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Part of the suite of services that I offer is helping people buy cars - new and old. I can handle the entire transaction or sit in the background and review documents and offer advice. If you are questioning the 'Platinum Diamond Tru-Coat Etch Security Protection Package' added to the price of your car, I can help evaluate the benefits that this extra $895 will bring you. Working for car dealerships for 20 years, I can find a common ground that keeps everybody happy - most of the time.
Lately this has been a bit more challenging. Dealer margins are squeezed while the manufacturer's expectations of capital outlays on facilities keep increasing. COVID and the chip shortage have drastically reduced inventories and sales. Most dealers are struggling and looking for ways to squeeze more juice out of every car deal. Manufacturers, seeing unprecedented demand, are raising prices. All this can make buying a car a challenging and frustrating exercise.
This is a good test for the dealers and manufacturers, and the value they place on their existing customer relationships. I see dealers breaking into two camps: those who want to keep their existing customers and the other camp that wants to find a new group of customers. The latter appear to outnumber the former.
Dealer managers smarter than I am must have figured out that repeat customers are boring, and what with all the new Social Media tools, Influencers and self-professed SEO experts, getting new customers is easier than ever. Here are some of the very effective techniques, and their rationalizations, that I have observed lately:
Change The Price:
Normally people have the expectation that if they sign an offer to buy something and place a deposit the price that was agreed upon won't change.
[Rationalization] This is the car business so it's different. What if there are circumstances beyond our control? Like if we want to change the doc fees or the PDI charge - well, we need to be free to do that. We are selling fewer cars so we need to make it up somehow.
Add a bunch of dealer fees and tell the customer they can't be removed:
Examples are a 'Data Protection fee' for $295 - nobody wants their data stolen, so customers should pay a fee for the dealer for keeping it safe.
[Rationalization] It is the law to protect customer data of course, but where is it written that we can't charge for it? Etching is a good one too, and we can tell the customer that it is put on by the manufacturer and that it is required by the RCMP. (I'm not making that up-LR)
Advertise one price and charge another:
[Rationalization]
We want to advertise the lowest price possible on the internet to get customers in the showroom. But when we sell a car we want to make the most profit. So why shouldn't we have it both ways? Those AMVIC rules are just guidelines. We can always call the advertised price a mistake. Just watch out for those W5 people.
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