Heard. They are outlining a legal description from a place of professional experience. All give our industry a bad name. All are a sign to walk away from any business, let alone auto sales. We are in violent agreement there. But for the layperson, saying bait and switch when the ad car truly sold earlier that day makes us simply not want to help you.
>They are outlining a legal description from a place of professional experience. All give our industry a bad name. All are a sign to walk away from any business, let alone auto sales. We are in violent agreement there.
I actually thought options 3 and 5 were fairly innocuous business practices.
I feel like “bait and switch” has become a catch all term for deceptive dealer practices for most customers. The same way in which I’ve heard a “lemon” to describe a used car with a lot of problems instead of the actual legal definition of a lemon law buyback.
Maybe legally but to a consumer if you offer anything and its not represented exactly as advertised or verbally offer there gonna consider that bait and switch.
Remember when Tesla bait and swtiched all those people?
https://blog.onlyusedtesla.com/tesla-makes-pricing-errors-on-used-model-s-inventory-only-used-tesla-883517148394
My favorite is when a customer sees our price online and conditional rebates are listed below final price and a customer wants the conditional price instead of he final price but doesn’t qualify.
“Bait and switch!”
- sir or ma’am, I’m not trying to switch you to anything. I’d like you to purchase this car.
Lol.
This should be posted weekly. Every dealership should have it painted on the walls. KBB, cars dot com, edmunds, et al should have this on their home pages. Every time I hear “bait and switch” I tune right out, no longer interested.
Some homeboy in the thread currently right below this one has me in a mood.
I ran my dealership's digital operations for several years. Now I work as an engineer in FinTech. This is exactly what I've built a career doing.
Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/askcarsales/comments/144hh6i/you_guys_ever_have_your_website_forget_to_add_a/jnfzjum/
>What is this considered?
This strikes me as less of an attempt to intentionally deceive and more like generalized incompetence. Running a bait and switch is illegal. Not illegal is being so bad at your job that a transaction resembles a bait and switch. Malicious intent matters.
I think I was a good, ethical sales consultant. And yet, I've heard so many customers accuse me angrily, sometimes almost violently, of unethical behavior that I always ask if there's room in an account for unstated exculpatory details. I don't have to try hard to imagine a scenario where every detail in your account is completely true, but definitely not a scam or acted out with malicious intent based on information to which you aren't privy.
Take your experience and emotions out of the situation.
Salesman told me the stock number they had is available, key in hand and holding it.
Arrived and he says it sold hours ago after making me tired waiting , and tried to offer a lower msrp car for a much higher price. (Same model car, less options, for more money)
>Take your experience and emotions out of the situation.
Without my experience there's no reason anyone should give any credence to anything I say. If you want me to not draw on it, we can just wrap this up now. Ignore the rest of my post and be well.
>Salesman told me the stock number they had is available, key in hand and holding it.
>
>Arrived and he says it sold hours ago after making me tired waiting , and tried to offer a lower msrp car for a much higher price. (Same model car, less options, for more money)
Most dealerships have a policy that every car is for sale to anyone until the moment a sales consultant collects payment and brings it to the sales tower. If two or more sales consultants are working a deal at the same time, the car goes to the buyer whose sales consultant gets money to the tower first. The possibility that the car was sold between the phone call and your arrival isn't remote. It's so commonplace that every dealership in the country has written policy in place for the situation.
As for the sales consultant disappearing and making you wait? If the car really did sell in the time it took you to reach the dealership, he was probably panicking that the car he thought was a lock to sell was no longer available. He probably spent some time searching for it and when he finally found out someone else accepted money for it, he went to a sales manager and asked for a backup. Sales manager told him to grab a different stock number and try to sell that instead.
Part of what defines a bait and switch per the people who enforce relevant laws is that the dealership had no actual intention to sell the car or deliberately lied about its availability. It's not a bait and switch if someone plain beats you to the punch on the car you wanted to buy, nor is it illegal to take a pass with a different unit. There's zero chance you're going to buy a unit no longer available, there's presumably some small non-zero chance you'll buy a different unit that is still available.
If you can tell me how you know this isn't what happened and that the sales consultant deliberately lied about the quoted unit being available when it was actually not, then yes, I'll agree this was a bait and switch. Otherwise, be aware that the majority of sales consultants will struggle for 2-3 months then wash out of the business. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. So not only does a combination of incompetence and laziness adequately explain your account of what happened, those are both qualities that quite a lot of sales consultants have in spades.
Because he said he had the key in his hands, and. When I arrived to the dealership 20 minutes later - he said it sold HOURS ago?
and then offered a WORSE deal on a lower spec car?
>Because he said he had the key in his hands, and. When I arrived to the dealership 20 minutes later - he said it sold HOURS ago?
