HN user
I'm sure some people would consider me a troll, while I think I'm just writing honestly when I see things I don't agree with. Yet reading what you just wrote makes me want to quit this site forever. On most sites we know not to reveal enough to get doxxed. Here we reveal a lot thinking we're dealing with serious people. Stupid mistake. Thanks for the warning about the stalkers.
A 20 year old pickup is fuel injected, has a catalytic converter, and is checked by it's OBD2 controls constantly.
Unless the pickup is failing its smog tests, and driving around with expired registration, it's operating pretty well I promise.
Regarding oil consumption, that might be possible, but would eventually clog up the catalytic converters with an oily residue and also cause OBD2 faults for bad catalytic converter efficiency.
Maybe they're leaking it on the ground I suppose.
Or it's two stroke oil for the leaf blower.
I'm from California where ignoring someone for the way they dress doesn't really happen often. And honestly, any car salesman that's been in it for more than a month has seen a blue collar worker come buy a $80k diesel pickup or escalade for their wife.
What we do screen for a bit is basically time wasters. It is possible to be accidentally picked up in this net, and then say "they sure missed out, I bought a car at the next place". That's unfortunate for the salesperson sure, but you're ignoring the countless hours saved by quickly dismissing the true time wasters.
I sold cars and was very good at it (better than top 1%) and would sometimes get in a mood when I would ignore intuition for a few weeks and just do an amazing job with everyone. Doing an amazing job works well, and you can get people to buy a car who swear they stopped with ZERO intention of actually buying a car that month even, very often. But you almost never even get CLOSE to selling a car to someone you have a bad vibe about, even if you go all in.
If you're good at car sales, you have more people to follow up with and do a good job with than you have time. I sold 34 cars a month average over years. National average is 11. Eventually you have to trust your judgement to save yourself 10+ hours a week, even if once a month it costs you a sale.
They are definitely compensated via a gross profit commission split just like others at the dealership. They do have volume bonuses to make up for the fact that most of their deals will be low or no profit, but if you inquire on the internet about buying a rare model, it's not like they're going to discount it drastically and get a low commission... It's a rare model after all.
4. You said final paperwork previously.
I'm not going to bother responding to the rest as it's clear there's some misremembering or exaggeration going on here.
In my experience, the things you are describing are very rare, and even more rarely intentional. Why they keep happening to you, idk.
1. I wouldn't call a miscommunication between a handshake deal with multiple people and departments involved and the next day the exact same as a "term sheet ruse" which implies there are games being played on the actual term sheet in front of you. I would say in many industries there are terms on the final documents that don't always exactly match what earlier communications, and yes it's important to make sure they match up.
2. A new car is new as long as it hasn't had a registered owner. You can even have a new car with an already started warranty sometimes. I still wonder how you made it to the paperwork stage without seeing the car and noticing it wasn't exactly 'new new', but if you landed on a very shady salesperson it could be covered up (simply leaving the dashboard display on a trip meter instead of odometer could do this I suppose)... But once again.. I STILL think it's more of an accidental miscommunication than deception since everyone knows it will eventually be discovered. Dealerships sell many "demos" year round, and I've also never seen this drama in person even though demo sales are common industry wide.
3. Clerical errors do happen when a salesperson gives management a summary, a salesmanager loads a deal into the system, and a "finance manager" (I hate them) finished loading things so that the DMV and banks are happy. It does happen. It isn't a tactic because once again, people rarely miss a $1000 line item, or the payment going up suddenly.. so why have the drama, potential deal blow up, yada yada.. the salesperson doesn't get paid on non vehicle adds ons or fees, and management gets such a small cut of gross profit I just don't believe it's done on purpose since it has a high threshold of drama.
4. I have never seen this, and I can't even imagine how we'd get the computer system to do this. Also, the banks would reject a contract later that doesn't add up and send the deal back. And finally, who is intentially commiting this kind of fraud on a document that will forever exist in your hands and the banks hands. Would there be an easier way to get caught for some crazy fraud than having numbers not add up on a final contract?
