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Detroit, 5:19 AM
Mon Nov 9
7 posts in the last 24 hours
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09/30/09
09/30/09
09/30/09
Franchise laws are pretty strict in most states. I thought Californeeuh was one of them...
(edit to pluralize a word)
08/10/09
Fur reals, this seems like a good thing. At the dealership, the car you want is seldom the car you find, and finding the car you actually want usually involves either a lot of work or special ordering; neither option leads to Discount City. But finding and bidding on cars direct from the factory with online anonymity? Welcome to my bookmarks, ebaygm, and meet autotrader, craigslist, and carsdirect. I'll be the guy in the sweatpants.
08/10/09
GM experimented with the sales side of things once before, with Saturn. Was that model considered a success? A failure? Did they learn any lessons from that which led to this eBay thing? Or is this just some random new thing they are gonna take a whack at?
08/10/09
08/10/09
High-paid GM Exec: "How about ebay?"
GM CEO: "Brilliant!"
08/10/09
08/11/09
09/30/09
(Podcast begins now)
Get out the way, we got a Woot Off
We’re pigging out down at the Woot trough
Ain’t gonna stop until the Woot Off is done
You figure there's one car per day-o
And if it’s junk it's an A-ve-o
But now an avalanche of crap is set free
Who the hell badged this pile the G3?
It’s giving me an GM complex,
Cringing just to see what’s up next
Checking back to shop for what’s new
I don’t want it but I hope that you do
Cause new designs won’t get drawn
Until all of these are gone.
Now there’s another Chevy on line
A hatchback with a weird-ass design
How will this thing ever sell out?
This will start a new design drought
Who would ever buy this dumb car?
The New GM is so damn bee-zaar
I’m posting on Jalop to decry
This car you couldn’t pay me to buy
Well you could ridicule and signify it
But someone’s gonna have to buy it
Those are the rules of the Woot Off
We’re pigging out down at the Woot trough
Ain’t gonna stop ‘till the Woot Off is done
08/10/09
08/10/09
08/10/09
Or maybe it's both?
Either way, cars are commodities. Once you drive one, why not just go pick one out online and buy it? I think this is the start of a better way to buy.*
*better for me, especially, since I'm a horrible negotiator.
08/10/09
[OMBUDSMAN'S NOTE: "Cars are commodities." Jebus, man, do you know what site this is? Very anti-Jalop (though I feel that way about my daily drivers, sigh). ]
08/10/09
Click.
"Congratulations, you've just bought a new GM."
"What!? but I didn't even login!"
"Your credit card has been charged and the car is shipping to you. It will be due for it's first service at any GM dealership. Have a nice day!"
08/10/09
A big part of what car buyers hate doing is dealing with car salesman and their crap. So why even bother dealing with them in the first place? If you are about to buy a car, the natural course of action is to figure out what kind of vehicle that you are in the market for and educate yourself about all of the cars in the general niche that you are looking at, and make an educated decision about which vehicle is best for you without having to hear the pain-in-the-ass salesman tell you all about his cylinder deactivation, stiff spring, etc.
I can see where some dealers might get nervous about this, but there's really no need, as this does not exactly mean the end of car dealerships as we know it. Rather, it would be a great way of making dealerships more effective and more efficient. After all, part of the consumer's education involves actually physically sitting in the cars and taking the cars for test drives, and what better place to do that than a dealer? The consumers can do that, and then once they determine what they want and are ready to buy, they order the vehicle online and can choose the dealership of their choice to purchase the vehicle through.
This would mean that dealerships really do have an incentive to work on customer service (which is really lacking at a great many dealerships, even Audi and BMW ones), as it would be the consumer experience that would decide which dealership they want to order from. It would also have the added benefit of allowing someone living in Europe to purchase a car that isn't normally marketed there but meets all relevant certifications and vice-versa.
Seems like a good idea to me.
08/10/09
08/10/09
You say dealers have no need to get nervous, rather they just need to step up their game. However, it seems it's a lot easier to just lobby state politicians instead, as that's the route they went long ago.
08/10/09
However, they wouldn't be buying their cars directly from the manufacturer, they would be ordering the cars, and then selecting the dealer of choice to purchase the vehicle through.
I wonder, though, whether or not those laws apply if the items are being sold on the internet.
