limit their criticisms to those within their own country, same as British and Australian journalists often write about problems with their own.
Thanks for the reply. That is the title, but there are three pages of text to go along with it.
The first word of the article mentions that this is American-centric and somewhere in the first few paragraphs, the author clarifies that he or she is writing about buying a new car without a dealer.
It is interesting to learn that you have been able to buy a new car directly from the manufacturer where you live. Do you know if the dealers complained when this came about? Also, do friends and family members buy new cars this way now?
As for how friends and family members buy their cars, most of them drive corporate lease cars.
Dealers get paid for the test-drives they arrange for such customers because it is a certainty in those cases that the dealer will not be involved in the actual sale.
One example of an online store for cars is:
http://www.nieuweautokopen.nl/
(dutch, sorry and apologies for the irritating flash intro as well)
Of course the dealers are trying their hardest to sketch buying of a car through the internet as the most terrible decision you could make.
By law at least in Europe the whole concept of a brand dealer is no longer an acceptable concept, any car dealer can sell you any brand of (new) car. Importers / manufacturers can no longer make deals based on exclusivity.
I realize HN is US centric, in spite of that I would suggest a title of 'Why Americans can't buy a new car online'.
Amazon.com's profits are in the service and maintenance of the books it sells?
Most dealers get their profits only if they reach certain sales targets in the form of kickbacks.
Amazon.com receives "kickbacks" for reaching book-sale targets?
Wikipedia can do it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com
Amazon.com [...] is America's largest online retailer
Why would anyone bother paying to maintain an automobile cheaply-purchased online, when he could instead cheaply purchase another new automobile online?
In what country? Is Amazon.com selling and shipping these cars?