sipark

Hope this is not a repost

how dealers make money

PixelHarmony

Wow, I never knew that.. So I guess since I did get $1500 off my TSX's, I only paid a little over $500 invoice. I talked them into taking off all dealer fees and my temp plates were free. I didn't want any accessories or options they give. And on top of that I paid for the car in cash. :lol: I must've pissed off a lot of people at this dealership since they aren't getting much of a cut from my sale, cept the internet guy who made the sale.

Maybe that's why they didn't offer any free oil changes?

Good post!

SacQuacker

How car dealers really work:

slo007

Good editorial.

Poindexter

Now I'm pissed
That article made my blood boil.


Great write-up though.

CGTSX2004

iTrader: (1)

Hmm...just as I thought. Good thing I already did the back and forth method on both of my dealerships to get the best possible price.

Very interesting nonetheless...

Whiskers

Nice. I read that you should make the deal at the end of the day / month / year as well.

Junkster

great find. This should take alot out of the mystery of how much money is involved for everyone in the process when a car is bought/sold.

My buddy is a finance officer for a Scoobie/Nissan dealership and it's interesting how the business goes down. For instance, when I bought my scoobie, he showed me the invoice and how he's financing it through Subaru, but since I had a two late bills on my brother's mitsu (financed under my name) with my salary, he couldn't hit the .9% interest that Scoobie was offering. So he went back and came back with the interest rate and we signed.

I asked him while we were signing papers in his office how it got through the second time... and he told me he fudged the numbers a bit. He increased my income by 2 grand for the year, which made my two late payments less of a factor. He told me that if a salesman really wants to sell a car and some minimal paperwork stuff is the only thing that is holding the deal back, he would fudge numbers for the sale.

Junkster, who thinks a good salesperson is another key to the deal

iamhomin

I guess then I got scammed the back door way.

Blast!!

Stevens24

As a Sales person there are numerous ways deals get done. Hold back is not there to allow dealers to sell cars at invoice. Hold back is design to cover some of the insurance and flooring costs of having vehicles at the dealership. Supply and demanddictates price most of the time. As far as Acura is concerned end of the month doesn't hold as much importance since they gauge sales multiple time during the month. End of the year is the only real time you can save a little more than others. Dealerships will make up some money on the back that they give up on the front. I just don't understand why these same reporters don't bug Doctors and lawyers about what they make. And it is a two way street if I had a dollar for every customer that worked a deal and then had the worst credit that they couldn't finance a pizza I'd be retired. In the End it is a business It must make money to survive.

Oh yeah how come you don't ask your grocer what invoice is on a box of cereal?

sipark

Who buys $30K worth of food at a supermarket?

Whiskers

Um, probably everyone....

Food = about $100 a week = about $400 a month.
My TSX payment = about $400 a month

sipark

So, you buy next 5 years worth of food at the super market once?
Must have a freakin' huge fridge!

Junkster

hehe.. spoken like a true sales rep (in anything).

I have to totally agree, people should definitely challenge doctors and their bills. Lawyers, I dont' know so much about, but doctors can definitely justify most charges. With malpractice coverage and some hospital coverage charges, it adds up pretty quick. Then you get surgical instruments that is made of stainless steel, but is a 'one-time' use variety, it's a costly little thang. And not many car salespeople have quarter million dollar debt for spending 8 to 10 years slaving away your youth, so the profits get a bit higher. But I do agree that MDs are overpaid, no doubt...

But back to the lecture at hand...

Car dealerships are a business, yes. And I totally agree, they need to make a profit to stay afloat. But the consumer is king, in the end, and with so many choices (dealerships, let along brands and models), it's gotta be a cut-throat business. But I've seen some dealerships that I would go back to time after time because of the people I've dealt with. So, as a consumer, questioning and proding for more savings is a pretty logical thing to do.

That being said... when I was shown invoices, I noticed that my Scoobie was more expensive then another Scoobie invoice he was holding, with the identical specs. I asked my friend why the price difference, and he said even time of production can vary the price of the car by up to 700 bucks... how interesting.

hehe... Stevens... cereal invoice... you silly...
Can you see going up to the check out... 'hey, I was looking at Edmunds.com and they said this Frosted Flakes' TMV is 2.50.' They show you invoice, then they send you to financing or sales... then you walk out of the store, but only if you have proof of insurance for your cereal...

hehe... silliness is great.

Junkster, who tried the strawberry Honey bunches of Oats... yummy

Junkster, who

Whiskers

Hey, $400 bucks a month is $400 a month no matter how you see it. And yes, my fridge is da bomb....