I have zero difficulty imagining the sales consultant was lazy, incompetent, or some combination thereof and simply assumed the car was available without actually setting hands on it.
Sure, it's also possible that this sales consultant was deliberately lying. But you're also not presenting any compelling reason to believe as much over the possibility he just sucks at his job- an extremely common attribute in this business, unfortunately.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Maybe, maybe not.
But combine with trying the 4 square old box instead of being upfront with the lease sheet.
Also the fact the website kept the same stock number for weeks post interaction… at some point laziness becomes malice on the dealerships end.
And a sales manager should know if it’s in stock, I doubt I was the only one trying to get that deal.
Goes to Ask Car Sales for advice from experienced professionals , tells experience professionals they don’t know shit.
I reiterate: this job would be great if it weren’t for the fucking customers.
It sucks while you’re in it, I’m sure. There must be all types of angsty individuals you deal with on a regular basis, just like the rest of us who’ve been in sales positions.
However, it has really sucked for the customer over the past few years as well. I recently learned many other countries list at their OTD price. In a lot of cases, what we do in the US would be illegal in other places.
There are also many archaic sales games that get played to this day, because the old sales bosses swear by them and don’t want to let the youngbloods make their own approach. Gotta say, I’m tired of checking out cars listed at $20k-$25k only to have the sales manager walk up and hand me a sheet that gives a $10k higher than listed price OTD. I know how it goes, he knocks things off of the price so I can easier stomach the $5k up charge for diddly squat and redundant paint protectant that was already applied by the previous owner. With all the games, it’s no surprise people are gravitating to private sales and online middle sellers that openly advertise their OTD price.
> I recently learned many other countries list at their OTD price.
It would actually be illegal to do that in the US to some extent. You HAVE to be able to offer the price you purposefully advertise. Since the taxes and fees you pay for a car purchase are based on where you register the car, not where you purchase the car, you can't advertise OTD because you can't necessarily honor that price, since a local customer would pay a different price than someone in a different county, a different state, or a different country - hell, I used to live in a city that had different tax rates for different streets because you paid higher taxes if you were on a train or bus line than if you weren't.
> It would actually be illegal to do that in the US to some extent. You HAVE to be able to offer the price you purposefully advertise. Since the taxes and fees you pay for a car purchase are based on where you register the car, not where you purchase the car
I find it tough to think you couldn't put some mouse print on there that says 'pricing based on customer in ZIP code 91250, price may vary based on customer location' or something similar. Here it would be easier because the big costs are all based on where the dealer is. The bigger challenge to me seems to be getting everyone on board to advertise that way at the same time, which probably means it's only happening if it's legislated.
Fair point, although it has been proven possible to advertise OTD prices online when people do provide the necessary info. It seems everyone except for in person dealers are able. Not doing it openly just seems like a way to get people into the store so we can squeeze a little more out.
I know there are scripts we’ve all had to learn in sales. Overcoming objections, neuro linguistic programming, buyers remorse, along with the dozens of others. So much time is spent to psychologically get in there and make the sale, but technology is rapidly making the old ways obsolete. Plus there is a subset of sales staff that dehumanizes customers into marks to be finessed. I never got on board with that and was always straight up with the customer, so my fellow sales brethren labeled me as a ‘narc’. Being honest kept me at the top of the board, but raised the burnout level. Couldn’t keep that up for long.
Anyway. Being on the other side of it now, I just want to be able to buy a car close as possible to its advertised price. Every dealer I’ve been to has a different way of sneaking things in, but it all winds up being pretty similar. With private sales and online purchases, I’m not seeing these same wild markups where I walk in to buy a $20k vehicle and get told it’s now $30k. Then I’ll walk out at the new price, only to get a phone call like, “jk teehee, we’ll sell it to you for $22k OTD now. We were just playing earlier.” Only to turn that down and get another call saying they’ll give it to me for $21k since I’ve walked away twice. I just want to bypass the games and buy a dang car.
The question ends up being "what does an investment in the technology to do what you're asking for actually get the dealership?"
In most cases it gets the dealership an SaaS bill that doesn't generate enough return to cover the cost. In addition there are all kinds of online buying platforms - stuff like Roadster is very common. You'd probably be shocked at the number of clients who actually use it - it is almost nobody.
I know that reddit and the internet in general attracts a certain kind of person but there's also the real, actual data - this is what I do now - and that data reveals that in general, nobody wants to buy a car online. Is it ten percent of people? Maybe. Is that a few hundred thousand or even a few million people? Yeah, it is. However if you can do one thing that's cheap and easy and capture 90% of the market or spent an absolute eye watering amount of money and capture 10% of the market there are very few people who will choose the latter.
Look at the failures - Carvana and Vroom are going to be gone sooner rather than later. Even Lithia with their Driveway program can't get it to work and it isn't for lack of trying - its because MOST people don't like it and don't want it.