I haven't seen the show unfortunately.
My basic summary of the entire absurdity of the common tactic of "what's the best price you can do?" is as follows..
The best price is a vague concept depending on where we want to draw the line.
Best price I can do and keep my boss happy with my performance?
Best price I can do if I want to be below average at this company?
Best price I can do if I want to ask for a personal favor from my boss to allow me to heavily discount this car beyond established metrics we have and sell it this one time?
Best price I can do if I want to be yelled at tomorrow morning?
Best price I can do if I want both my boss and I to be yelled at tomorrow?
Best price I can do if I want my boss to negatively impact his career by the owner seeing him make deals like this too often?
Best price I can do if I want to get myself or my boss fired the next day? I could probably somehow secretly sell a car $10k under what I should... Once.
Where do we stop? Some nice people pay MSRP. Some people ask for a gesture of a discount. Some people ask for what discount is fair to market and we'd be ok with, and take it. Some people want below market, and we try to stop it if the car is in demand or we have enough volume. Some people want prices so low they'd fall into the "negatively impact the salesperson or teams career". Sometimes we even take those, but it's always a calculation between taking a below market average offer or waiting for one of the earlier described people to walk in.
1. Weird fraud I've never seen done, if the actual original interest rate was "agreed upon", and not just a "potentially if you qualify at our source bank".
2. I assume the car was looked at and maybe test driven. I find it hard to believe this was a 'ruse' left for the final moments. I can imagine people getting confused or not hearing or understanding I suppose.. someone wants a discount, salesperson says we have a demo over here we can do a large discount on.. and somehow the miles or reason for discount were not discussed. I wouldn't call this a ruse, and once again not something I've done or seen since it's just a waste of time. Obviously the person will discover the miles at some point, so why have the drama.
3. Illegal to pad a term sheet and then stuff a $1000 'charge'. You'd atleast have to have the customer sign the contract for what they were getting for their $1000. Dealers attempt to add things often, but they can't be secretly padded into the initial payment discussions. It's superficially easy for a customer to snap a photo of a preemptive term sheet and burn a dealership at the DMV dealers office or back out a whole deal months or even years after purchase if this was documented. Again, not something I saw in 10 years.
4. I saw countless people get confused by the "total" on the contract, usually when selling a used car to a less mathematically and logical buyer for some reason. You can sell a Porsche to an accountant and all goes great everytime, but sell a used Corvette to someone that personally requested a 72 month loan and watch drama unfold as he wonders why the total of payments on his $50k car is $70k. Luckily I was good and could always explain reality of sales tax, registration, and interest to these people. But not everyone is so lucky.
Maybe the dealerships I worked at were above average in integrity, because they were high performers and high performers don't have time to fraud induced drama, but honestly if you land on a dumb salesperson that can't explain your confusion to you, you can end up thinking your confusion was their attempt at a scam.
You can buy any car in America using the Tesla model. Just call them, tell them you'll pay asking price (just like Tesla requires) and tell them you want it delivered to your house with the paperwork. I have done this countless times, even for people negotiating a discount.
I sold cars for a decade, at very busy dealerships, and I have no idea what a term sheet ruse means. The only 'ruse' in car sales is the game played to stop people that want to pressure a dealership into selling something below it's typical sale price.
If a car is in demand, it sells near MSRP. If it's a high volume commodity that's hard to sell in the required numbers, you can discount it heavily. If everyone wanted to buy a car at "the best possible deal you've done in the last 90 days" dealerships would basically be out of business by definition. So someone has to hold the line or the entire system doesn't even work.
Im a very frugal person and don't even buy new cars, but why some people think they deserve to pay less than their neighbor did blows my mind still to this day.
