whitex
Well-Known Member
That is not true. A friend bought a used Toyota Sienna couple of years ago from a dealer like that. The dealer did not entertain any offers - they explained to him that the price lowers every week (even told him how much the next discount was going to be) and if he wants a lower price to come back next week, and if the car hasn't sold by then, it will be discounted. If you think about it, it simplifies things for the dealer too, for example they don't need to have anyone onsite to do the negotiations, plus there are no multi-hour negotiations to be had with customers - all that costs the dealership money as they have to staff for that. The cost savings combine with potentially selling at higher prices may net a profit to the dealer even when offset by customers who are turned off by this model.
In the case of my friend it worked. At first he didn't buy the car, but then did more research and found only 3 cars with the discontinued seat configuration he needed for his large family, so he decided to pay the current price and get the van at ~$1,500 over what he researched the market value of it was, simply because he needed the car (his old one was totaled in an accident) and didn't want the car to sell and have to look for more of that rare configuration, possibly having to ship it from another state. One thing to note, the dealer didn't apply any pressure tactics, nobody called him at home or anything like that. It was pretty much like Tesla model, take it or leave it (though they did let him set drive the car, unlike Tesla).
I wasn't defending the model, nor did I say it works on everyone. I was simply stating that it is not a new sales model, and that it seems to work for some sellers, including Tesla, since they stick with it. The goal of a sales model is to maximize profit, not to sell to every customer. It's kind of like when you see items go in auctions for more than new, or when you search prices on the internet and find people listing items at high markups and think "who would buy a graphics card on Amazon for $1,749 when they can buy it direct from manufacturer for $1,199 ?!?" This is an actual example by the way from December 2018. Even today, after the Christmas rush, the same card lists on Amazon between $1,400-$1,500:
Amazon.com: Buying Choices: NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition
While you can buy the same thing from the manufacturer for $1,199 (with a bonus $60 game):
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/shop/geforce/?page=1&limit=9&locale=en-us
Obviously they are not selling to customers who do their research, but since those sellers pay Amazon to warehouse it (half of them are "Fullfillment by Amazon") they obviously must sell enough to make a profit.
Welcome to the free market!
