That wasn't how the story went?

LMAO LMAO

From what I can see, it would depend on who's telliing it you ornery bugger. :grr:

If you have a family, DON'T DO IT!!!






been there, done that...

:) :) :)


So, what ended up happening? Did you get it taken care of or did you finally have to pay anyway?

It cost me less money to pay them off than it would have to go to court and (get this) win. The sad thing is, I would have easily won the darn thing too. The system is soooooooooo messed up Mike. When I got a letter to come in for jury duty after it was all said and done on another ease, I was still so mad I tossed it in the round file and didn't reply. Hey, at least I'll have a nice tax write off this year. ;)

your cousin's the Pope?!


that makes your career choice interesting!

About 25 years ago, when I first started in sales (not cars), I had a customer who was a car salesman. For no apparent reason he said to me, "people say salesmen lie, but the customers lie a lot more". As time went by I gradually learned what he had meant. The lies vary but common ones would be about prices or services offered by competitors. Interestingly, most people will recount tales of their lies to salespeople, often even exaggerate them, to show how shrewd or clever they are in negotiating and purchasing. Of course, if a salesperson were to do the same to them they'd be (rightly) incensed. The point is that honesty in business is a two way street.


Personally, I've found that honesty in selling is far more profitable in the long term than lies. Lying to customers, in fact, is the quickest way to a short sales career. It catches up fast. And as someone mentioned in another post, the easiest sale is the repeat customer who was happy with your products and services before. As to customers who lie, when a salesman has a good trade built up he can afford to broom the people he isn't comfortable dealing with......which takes time but is kinda nice when you get there.

I read that a couple years ago, it's a definite must-read. I'm pretty sure that's where I learned what a "yank" is. The salesmen aren't the evil ones, it's the finance guys that are the scumbags. If that's not enough to scare the hell out of anyone who wants to buy a car, I recommend going to ripoffreport.com and do a search for "car dealers" and reading some of the horror stories there.

First thing to understand is that in life you get out of it what you put into in generaly speaking. I decided early on that the Car business had it's reputation and that did not have to define me. As was said previously, if you treat people the way you would want to be treated then they will respect you. Respect will not in and of itself sell cars, but it helps. Respect is what has kept me in the business for as long as it has. I have served in this business in many capacities and am currently dealing with commercial customer's who are no less demanding, but much easier to deal with.

At any rate, it is because of the reputation that most people are jerks when they come into a dealership and I understand that, although that doesnt discount the fact that even though you are simply trying to earn their business by being upfont and honest they continue to act like idiots.

I have even heard it said that when buying a car even a preacher leaves his Bible at home. I doubt that is true for all, but I know the majority will do anything just short of selling their own grandmother to get a deal. So, my statement was to that buyer, which represents no less than 50% of the retail customer's, who will tell you anything or do anything to save a buc or two.

Please don't misunderstand, I realize that there are bad apples in this and every other business, but to assume that more than 20% of the selling industry is that way would be rediculous. As I said originaly, the sleaziest people I have met, have almost always been the customer, who as I said are almost willing to do anything to save a buc.

Glad everyone liked that article. I thought it was pretty fair and gave both sides.

Not looking forward to buying a new rig here before too long...

When shopping for a replacement van for our '98 Safari, we had some interesting experiences.

We started off heading out for OK City. We stopped off at a dealership in Yukon at a GM dealer that had 2 Astros sitting on their lot. I was kinda surprised that a salesman didn't chase my van across the lot as I drove over to the vans. I looked the 2 vans over for quite a while before anyone ventured out. Finally, about the time I'm thinking they must not want to talk to us, out comes a salesman. I asked him about the Red van with Gold trim (:thumb:) and he tells me they want $12.9 for it and it's a '01 has 34K miles on it. I talked to him for a bit to see what his best price was (I wasn't getting carried away Foxman;), after having a cousin that manages a dealership, I know there is usually a lower price than the first one stated). He said that was the best they could do and after visiting a bit more told us if there was anything else he could do for us to let him know. He handed me his card as I climbed into our van and waved as we drove off.

We headed on into the city. And made quick circles of lots, managing to escape the dealership property before the salesmen running after us could catch up. One lot though we were driving through, the car in front of us stopped. THEY STOPPED!!!! There wasn't room to get around them. Not only did they get hammered by salesmen, we had one on each side of the van, one trying to talk to the wife through her window and one trying to talk to me through mine. Luckily they didn't have what we wanted and when they heard what I thought about Chrysler products they surrendered and walked off.

One dealership actually had an Astro. As we pulled up to it, here comes the guy. He's really helpful. We go for a test drive. Then he wants me to take a spin with him in mine. He notices all kinds of things wrong with it - it's odd that the only problem it had other than high mileage he didn't catch. He takes us inside, keeping my keys of course, and starts talking to us about the deal he could offer us. The van was a 2004 Astro 4wd loaded with about 8k miles on it. They want 18k for it. I tell them that's more than we can afford - we were looking for something between 10k and 13k. He crunches numbers, gets us down to taking our van in trade and 17K. When I told him thanks for his time, he told us to hold on, and slips back out. He brings his sales manager in. That guy starts talking. They talk, show me a "deal" to which I say no to, head back out, talk and come back in with another "deal". After a while, I divulge to them that I had found another van, told them the deal but not where, and the salesman flat out called me a liar and that if such a van really existed he'd buy it so he can make 4-5k on it. That's when I had it. We'd been there for 2+ hours at this point. The manager realized the salesman crossed the line with me and the price dropped considerable. He offered us the van at 15K and would give me an aditional 2k for my van. By this point though, I had made up my mind that if they gave me their van for free I wouldn't take it. We got up and asked for our keys. They stalled, left the room, came back, tried another pitch and I had to speak in a loud, forceful tone "I WANT MY KEYS NOW!". They were really, really mad at me for not taking their deal. The first salesman was glaring angrily at me and his tone had changed completely from when we first met - he told me we had wasted his afternoon and he could have been selling cars to people that wanted them. I told him we tried to leave an hour sooner and he wouldn't let us. We were both glad when we got back into our van and pulled out.

We ended up going back to the first dealership. I went inside, found the salesman I talked to, and told him we were interested in his van. We test-drove it and bought it at $12.9.

When I get ready to buy again, if he's still selling at that dealership I will go back and talk to him again.

From someone who has been in sales 25+ years I couldn't have said it better myself.

I learned a long time ago there's a very fine line between being a great salesman or a great con-man.Learning to be a great salesman will keep you in the business as a career.

Like what?