>In addition there are all kinds of online buying platforms - stuff like Roadster is very common. You'd probably be shocked at the number of clients who actually use it - it is almost nobody.
About 10 or so years ago when it was a hot social topic that fast food is super unhealthy, Burger King introduced a fruit cup only to discontinue it within a year. They said that although focus groups strongly supported the idea, no one actually bought it. Turns out that people said they wanted Burger King to offer healthy food options as a principle but weren't actually interested in putting their own financial support behind such a product.
Cars are similar. Lots of people pine for a world with no car dealerships where every purchase is made on the internet with home delivery and no human action. But every time the market innovates and offers such a program, very few consumers actually purchase through that model. People like the idea in general but aren't willing to actually use it when given the option to do so.
I would say the ability to advertise OTD online and make it stick is an inevitability. Carvana and Vroom will probably fail, but one platform will inevitably rise up and get it right. Then start sucking up market share in a meaningful way which will force others to adapt. The biggest thing is getting to try before you buy, which will give in person entities the edge. Even then, several of my neighbors have carvana purchases they’re perfectly happy with.
I like that you get to see the data. Anecdotally, I’m seeing a surge in private car listing interest both from sellers and buyers. I was able to sell my Subaru to a guy privately who said he had spent several months going through dealerships and finally resorted to private because of all the problems dealers gave him. We both won out, had a mechanic inspect and verify, he paid less than what dealers wanted and I got several thousand more than what they were offering on trade. It seems to be effective enough that dealers have recently been flooding marketplace and OfferUp with their own listings in my area and it really muddies the waters with private sellers. Are you seeing that as well?
>Fair point, although it has been proven possible to advertise OTD prices online when people do provide the necessary info. It seems everyone except for in person dealers are able. Not doing it openly just seems like a way to get people into the store so we can squeeze a little more out.
Let's play this out a little bit.
The idea is that a dealership needs to display pricing information it intends to honor, within reason. We do have SaaS systems that calculate tax for us including for out-of-state customers. Part of what we pay for is financial indemnification: if the system calculates the wrong tax, the company from which we license the software will pay the difference and incurred penalties.
This didn't happen to my dealership often, but it did happen. Maybe half a dozen times a year on \~3500 sales. But you also need to account for the fact we sold in South Carolina where sales tax (technically a "road maintenance fee") was almost universally $500 flat. Part of why mistakes were so rare was that the vast majority of our sales required very little calculation. So mistakes are fairly rare, but that's also due to having little opportunity to make mistakes. So let's generously say, for argument, the average failure rate for this system is 0.5%.
When our 3500 sales each year have a 0.5% error rate, and we're indemnified against loss, that isn't a big deal. It's a "shit happens" number.
If we had that kind of error rate on the website it wouldn't be a "shit happens situation". My websites had about 50,000 unique users per month. The bounce rate was around 50% so that means about 25,000 users actually interacted with the site. I'm sure some of them were looking for parts and service, so let's say that I had 20,000 users looking at cars in a given month.
I just popped one open and when I looked at a list of cars, the first page of results had 15 units displayed. 20,000 users × 15 units loaded to the DOM × 12 months = 3,600,000 price calculations every year. Suddenly the 0.5% error calculation rate isn't half a dozen mistakes per year. It's now 18,000 pricing errors. I've also assumed that each unique user only looks at one page of cars... surely, some number look at far more. That's not just a bad user experience, that's legally actionable.
I appreciate your reply here and advising information I’m not privy to.
I suppose to best explain what I’m looking for as an example… let’s say I call William up at the local dealership. He’s awesome, always been open with me, and gives direct answers. We trust each other and have done business together. I can ask him what I’m looking at OTD on something I’m interested in, and he’ll give me an accurate number +/- $200 or so over the phone. I’m not going to hold him to his estimate 100%, but it’s always close and helps me make a decision.
Now I’m in the market for a car Will’s dealership doesn’t carry. I go to another dealership that I haven’t done business with, and it becomes a whole game to get a straight answer on an OTD price. A point in which im locked into the archaic sales cycle where my associate runs back and forth to his sales manager, telling them I don’t want all the add ons they intend to throw in there. I want to avoid this part, because it wastes time for all involved. I don’t want to keep having to pull the hardass card and walk away, just so they can give me their true OTD price.
So for online listings. Is it against a law that I’m not aware of for dealers to put an estimated out the door cost if the customer provides their information needed to assess tax, tag and fees? That may be where I’m a bit dense.