Take it from a car salesman, this is often a tactic to slow down the negotiation and make you feel like your offer was a good deal for you. I have said those words many times when I could have gone lower than their offer, but if you just go back and accept it, a lot of "hard negotiators" get cold feet. Anyone that brings a friend to buy a car with them automatically broadcasts "I'm playing games and brought an extra player" so we turn on the games too.
Every person? Obviously not. Statistically more likely? Absolutely.
And your comments about SF people are absolutely true, and I live here.
Obviously there are great low income earners. I'm just speaking statistically.
Did you follow this safety protocol with the current covid vaccines?
Jesus. Go more extreme then. Do you want to live next to the barely employed, social services using, bike stealing crowd? Are we really pretending nicer safer areas aren't more desirable than areas of low income housing?
This wasn't about me, I wasn't the one I described. And I totally understand why people in Atherton wouldn't want people like me as their neighbor. I'm not goofy enough to think we'd be best buds if only given the chance.
Jesus. I can't even be bothered to keep going with this.
Yes, obviously the danger of getting passed by a much faster silent vehicle is much less in an area with low traffic density, low intersection density, yada yada. I'm glad we finally got to the bottom of your confusion.
Is there anyone that genuinely wants people a few steps down financially from them living near by them? If you make $150k being an decent but not fantastic engineer and you get into a nice enough neighborhood, are you really that excited if the vacant land down the street is being turned into low income duplexes for tow truck drivers? Honestly?
Heck, even the safety aspect. And the mining of materials. The recycling aspect (or lack there of), or the disposability of the vehicles if the battery/charging system bricks itself. The Chevy Volt forums are full of people losing thousands of dollars because their low miles car worth about $10k, needs a $10k battery module or two.
Either dodge chargers in your area don't have the loud exhausts that they do here in California, or you have a problem of some sort. Loud noises bounce off the road, off buildings. Basically the reason you can hear someone talking yell even if they are facing away from you.
It can be a response to people taking a handful of incidents and ignoring the millions of safe and courteous police interactions a year. So while it may have been a response to cries about police violence, it doesn't automatically become some white supremacist pro police violence symbol....
And here I was thinking it was used by people that appreciate their local police force and understand the stresses they are under.
Atleast when a Dodge Charger is charging up from behind, I can hear the thing. Pedestrians can hear the thing.
When the demographic that currently commits most reckless driving eventually adopts electric cars, it's going to be a blood bath.
? I explained in my post I take it to car washes on hot days. Cold water conducts way better than your idea of "shock" via air and sun rays.
Your winter water idea shows you might almost understand water conducts better than air. So it's just proof you don't read well. And either way, it's 1000x more extreme than what an laptop screen experiences.
My Pixel 4XL, that I bought second hand, had it's battery replaced TWICE under warranty. Then, it started failing against, and I got an OS level alert saying they're detecting another battery fault and that I was eligible for a warranty extension at no cost, and to go and get it fixed. I just take it to the nearest UbreakIfix (or something like that) and they fix it in an hour sometimes, once it took a few hours because they were extra busy.
I was so impressed I bought my dad another used Pixel 4xl because I trusted them. And I'm someone that in general dislikes Google for losing their way the last 5-10 years.
I'm sitting in a car with 150k miles on it, with the original windshield. It has one chip from when I followed a gravel truck too closely once. Sometimes I even take it to a carwash in the summer with a baking hot windshield. Sometime I turn on the heater in the winter while it's snowing. Amazingly, engineers have designed a glass product that is as heavy, thick, coated, whatever... To survive common usage for a decade.
Why do you think that is? It works great here for companies (Nordstrom, Costco, even Walmart)
Car dealerships do favors constantly for repeat customers that don't haggle to death during the purchase process.
A vehicle needing a repair that costs 50% of its new MSRP is extremely rare, outside of a few electric vehicle battery packs.
In addition, when a vehicle reaches the point where any common repair costs more than it's current market value, it's basically considered worthless and only desperate people buy them. How long does it take an apple product to reach that point? A year?