Car dealer story

tbm3fan

Old Man with a Hat
Joined
Jan 22, 2012
Messages
5,254
Reaction score
2,805
Location
Pleasant Hill, CA
This story is about the Jaguar dealer in Livermore, CA.

I had a patient in today, Mrs.B, who arrived before her daughter, the patient, arrived. We got started talking about blue frames since blue is both our favorite colors. I then mentioned how I didn't have any cars in blue. That caused the conversation to drift.

She was looking for a Jaguar (I didn't judge the wisdom) for the last 9 months. Wanted blue but with a dark interior rather than white, off white, or tan. Finally found one at the Livermore dealer. It was perfect and said she would like this car. Her husband would be over to take a look before she purchase it.

Her husband decided to get over there on the sooner side. So he went after he got out of the gym while still in his gym clothes. Right then I knew there was going to be an issue before the story went further. You see she is Asian and her husband is African-American.

He looked it over and drove the car and said all was good. He asked if he could put down a deposit on the car to hold it for his wife who would be down 2 hours later. The manager said he couldn't do that because blah, blah, and blah. Mr.B said he would put down a $10,000 deposit. Manager says no because things could change in those 2 hours. Mr.B then says if she doesn't show he can keep the 10K and give it to charity. Now the manager says no I won't sell you the car. Implies he might want another car if you get the intended meaning. Jaguar U.S. told her that they have no control over dealer managers. So Jaguar ended up with a scathing review.

From there she went off to looking at Porsche instead and just then Mr. B walked in. There was a 10 minute conversation about their daughter and he left. Of course, the side track meant I didn't find out what she ended up buying. I guess I'll have to wait till next Friday to hear the ending.
 
Seems odd this went as far as a test drive and an offered $10k deposit with no discussion of terms/price?

Keep $10k and give it to charity? "Now I won't sell you the car, go somewhere else"? Something went south between the test drive and negotiation. This puzzle is missing a piece.

Or maybe the salesman is like me, race not a factor; just hates dealing with men who need mommy's permission after negotiating a deal?
 
If it were me, I would go to the closest competing Jaguar dealership, and order a car if they have the money. Then after the car arrived, drive it to the first dealership, and rub the paperwork into the managers face. Then to top it off, I would make the first dealership do ALL the warranty work if needed.
 
Last edited:
Good thought Traintech55. I'd add that I'll bet even Jaguar Dealerships have Dealer Trade agreements between ALL the Dealerships in the country...ie, Get the same car from a different Dealer...I've done that myself in the years I waz dealing with the Dealerships directly, Jer
 
That's kinda screwy... though, if taken as an omen against buying a friggin Jaguar, could save them a lot of trouble in the long run.
 
If it were me, I would go to the closest competing Jaguar dealership, and order a car if the have the money. Then after the car arrived, drive it to the first dealership, and rub the paperwork into the managers face. Then to top it off, I would make the first dealership do ALL the warranty work if needed.
I agree, I myself would like to rub some mud in that salesman's face,but I don't think a Jaguar is worth the effort
 
Something went south between the test drive and negotiation. This puzzle is missing a piece.

Second hand story that already had no ending is definitely missing pieces. I going to guess that what actually happened was: A) husband didn't actually want the car and concocted a BS story for the wife, or B) husband was trying to swing out of his financial ability and the dealer found out and didn't want to waste anymore time.
 
If he had walked into a Nissan dealership, they would have tried to get him into a Versa with an 84 month loan at 18% interest.
 
My mother-in-law, a widow, went to her local Cadillac dealer. She said she wanted to test drive a car. The salesman told her to bring back her husband and he would be happy to take them. She drove out of the lot, fuming and drove down the street to the very next dealer and bought a Honda Accord.
 
Second hand story that already had no ending is definitely missing pieces. I going to guess that what actually happened was: A) husband didn't actually want the car and concocted a BS story for the wife, or B) husband was trying to swing out of his financial ability and the dealer found out and didn't want to waste anymore time.

Being as how I have known them 15 years you are way off the mark. If you had read carefully the wife was buying the car on her own and she only wanted his opinion on the car. The car she got was no doubt equally as expensive, just don't know which brand yet, so there goes your financial ability comment.
 
A friend of my mother went into the local Jeep dealer with her husband to look at the Grand Cherokee, every time she asked a question she was ignored and the salesman kept asking her husband questions, he shrug and point to his wife. The Salesman persisted to the point they just walked out on him.

They get in their car and go to the nearest other Jeep dealer where the sales people were very respectable, she asks her questions, looks at the inventory, blaa, blaa, blaa. She then cuts a deal and tells them I'll take two.

They then hop in their new Grand Cherokees and drive back to the previous dealer and ask for the sales manager and explain their story followed up with that they also will be taking all their service to the other dealer.


Alan
 
Last edited:
For that matter I held off on a new Challenger for a long time because of horrible "pay no mind" treatment. I had to ASK for a salesperson who was regaling his co-workers with some BS story. Eventually I walked out, but not before knocking loudly on the glass and waving "bye".

Then one day in semi-rural Ohio for another reason I passed "Charlie's Dodge" and commented to my wife "I wonder how a place like this would treat us?" Well enough that I ordered an R/T that morning :)
 
Being as how I have known them 15 years you are way off the mark. If you had read carefully the wife was buying the car on her own and she only wanted his opinion on the car. The car she got was no doubt equally as expensive, just don't know which brand yet, so there goes your financial ability comment.