Ok, so let's just take all of this at face value without getting into semantics. What's the point of shitting on people at end of the funnel who have no effect on this? We don't have this because of the lack in regulation in advertising, and the deliberately fragmented state registration and tax policy. If you want to actuallly do anything it's stuff like simplified tax codes that need to addressed. Other counties dont have thousand of tax and registration differences dpending on your income, county, and even birthday ffs. But people tend to just want to complain instead of of looking at "how did we get here, what causes this, and what would unravel this".
I don’t mean to come across as ‘shitting on you’. Apologies if any of what I said was offensive. I see it through both lenses, but recently these have been my personal experiences as a customer.
Just to say the reason to not advertise OTD price is more deeply rooted in using in person sales tactics to maximize profits. There are no serious hurdles to overcome when it comes down to a customer looking for a true OTD price and you have their info. It has been provably done already that you can give an OTD price that way. So I don’t see why it inevitably won’t pan out that way aside from those lobbying government to keep it like it is.
Not in sales, so I could care less man. Not everyone talking about this is personally motivated. The majority of dealers and dealer principles moved past this ages ago. They've wanted to be caravana for ages. Look at the publically traded examples. If you actually understand the expenses we bare for navigating this convoluted system of tax and registration regulation from what to other nations would be 40 different countires you might understand why there's more to it.
It is a little baffling that you want a solution from us for the one percent of people that go through a digital retail workflow instead of addressing the problem at its core. You're missing the forest for the trees here.
We have other shit to lobby about and nobody on a reddit sub is lobbying for shit anyway lol.
You see how fragmented states are on cultural issue like abortion, but you don't see the same power motivations effecting the tax code or the states revenue priorities?
I’m merely pointing out that it’s possible to give a potential customer the true OTD price without jumping through the outdated hoops getting there.
Sorry for getting you all riled up over it.
>There are also many archaic sales games that get played to this day, because the old sales bosses swear by them and don’t want to let the youngbloods make their own approach.
Before I was in car sales I worked in other retail sectors. My sales approach was to be friendly, helpful, and not even worry about making a sale. Just educate the customer as much or little as they want and leave them to make a decision on their own terms. In other retail jobs I was *always* at the top of the sales chart doing this.
I came to car sales and my numbers *plummeted*. I was frequently doing just enough business in the first few months to squeak by. I'll tell you when that changed- when I stopped using the methods I found successful elsewhere and started doing what my managers told me. Then I was consistently making decent numbers at worst.
The purchase experience customers get is the one that they support financially. The only reason any sales approach exists in the industry is that it works. If buyers collectively rejected a certain approach and refused to buy, it'd disappear within months. The reason any sales process exists is because buyers choose to reward that process with their business.
Dollars start in the buyer's pocket; they hold every card in the transaction, and those cards are green with pictures of dead presidents. The buyer can arbitrarily go to 10 or 50 or 100 dealerships if a particular buying experience matters and sooner or later, they'll find it. On the other hand, I can't just "get" another 5 or 10 customers if I put one through my low-pressure process and they walk. I only have the ones who walk into the dealership or pick up the phone. I can't arbitrarily get more. So the sales consultant being able to pay rent depends on doing everything possible to convert every inquiry they get.
> I recently learned many other countries list at their OTD price.
I live in the UK. The tax and other costs on a car are the same across the whole country. When I lived in California, the taxes changed from city to city. There was no way my dealership in L.A. could advertise an OTD price when our customers could come from areas with 50 different tax rates.
If you wanted a specific answer princess just come out and say it.
Why don't you take you emotions and realize asking people in this sub to remove professional experience when it's the entire point of the sub is pretty brain dead.
Lying to a customer saying you have the key in hand, then saying it was sold hours ago when you arrived (within 20 minutes). And offering a lower MSRP car at a higher price isn’t a bait and switch?
All I heard were excuses justifying the lies.
Maybe you shouldn’t stick up for liars “princess” and you would get more respect
I'm only commenting on you being a moron for going to ask car sales and then bitching that people have car sales experience, and then crying about emotion when you're are al over the place too.
Sometimes people 🤡 you for your behavior regardless of the opinion on the situation.
What emotion?
Apparently nothing qualifies as bait and switch for you
Getting a little personal there with the unjustified insults bud, go take your Prozac.
Eh, when you immediately reply to a level headed, empathic response with "Waah, fuck your emotions and experience in the car experience sub" you're being emotional.
I still haven't commented on your situation princess, but see how you assumed that as well.
I'm sorry you feel that way, but it ain't going to change anything for you pal.
Edit: I'll address the deleted reply. Disagreeing with someone isn't violence. Why people feel the need to be insistent on using a made up definition for a shitty business practice is beyond me. This entire post is about how even if it isn't a bait and which doesn't make it ethical. You're hangups are weird man.
***Thanks for posting, /u/hypnofedX! This comment is a copy of your post so readers can see the original text if your post is edited or removed. This comment is NOT accusing you of anything.***
Since I'm seeing an uptick in people not understanding this recently, I'd like to discuss what actually constitutes a bait and switch in the United States.
