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Comment by bradleyland | Hacker News Reader

The question I'd ask is, why do I need the salesperson at all? I know exactly what I want when I buy a car. For my last two cars, I sourced and specified the manufacturer option codes for my order.

The role of a salesperson is to convince someone to buy a product. If I am already convinced, why should I have to involve this person in my transactions?

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You don't, the dealer does. I sold cars for a short while. The dealer makes money by introducing a spread between what he paid for it (minus bonuses) and what you'll pay (plus financing). They are middlemen pure and simple, something information technology is exceptional at deprecating. The reason the major brands don't have company stores like Tesla is manufacturers don't have to hold as much of a risk with inventory and dealers are well lobbied.

The main issue here is the lobbying component of the dealerships. A lot of states have mandatory purchase the car from the car dealer mandates, thereby requiring a system in which the dealer makes enough money to continue their efforts.

The rest of the world has car dealerships too, and as far as I know has no mandatory purchase rules. As far as I can make out car dealers make so little money in Europe that it is not worth disintermediating them, but I may be wrong.

Agreed. There is a difference between sales and fulfillment.

> I know exactly what I want when I buy a car.

A lot of people don't know exactly what they want.

They have a price range, and that's about it. Someone needs to show them their options. Particularly if they're looking at used cars.

A dealer salesman on a single brand lot is a horrible solution to this problem.

The closest you can get to a simple middleman-free market is eBay, sadly.

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