Fair enough, you obviously know these people better than I do. And I know that some salesmen assume that somebody isn't worth their time for one foolish reason or another. But you posted an incomplete second hand story, with unnecessarily included facts of race. If you were just telling a story of poor service at a particular dealership, I don't think their race was important in any way. If it was, I doubt the story would have included a test drive or anything beyond. It just seems misleading, and I was only pointing out two realistic situations that could have occurred.

BTW, you seem offended by my speculation of their financial ability, and seem to imply that you know their financial ability. But unless you are running their books you are only speculating from the outside. My job shows me a lot of the inside of peoples financial ability and I have noticed that the flashier, high dollar car renting people are just as broke as anyone else living check-to-check.
 
Fair enough, you obviously know these people better than I do. And I know that some salesmen assume that somebody isn't worth their time for one foolish reason or another. But you posted an incomplete second hand story, with unnecessarily included facts of race. If you were just telling a story of poor service at a particular dealership, I don't think their race was important in any way. If it was, I doubt the story would have included a test drive or anything beyond. It just seems misleading, and I was only pointing out two realistic situations that could have occurred.

BTW, you seem offended by my speculation of their financial ability, and seem to imply that you know their financial ability. But unless you are running their books you are only speculating from the outside. My job shows me a lot of the inside of peoples financial ability and I have noticed that the flashier, high dollar car renting people are just as broke as anyone else living check-to-check.

But race was a factor in this. Whereas the wife is an Asian female and administrator of three hospitals she had no issues. Now her husband did. Was it his gym clothes? Was it his race? Was it the combination we may never know. Yet since at least 30% of our population harbor highly biased to outright racist ideas this manager could possibly be in that group. Bay Area is not immune considering several instances this past summer in the Oakland area.
 
When I got into the dealership parts deal in late '76, each salesman (we didn't get any female sales people until years later) knew what "card" price was and could go that low, if needed, to get the sale. "Card", at that time, was about $600.00 over stated invoice price. Holdback was not to be gotten into, without approval. So, any price issues were concluded with the salesman, then the client was taken to the finance people (who were very easy to deal with) and they figured the payments, could buy extended warranties, or credit life insurance (at this point). When everything worked out, the papers were drawn up and signed. Everybody was happy. This was in stark contrast to many of the "big city dealers" about a 30 minute drive away. It worked well for us, but in the later 1990s, we got "big city-ized" of sorts, but still with the customer-focused approach.

When a prospect comes in, the first thing they usually do is to get their information and run a financial check on them. Which also indicates how many OTHER inquiries into their file have been made. So, when they get back from the sales pitch, etc., the salesperson can know "how strong" the potential buyer might be, which can affect things later on. If their finances aren't that good, then they might get a very low trade-in price on their existing car, for example. End result, if the potential customer has serious financial issues, they get motivated to go elsewhere.

I have heard some "horror stories" from some of our salespeople who got the customers "on the rebound". In one case, the lady went into the Nissan website and got a printed letter of pre-approval to purchase a new Nissan and finance it with the Nissan source. She went into her local Nissan store, with the letter, and she allegedly got read the riot act for what she'd done. Some pretty strong language was used by the finance director, she said. End result, she drove 30 minute to our Nissan store and purchased a new Nissan in the manner she expected and deserved. The bad thing is that that Nissan store was owned by an old-line country GM dealer who probably would have fired those people if he'd known what they'd done.

In another case, a west-central Texas Nissan store was getting close to closing time. A couple drove in to see about a new car. The lone salesman said he was "snowed under" and could they come back the next day. They were ready to buy then and drove 2 hours to our Nissan store and drove home in a new Nissan.

That females and/or ethnicities still seem to be mis-treated goes against GM and Chrysler dealer training, going back at least 50 years. They specifically say "Pay attention to the ladies" as they have final say in about 75+% of all vehicle sales. GM has a training module on "diversity" training in how people are treated by anybody in the dealership. I strongly suspect that Ford, Chrysler, and others have similar.

Yet there are still salespeople who readily "profile" potential customers as to their financial capabilities and "ready to buy right NOW" orientations. And many of these salespeople probably loose more sales than they ever suspect, due to these things.

And the bad thing is that if the sales rep who initially talks to you at the dealership, your contact with them is in the Customer Relations Management software so that he/she gets credit for seeing that person initially (and later on), so that sales commissions can be tracked and distributed later, even shared if another sales rep needs to be involved.

With all of the online dealership inventory listings on the OEM's website, you can see who's got what and where. If you find a sales rep you want to deal with, no problems to get that vehicle dealer-traded for. One of our Brand Z car club guys found a vehicle we had in stock, but he didn't get a timely response to his online request, so he went to another dealership and they dealer traded for it.

The bigger a dealership tends to get, the more convoluted the sales process can become. This is unfortunate! The "big boys" claim it has to be that way to unlock profits in the transaction. But they probably tended to come from an environment/region where they all did it that way. Doesn't always work, though, but they'll never admit it. Personally, I'd rather have volume rather than higher per/unit profits. Volume will take care of you, but that "last $10.00 profit" on a deal might lose that customer in the future. Volume keeps the back-side of the store busy, too! Lots of angles and aspects of things!

Enjoy!
CBODY67
 
Yet since at least 30% of our population harbor highly biased to outright racist ideas...

That just seems unrealistic and rather extreme. Like a statistic from CNN. I'm not saying that racial biases doesn't exist, but claiming that at least 30% of people are racist is pretty much saying that for every three people, one of them is a black panther or klan member. I don't know anyone associated with either organization and I know more than three people.

Could a racial thing have happened with your patient, sure, but I still think that my previous situations are more likely. Or maybe he displayed something political and the manager didn't like that, a scenario which seems to be way too common these days.
 
Back
Top