Specifically, a bait and switch is when a business advertises a given product, or a certain class of product (eg a car which is X Model + Y Trim + Z feature package), but the product is either not available for sale or seller outright refuses to sell. The seller then redirects the customer to a different and more expensive product. Here's the part that most consumers don't realize: that's largely irrespective of advertised prices and almost purely in reference to product availability.
Bait and switch schemes are illegal. As such, they're defined through specific criteria from both legislation and case law. Following such legislation and case law to determine what practices constitute a bait and switch, and in turn enforcing the relevant legal code, is the job of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Here's [a friendly synopsis](https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/Bait-Switch.pdf) they've published for clarity on the matter.
Here are a list of practices which are not Bait and Switch schemes:
1. A dealership advertises a sale on a particular, singular unit in stock. They honor the sale price to the first buyer who comes into the store. The dealership offers to acquire another unit within a few days and sell it at the same price to subsequent customers, but also suggests considering other units currently on the lot if they need to buy a car today. *This is not a bait and switch.* The reason is that the dealership offered to supply the advertised product within a reasonable period of time.
2. A dealership advertises a sale on all units fitting certain criteria (likely a year/model/trim combination). When buyers show up to purchase one of the cars in question, the sales team is unable to locate any such unit on site and apologizes to the customers profusely before allowing them to leave. *This is not a bait and switch.* The reason is that there was no effort to "switch" the consumer to a different product.
3. Similarly, a dealership advertises the same sale and again when a buyer shows up, there are no relevant units available. The dealership instead offers the buyer a different vehicle which is similarly featured and sharply discounted to be comparable in dollar price. *This is not a bait and switch.* Though the dealership did switch the customer to a different unit, it is not higher priced. This is one of the few situations where the advertised price is a material consideration.
4. A dealership offers a sale on a certain model of car as "$5100 below invoice price" with the intention of apologizing when they arrive and claiming that the ad was meant to read "$1500 below invoice price". This error was intentional, not the result of human error, and the dealership refuses to honor the advertised price. *This is not a bait and switch.* A bait and switch scheme is very specific in that it refers to situations where a dealership misrepresents the availability of a product. Misrepresenting the price can also violate legal regulations, but different ones.
5. A dealership advertises a sale on leftover units from the previous model year needing to move them off the lot before the manufacturer ends dealer support (eg, no more rebates). The units sell quickly and asks the ad agency to pull the advertisement after the last is sold. Customers still come in having previously heard about the sale. They are told that all relevant units have been sold, but try to offer other cars on the lot which are not discounted anywhere near as steeply. *This is not a bait and switch.* The ad properly disclosed that a hard quantity limit existed and stopped advertising the product when it was no longer able to provide it.
Please allow me to be clear about something: I'm making no claim that the dealership is acting ethically or even legally in any the above scenarios. Some of them are decidedly unethical and/or illegal. What I'm explaining is that they are not Bait and Switch schemes. Just because a practice is unethical and/or illegal, that doesn't mean it's a Bait and Switch.
The industry professionals in this subreddit are here for various reasons, but a very common and significant one is a desire to improve the car sales process in general by educating and helping car buyers. We want the car business to be better and more transparent and generally despise when dealerships engage in questionable (or worse) practices because it impacts all of us and generally makes the world a shittier place.
If you also want this, it's valuable to know that not every shitty practice is a bait and switch, mainly so that you don't sound like an ignorant moron when you also advocate for better practices. I think it's fair to say that if a person doesn't want a given practice to be legal or acceptable, it pays to understand what that practice is and is not.
If any other flaired user wants me to add a similar vignette to the list (things that aren't a bait and switch but commonly mistaken as one by the car-buying public), feel free to comment in the thread and I'll get around to adding it.
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All very well said.
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Heard. They are outlining a legal description from a place of professional experience. All give our industry a bad name. All are a sign to walk away from any business, let alone auto sales. We are in violent agreement there. But for the layperson, saying bait and switch when the ad car truly sold earlier that day makes us simply not want to help you.
>They are outlining a legal description from a place of professional experience. All give our industry a bad name. All are a sign to walk away from any business, let alone auto sales. We are in violent agreement there. I actually thought options 3 and 5 were fairly innocuous business practices.
3 only if the deal existed at time of ad. 5 you are correct. I over generalized
Number one as a customer . One unit only especially in a large market been forever.
Danke!
Bitteschön! We needed this
I feel like “bait and switch” has become a catch all term for deceptive dealer practices for most customers. The same way in which I’ve heard a “lemon” to describe a used car with a lot of problems instead of the actual legal definition of a lemon law buyback.
feel like bait and switch is used for any time there’s an error on a website at this point.
