General > General Technical Chat
Is it difficult to buy a car in Australia?
razberik:
I have watched this:
and other videos from this man.
I am not sure if I understand him. Is it really difficult to buy a new car in Australia? He calls cardealer "your enemy". What is the problem with walking away from that specific dealer to another dealer?
Methods he describes are applicable to buying pretty much anything. If I am not happy with some seller I go to another.
Also, he criticizes pretty much every car brand from around the world. The only makers he is OK is perhaps KIA, Hyundai and Mazda. Absolutely everything other is a crap.
Brumby:
--- Quote from: razberik on September 28, 2018, 10:04:45 am ---I am not sure if I understand him. Is it really difficult to buy a new car in Australia? He calls cardealer "your enemy". What is the problem with walking away from that specific dealer to another dealer?
Methods he describes are applicable to buying pretty much anything. If I am not happy with some seller I go to another.
--- End quote ---
Your observations about what he is saying are correct. Where these may seem to be puzzling will come from a difference in culture, personality and/or knowledge - IMHO.
If you come from a background where haggling is common, you are already ahead on several of his points. If you are wary or cynical about what a salesman says - and about what you tell them, then you are less likely to give up information that they will use to their advantage as well as not blindly accepting everything they say. Add to that having specific knowledge - such as that which John Cadogan shares with you or points you to - and you will be at less of a disadvantage in negotiations.
Unfortunately, many car buyers in Australia can be classified as sheep and even the ones with a bit more self assertiveness may not know all the angles. This is the sort of person John Cadogan is addressing.
The only aspect of which I have no knowledge about for dealerships outside Australia is the monthly sales target. Within Australia I can attest to the reality of it - and the power you can wield, not only for new car sales, but also used.
I inadvertently discovered this when I had to get a new vehicle with more seating due to family growth. I'd let this task slide for too long and when I finally got my act together, I had a month and a bit to get the job done. I started off assessing the vehicles that would satisfy the basic requirements and then eliminated all but one. I had the cash on hand for a decent second hand vehicle and had no interest in splashing out big bucks for a new one I then had 4 weekends in a rather wet April to locate and secure the best example that I could find and afford.
Checking out vehicles in various car yards introduced me to the usual bullshit - but one thing I noticed was the value of my trade-in. Across all the car yards, the average increased each subsequent weekend. By the last weekend, the trade-in amount had doubled from the beginning of the month. I closed a deal on that last weekend.
A few months later I was talking to someone in the car trade and mentioned that I had worked out how to get the best deal on a car - turn up ready to sign on the last weekend of a wet month. He looked like he wanted to take my head off. That quota pressure is very real here in Oz.
Bassman59:
--- Quote from: razberik on September 28, 2018, 10:04:45 am ---
I am not sure if I understand him. Is it really difficult to buy a new car in Australia? He calls cardealer "your enemy". What is the problem with walking away from that specific dealer to another dealer?
--- End quote ---
I don't know about Australia, but here in the U.S., the car dealer is absolutely your enemy.
And it's not like you can just go to another dealer -- with territory agreements, there might not be another dealer of that brand within a reasonable distance.
In most States, there are laws against a car manufacturer selling directly to consumers. To buy a car, you must go through a franchised dealer. One might think that there is some value-add to that, in the sense that the salesperson knows everything about the products, but that's not true. The last two new cars I bought, I came in with information about the car I wanted, and then I asked the salesguy pointed questions about the cars, and in every case, he opened a web browser on his computer and looked it up on the manufacturer's web site.
And do you know why these laws exist? Because dealership owners are rich, because they don't own just one, they own many dealerships across all brands, and these guys fund political campaigns. Here in southern Arizona is a car dealer named Jim Click, who presents this "aw shucks" folksy image, but he is literally the largest funder of Republican political campaigns in the state. And he is why Tesla doesn't have any dealerships in the state, because Tesla refuses to play the franchise game and even though polls of citizens say that Tesla and other manufacturers should be able to sell direct, they can't.
Plus their service departments are complete rip-offs. (The techs are usually quite competent, but it's the service department managers who set the policies, and they're all about making money.)
Car dealers are absolute scumbags. I can't wait until I'm able to go to the local Costco and order a new car and bypass the entire ripoff process.
nctnico:
I'm not a fan of car sales people either. I very much prefer to buy a car directly from someone else. When I go look for a car my price is fixed. If I don't get it for the price I want I won't buy it and wait for another good deal to come up.
@Bassman59: but how about non-branded car sellers and garages? Or don't they exist?
Rerouter:
In every case the car dealer is your enemy in negotiations, they want to sell for the highest price, you want to buy for the lowest.
I do fittings for bus and truck dealers, It is ridiculous how often they will let the batteries go dead-dead flat on a brand new vehicle, only to jump start it on the day of the sale and say things like "Yeah it might not start once you stop it" during delivery, And only putting enough fuel in the tanks for the customer to be able to drive to the nearest servo, e.g. 5L
Even buying my first car, I paid a fair price for it, but all the tires where nearly thread-less, because while I was inside arranging payment they swapped them because they wanted to flog them, I went back to them over that BS, but not everyone would eye the tires before driving out.
I've also recently discovered they did some really shitty panel beating on it as rust spots are now starting to appear under the paint,
TLDR: Its easy to buy a car, its hard to get a fairly priced one without shenanigans.
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