CGTSX2004

iTrader: (1)

MDs are overpaid?

:wtf:

If anything, they don't get paid enough. If anyone is overpaid, it's those athletes, singers, and actors.

sipark

If I said to my manager "I'm not reporting to work, unless I get paid more", they'd escort me out the building, suspend my badge access and then fire me.

Junkster

hehe... bragging about fridge content... we should have a picture thread: what's in your fridge?

Junkster, who would limit the posts to only pictures and discussions of the pictures

Junkster

From my personal experience of going to see, working with in hospital and now in research settings, unless your at the peak of your profession, there is no reason you should be picking up that much cash for what you were trained to do. The disparage of salary between a ped and someone cardiac are teh :ghey:... what are you tryin to say, taking care of a kid with the flu is less important then some old dude with heart murmers?

The high end people in the profession, along with popular specialties, are ruining the true value of medicine.

Of course, there are other factors.

I would say 15~20% of atheletes are overpaid (the Clinton Portis and Eli Mannings of the world), but the rest have pretty average salaries, considering agents and others take parts of their checks. Singers... I don't know how much they make, but I'm sure there's alot of starving musicians as well. Actors, well, it's either they get the money or the studio keeps it, I'll take the lesser of the evils...

Junkster, who is underpaid

CGTSX2004

iTrader: (1)

This may be true, but if there's someone I'd rather overpay, it's a doctor as opposed to paying obscene prices to watch a bunch of grown men play a game, watch someone sing, or watch someone pretend to be someone else. Personally, I'd pay police officers and firemen more than I'd pay politicians or any of the aforementioned overpaid individuals.

Junkster

hehe.. so true about the police and firemen...

we say we won't pay for singers, athletes and actors, but we do, all of us. We watch Monday Night Football, listen to Ashely Simpson on the radio (she should really thank her dad and sister for her whole career) and can't stay away from movies with Kate Beckinsale in it... soooooooooooo hot, want to touch the hiney...




































sorry, lost my train of thought, what were we talking about again?

Junkster, who... argh... kate beckinsale

CGTSX2004

iTrader: (1)

Junkster

Right... sorry... We'lll stop here.

Junkster, who will move his nonsense-ing to Ramblin's

Stevens24

I understand the confusion with every manufacturer having different markups etc. The cereal comment was just a general comment ment at the concept that most retail items, clothe TVs, video games , sports equipment get marked up 50% and you aren't arguing with every cashier for a better price. I don't mind how the business is as long as the consumer realizes that Auto dealership are a business, and they must make a profit. I think it is fun.

biker

The bottom line is to get the best deal: make dealers compete for your business, do it at the end of the month, pay cash and leave out the useless stuff.

gt0279a

We all just want a reasonable deal.

You can go right now to acura.com and pull up a number for a 36 month lease on a TSX.
(lets say it's $1000 out the door and $375 a month) They even use a high money factor based on poor credit to calculate the number on the website.

The problem is as soon as you walk into a dealership you get raped. They bring back this piece of paper with an insulting payment (probably more like $1500 OTD and $475 a month)

You the have to waste your time just getting back to even. Then do it all over again when it comes to getting a fair price for your trade.

You don't go to a grocery store and see a $3 box of cap'n crunch cereal that has a second price tag on it adding $1 because it has a toy in it.
Or the guy at the store telling you how popular this particular cereal is and how it's a steal for you to get at his price.
But even when you agree to buy the cereal, your informed that there are no more crunch berries and you'll have to settle for the plain one.
And even if you thought you got a good deal on the cereal, you still gotta buy the milk.

slo007

Gotta have milk!!

Stevens24

Well I go to Acura .com and putin 0 down just drives of 897.65 on a 36 month lease with 12k miles and lo and behold the payment is 447.65 plus tax. Most Manufacturers websites are for 48 states so they can't calculate TAX and they don't take into account other items. You can base your price off of 500 over invoice but Dealers don't need to sell the car at that.

jcg878

Don't say this during your interviews

Physicians are not overpaid. I know plenty who make less than a lot of pharmacists I know (who aren't overpaid either, IMO). There are specialties that gouge patients for sure. I had an ENT who wanted to charge me $1500 for a 15 minute procedure to inject a hardening substance into my soft (?) palate to cut down snoring. He was only going to be there for the actual injection, but if he was there the entire time, he'd still be pulling in $100/minute! Why so much? Because it's not covered by insurance, methinks. But I digress... I think the average internal med/family med doc/pediatrician/getriatrician is underpaid, and attempts to see high numbers of patients to make up that income hurt us all

Oh for all you snorers out there - a $100 Tempurpedic pillow from Brookstone for me allows my wife to sleep.

jcg878

A business indeed, and like every other business, the more they get you to pay for it, the more they make. If I walk out with a steal, I don't feel bad for the people in the system that were trying to exploit me. That F&I business is too shady for me...