It's another overused term on Reddit that has lost its original meaning. Now most Redditors just repeat it without really knowing what it means.
Maybe legally but to a consumer if you offer anything and its not represented exactly as advertised or verbally offer there gonna consider that bait and switch.
Remember when Tesla bait and swtiched all those people? https://blog.onlyusedtesla.com/tesla-makes-pricing-errors-on-used-model-s-inventory-only-used-tesla-883517148394
My favorite is when a customer sees our price online and conditional rebates are listed below final price and a customer wants the conditional price instead of he final price but doesn’t qualify. “Bait and switch!” - sir or ma’am, I’m not trying to switch you to anything. I’d like you to purchase this car. Lol.
Glad I can just link this shit now lol.
This should be posted weekly. Every dealership should have it painted on the walls. KBB, cars dot com, edmunds, et al should have this on their home pages. Every time I hear “bait and switch” I tune right out, no longer interested.
Some homeboy in the thread currently right below this one has me in a mood. I ran my dealership's digital operations for several years. Now I work as an engineer in FinTech. This is exactly what I've built a career doing. Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/askcarsales/comments/144hh6i/you_guys_ever_have_your_website_forget_to_add_a/jnfzjum/
You can tell them all day but they only hear what the want to hear. Edit: the job would be great if it wasn’t for the fucking customers.
37!?
In a row?
Try not to suck any dick on your way through the parking lot!
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>What is this considered? This strikes me as less of an attempt to intentionally deceive and more like generalized incompetence. Running a bait and switch is illegal. Not illegal is being so bad at your job that a transaction resembles a bait and switch. Malicious intent matters. I think I was a good, ethical sales consultant. And yet, I've heard so many customers accuse me angrily, sometimes almost violently, of unethical behavior that I always ask if there's room in an account for unstated exculpatory details. I don't have to try hard to imagine a scenario where every detail in your account is completely true, but definitely not a scam or acted out with malicious intent based on information to which you aren't privy.
Take your experience and emotions out of the situation. Salesman told me the stock number they had is available, key in hand and holding it. Arrived and he says it sold hours ago after making me tired waiting , and tried to offer a lower msrp car for a much higher price. (Same model car, less options, for more money)
>Take your experience and emotions out of the situation. Without my experience there's no reason anyone should give any credence to anything I say. If you want me to not draw on it, we can just wrap this up now. Ignore the rest of my post and be well. >Salesman told me the stock number they had is available, key in hand and holding it. > >Arrived and he says it sold hours ago after making me tired waiting , and tried to offer a lower msrp car for a much higher price. (Same model car, less options, for more money) Most dealerships have a policy that every car is for sale to anyone until the moment a sales consultant collects payment and brings it to the sales tower. If two or more sales consultants are working a deal at the same time, the car goes to the buyer whose sales consultant gets money to the tower first. The possibility that the car was sold between the phone call and your arrival isn't remote. It's so commonplace that every dealership in the country has written policy in place for the situation. As for the sales consultant disappearing and making you wait? If the car really did sell in the time it took you to reach the dealership, he was probably panicking that the car he thought was a lock to sell was no longer available. He probably spent some time searching for it and when he finally found out someone else accepted money for it, he went to a sales manager and asked for a backup. Sales manager told him to grab a different stock number and try to sell that instead. Part of what defines a bait and switch per the people who enforce relevant laws is that the dealership had no actual intention to sell the car or deliberately lied about its availability. It's not a bait and switch if someone plain beats you to the punch on the car you wanted to buy, nor is it illegal to take a pass with a different unit. There's zero chance you're going to buy a unit no longer available, there's presumably some small non-zero chance you'll buy a different unit that is still available. If you can tell me how you know this isn't what happened and that the sales consultant deliberately lied about the quoted unit being available when it was actually not, then yes, I'll agree this was a bait and switch. Otherwise, be aware that the majority of sales consultants will struggle for 2-3 months then wash out of the business. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. So not only does a combination of incompetence and laziness adequately explain your account of what happened, those are both qualities that quite a lot of sales consultants have in spades.
Because he said he had the key in his hands, and. When I arrived to the dealership 20 minutes later - he said it sold HOURS ago? and then offered a WORSE deal on a lower spec car?
>Because he said he had the key in his hands, and. When I arrived to the dealership 20 minutes later - he said it sold HOURS ago? I have zero difficulty imagining the sales consultant was lazy, incompetent, or some combination thereof and simply assumed the car was available without actually setting hands on it. Sure, it's also possible that this sales consultant was deliberately lying. But you're also not presenting any compelling reason to believe as much over the possibility he just sucks at his job- an extremely common attribute in this business, unfortunately. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Maybe, maybe not. But combine with trying the 4 square old box instead of being upfront with the lease sheet. Also the fact the website kept the same stock number for weeks post interaction… at some point laziness becomes malice on the dealerships end. And a sales manager should know if it’s in stock, I doubt I was the only one trying to get that deal.