08/10/09
Presumably what the dealer brings to the table is a solid understanding of each option, their dependency on other options, etc. As a "consumer" this may be tough to decipher sometimes.
Though of course this is rarely true, and salespeople don't know jack about the cars they sell. But at least then you could refuse delivery when it's not what you wanted, vs if you placed the order via some online thing.
08/10/09
As for the consumer having difficulty understanding the options packages these days, I really can't see how. Every automaker makes it pretty well idiot proof when you go to their website and click the "build your own" function. The lay it out quite clearly, and if the consumer is still somewhat confused about whether or not an option is available with certain other options, they either don't allow you to click that option, or, if you click on the option, it tells you that it isn't available and why, and what changes must be made to get that option. It really is pretty easy.
The only thing that the dealers do is confuse consumers by throwing in a bunch of dealer-installed accessories that are unnecessary to the options that the consumer wants and charge through the roof for them. This is what sales associates are trained to do.
Additionally, many dealers are somewhat unscrupulous, and charge exorbitant markups on certain models just because they can. Why deal with that when you can order from the factory and take delivery through the dealership of choice, with the resulting delivery fees, etc. going to that dealership? This would also solve the problem of huge amounts of excess inventory.
Finally, as I pointed out above, it allows GM a lot more flexibility in selling cars to different markets. Case in point: neither the Mustang nor the new Camaro, so far as I know, are being offered in Europe. But who's to say that aren't those in Europe that would like to own one? Rather than forcing them to go through the the expensive, time-consuming, and pain-in-the-ass gray market loopholes, such a system would allow Ford or GM to import as many of those cars as are purchased, no more and no less. It allows a greater image presence in that market for very little additional effort.
Similarly, if someone wants one of the new generation of Ford or GM car that, while sold only in Europe, is fully compatible with US regulations, it would allow them to buy one. The market in each case may not be large enough to justify a full presence of a given model line, but for those that want thos models and are willing to pay for it, why should they be ignored? Ordering the model directly from GM would solve that problem. It would mean that American buyers could get buy an Opel Insignia OPC Sports Tourer (look it up) if they wanted to, or a wild European buyer could order himself an F-150 if he so wished.
Why not?
Again, it would be a comparably negligible cost to GM or Ford, as they are already shipping cars back and forth to begin with. Order whatever model you want whenever you want, wherever you want. At the same time, you are also ensuring that your money is spent satisfactorily, and allows you to support whichever dealer you want that has proven itself through superb customer service.
It's a win-win, and it makes perfect sense.
08/10/09
For the euro thing, I don't think it's nearly that easy. You can't bring in car that hasn't been certified for sale, just because you can buy it off a website.
For figuring out options, I'm not 100% sure it's always that easy. For example, click around [www.gmbuypower.com] which is the consumer site. And compare it to [eogld.ecomm.gm.com] which is a dealer site. The information you get from one is far superior. And it highlights some small options and such you'd never see on the consumer site.
As a trivial example, my dad was looking for a car with heated and cooled seats. He'd settled mainly on the CTS and the MKS. To provide some context, they need to be American, and if he went GM it would be because it was made prior to the gov't involvement (would be a swansong for him with GM vehicles). Anyway, so I said if it's the last GM, why not go for broke and get a CTS-V.
Looking at the dealer ordering site, it suggests that the Recaro seats are heated/cooled. Looking at the consumer site, it doesn't go into that kind of detail. But I couldn't be 100% sure. Presumably a local Cadillac dealership would be able to tell you definitively.
If they can't, I'm not sure internet ordering is really the right way to fix that? Maybe some kind of tort reform where manufacturers could more easily ditch dealerships that don't represent them well? Or to where at least they could change the model to something consumers liked better? Of course you'll need that for this internet buying scheme too. It won't fly in most states I don't believe.
08/10/09
08/10/09
08/10/09
[OMBUDSMAN'S NOTE: So does Ray.]
08/10/09
[OMBUDSMAN'S NOTE: You are a proofreader away from being a great commenter. Please take a minute or two to read your own stuff before hitting submit.]
08/10/09
08/10/09
[OMBUDSMAN'S NOTE: Dude, have you never worked in Saqles? It is far harder to make a living in that department than Sales.]
08/10/09
08/10/09