I do have some sympathy for the up-front salesmen, but I'd suggest they find another job

lostJR

You feel like an idiot if you pay list price for a car. You don't feel like an idiot if you pay list price for a box of cereal because you know that the person behind you is paying the same.

The retail car business has brought on a lot of their poor reputation by turning the purchase of a car into a game to see how much they can get out of the buyer. Every business tries to maximize profit, but the retail car business does it by abusing the customers!

ric

It used to be that a medical degree allowed one to immediately walk into the nearest Porche dealership and order one up......... managed care, lack of tort reform/malpractice insurance have changed all of that, and the real income for physicians is driven by their subspecialty and the method by which they choose to practice. Fewer and fewer elect to function as part of a private practice, more and more have "affiliations' with hospitals who can carry their insurance costs. Specialists do rake in based on the procedure, where you are paying for their specific depth of unique training. General med/internists and psychiatrists tend to be at the low end of the scale, while cardiologists and neurosurgeons tend to be up there, and anesthesiologists generally do rather well. However, one has to be careful to look at the cost reimbursed by insurance vs the charge; the cost of my wife's neurosurgeon - affiliated with a major teaching/research institution - for his 2 1/2 hour craniotomy to deal with a rupture brain aneurysm was $80,000; insurance reimbursement was for about 1/3 of that, which the hospital deemed "acceptable" and I had no copay....... I would note that the neurosurgeon was board-certified as a radiologist and neurosurgeon, a combo that was a unique asset in dealing with my wife's circumstance, and I'm not complaining. The rest is written off, which explains, in part, how hospitals maintain a nonprofit status - they sustain huge paper losses, although, increasingly, in some states, the losses are real.

As increasing numbers of docs take paid positions (vs private practice) in order to have an umbrella for malpractice, their income drops along with their personal risk. Ultimately, this impacts the hospitals that serve impoverished neighborhoods more than those that serve, say, Philadlephia's Main Line, or New Jersey's Short Hills; the latter are more dependent upon slightly more lucrative third-party payors vs medicare/medicaid. Does that result in better care? touchy question...........

Folks in large-ticket retail sales - cars, houses, boats, planes - can make money that is disproportionate to their hourly investment of time if they are damn good and have a command of their market sector - and, as the article pointed out, most sales outlets for large ticket items are set up with a mini-pyramid structure in which the manager makes more and the manager of the manager makes even more.........(includes housing developers; their approach is similar to that of the car dealer that the article cited). But - the article cited in the post at the top of this thread put a finger on the real issue - the real money to be had, guaranteed, is in the financing where naievete on the part of the consumer can lead to a really good consumer hosing more often than not.

Small-scale retail? I actually try to avoid buying anything at full retail, anywhere, any time - up to and including the rice crispies. The full retail outlet on an expensive side street in downtown Philly or in the King of Prussia Mall is going to charge me for his/her rent - they have to, to survive. So, either they have to provide me with true value-added service (rare) or I shop via google. Most reatilers are trying to make it on the "value-added" component of purchasing, but you pay for that "coddling". Why should I pay 40% more for a standard vitamin supplement at a store in downtown Philadlephia vs buying it over the internet from a direct sellor who has a warehouse somewhere out in the boonies? Same product - and I can place the order at 3 AM and take less overall time. Some people do it by shopping the outlets, I do it via the internet.

as for pharmacists? You know better than I do, but - my sense is that the retail part of pharmacy has turned into a merchandising tool where the real education of a pharmacist gets lost in the suffle, I suspect - and the research pharmacist or staff pharmacist in a hospital setting really has to struggle for his/her place at the table, both in terms of credibility and in terms of $ from what I've been able to see. A few teaching/research hospitals use pharmacists appropriately, as part of the care team for complex cases......... and those places can be counted on the fingers of a hand or two in any given large city.

As for architects - our fees are usually less than the brokerage costs for property sales. A rich architect has either inherited it or married it....................

lostJR

That is not really the point of the cereal comparison. The difference between cars and cereal is not the difference between full retail and discount. When I buy cereal at the store, the guy behind be _at the same store_ is paying the same price. Two people _at the same car dealer on the same day_ can end up paying very different prices.