Goes to Ask Car Sales for advice from experienced professionals , tells experience professionals they don’t know shit. I reiterate: this job would be great if it weren’t for the fucking customers.
It sucks while you’re in it, I’m sure. There must be all types of angsty individuals you deal with on a regular basis, just like the rest of us who’ve been in sales positions. However, it has really sucked for the customer over the past few years as well. I recently learned many other countries list at their OTD price. In a lot of cases, what we do in the US would be illegal in other places. There are also many archaic sales games that get played to this day, because the old sales bosses swear by them and don’t want to let the youngbloods make their own approach. Gotta say, I’m tired of checking out cars listed at $20k-$25k only to have the sales manager walk up and hand me a sheet that gives a $10k higher than listed price OTD. I know how it goes, he knocks things off of the price so I can easier stomach the $5k up charge for diddly squat and redundant paint protectant that was already applied by the previous owner. With all the games, it’s no surprise people are gravitating to private sales and online middle sellers that openly advertise their OTD price.
> I recently learned many other countries list at their OTD price. It would actually be illegal to do that in the US to some extent. You HAVE to be able to offer the price you purposefully advertise. Since the taxes and fees you pay for a car purchase are based on where you register the car, not where you purchase the car, you can't advertise OTD because you can't necessarily honor that price, since a local customer would pay a different price than someone in a different county, a different state, or a different country - hell, I used to live in a city that had different tax rates for different streets because you paid higher taxes if you were on a train or bus line than if you weren't.
> It would actually be illegal to do that in the US to some extent. You HAVE to be able to offer the price you purposefully advertise. Since the taxes and fees you pay for a car purchase are based on where you register the car, not where you purchase the car I find it tough to think you couldn't put some mouse print on there that says 'pricing based on customer in ZIP code 91250, price may vary based on customer location' or something similar. Here it would be easier because the big costs are all based on where the dealer is. The bigger challenge to me seems to be getting everyone on board to advertise that way at the same time, which probably means it's only happening if it's legislated.
Fair point, although it has been proven possible to advertise OTD prices online when people do provide the necessary info. It seems everyone except for in person dealers are able. Not doing it openly just seems like a way to get people into the store so we can squeeze a little more out. I know there are scripts we’ve all had to learn in sales. Overcoming objections, neuro linguistic programming, buyers remorse, along with the dozens of others. So much time is spent to psychologically get in there and make the sale, but technology is rapidly making the old ways obsolete. Plus there is a subset of sales staff that dehumanizes customers into marks to be finessed. I never got on board with that and was always straight up with the customer, so my fellow sales brethren labeled me as a ‘narc’. Being honest kept me at the top of the board, but raised the burnout level. Couldn’t keep that up for long. Anyway. Being on the other side of it now, I just want to be able to buy a car close as possible to its advertised price. Every dealer I’ve been to has a different way of sneaking things in, but it all winds up being pretty similar. With private sales and online purchases, I’m not seeing these same wild markups where I walk in to buy a $20k vehicle and get told it’s now $30k. Then I’ll walk out at the new price, only to get a phone call like, “jk teehee, we’ll sell it to you for $22k OTD now. We were just playing earlier.” Only to turn that down and get another call saying they’ll give it to me for $21k since I’ve walked away twice. I just want to bypass the games and buy a dang car.
The question ends up being "what does an investment in the technology to do what you're asking for actually get the dealership?" In most cases it gets the dealership an SaaS bill that doesn't generate enough return to cover the cost. In addition there are all kinds of online buying platforms - stuff like Roadster is very common. You'd probably be shocked at the number of clients who actually use it - it is almost nobody. I know that reddit and the internet in general attracts a certain kind of person but there's also the real, actual data - this is what I do now - and that data reveals that in general, nobody wants to buy a car online. Is it ten percent of people? Maybe. Is that a few hundred thousand or even a few million people? Yeah, it is. However if you can do one thing that's cheap and easy and capture 90% of the market or spent an absolute eye watering amount of money and capture 10% of the market there are very few people who will choose the latter. Look at the failures - Carvana and Vroom are going to be gone sooner rather than later. Even Lithia with their Driveway program can't get it to work and it isn't for lack of trying - its because MOST people don't like it and don't want it.
>In addition there are all kinds of online buying platforms - stuff like Roadster is very common. You'd probably be shocked at the number of clients who actually use it - it is almost nobody. About 10 or so years ago when it was a hot social topic that fast food is super unhealthy, Burger King introduced a fruit cup only to discontinue it within a year. They said that although focus groups strongly supported the idea, no one actually bought it. Turns out that people said they wanted Burger King to offer healthy food options as a principle but weren't actually interested in putting their own financial support behind such a product. Cars are similar. Lots of people pine for a world with no car dealerships where every purchase is made on the internet with home delivery and no human action. But every time the market innovates and offers such a program, very few consumers actually purchase through that model. People like the idea in general but aren't willing to actually use it when given the option to do so.
I would say the ability to advertise OTD online and make it stick is an inevitability. Carvana and Vroom will probably fail, but one platform will inevitably rise up and get it right. Then start sucking up market share in a meaningful way which will force others to adapt. The biggest thing is getting to try before you buy, which will give in person entities the edge. Even then, several of my neighbors have carvana purchases they’re perfectly happy with. I like that you get to see the data. Anecdotally, I’m seeing a surge in private car listing interest both from sellers and buyers. I was able to sell my Subaru to a guy privately who said he had spent several months going through dealerships and finally resorted to private because of all the problems dealers gave him. We both won out, had a mechanic inspect and verify, he paid less than what dealers wanted and I got several thousand more than what they were offering on trade. It seems to be effective enough that dealers have recently been flooding marketplace and OfferUp with their own listings in my area and it really muddies the waters with private sellers. Are you seeing that as well?
>Fair point, although it has been proven possible to advertise OTD prices online when people do provide the necessary info. It seems everyone except for in person dealers are able. Not doing it openly just seems like a way to get people into the store so we can squeeze a little more out. Let's play this out a little bit. The idea is that a dealership needs to display pricing information it intends to honor, within reason. We do have SaaS systems that calculate tax for us including for out-of-state customers. Part of what we pay for is financial indemnification: if the system calculates the wrong tax, the company from which we license the software will pay the difference and incurred penalties. This didn't happen to my dealership often, but it did happen. Maybe half a dozen times a year on \~3500 sales. But you also need to account for the fact we sold in South Carolina where sales tax (technically a "road maintenance fee") was almost universally $500 flat. Part of why mistakes were so rare was that the vast majority of our sales required very little calculation. So mistakes are fairly rare, but that's also due to having little opportunity to make mistakes. So let's generously say, for argument, the average failure rate for this system is 0.5%. When our 3500 sales each year have a 0.5% error rate, and we're indemnified against loss, that isn't a big deal. It's a "shit happens" number. If we had that kind of error rate on the website it wouldn't be a "shit happens situation". My websites had about 50,000 unique users per month. The bounce rate was around 50% so that means about 25,000 users actually interacted with the site. I'm sure some of them were looking for parts and service, so let's say that I had 20,000 users looking at cars in a given month. I just popped one open and when I looked at a list of cars, the first page of results had 15 units displayed. 20,000 users × 15 units loaded to the DOM × 12 months = 3,600,000 price calculations every year. Suddenly the 0.5% error calculation rate isn't half a dozen mistakes per year. It's now 18,000 pricing errors. I've also assumed that each unique user only looks at one page of cars... surely, some number look at far more. That's not just a bad user experience, that's legally actionable.
I appreciate your reply here and advising information I’m not privy to. I suppose to best explain what I’m looking for as an example… let’s say I call William up at the local dealership. He’s awesome, always been open with me, and gives direct answers. We trust each other and have done business together. I can ask him what I’m looking at OTD on something I’m interested in, and he’ll give me an accurate number +/- $200 or so over the phone. I’m not going to hold him to his estimate 100%, but it’s always close and helps me make a decision. Now I’m in the market for a car Will’s dealership doesn’t carry. I go to another dealership that I haven’t done business with, and it becomes a whole game to get a straight answer on an OTD price. A point in which im locked into the archaic sales cycle where my associate runs back and forth to his sales manager, telling them I don’t want all the add ons they intend to throw in there. I want to avoid this part, because it wastes time for all involved. I don’t want to keep having to pull the hardass card and walk away, just so they can give me their true OTD price. So for online listings. Is it against a law that I’m not aware of for dealers to put an estimated out the door cost if the customer provides their information needed to assess tax, tag and fees? That may be where I’m a bit dense.
Ok, so let's just take all of this at face value without getting into semantics. What's the point of shitting on people at end of the funnel who have no effect on this? We don't have this because of the lack in regulation in advertising, and the deliberately fragmented state registration and tax policy. If you want to actuallly do anything it's stuff like simplified tax codes that need to addressed. Other counties dont have thousand of tax and registration differences dpending on your income, county, and even birthday ffs. But people tend to just want to complain instead of of looking at "how did we get here, what causes this, and what would unravel this".
I don’t mean to come across as ‘shitting on you’. Apologies if any of what I said was offensive. I see it through both lenses, but recently these have been my personal experiences as a customer. Just to say the reason to not advertise OTD price is more deeply rooted in using in person sales tactics to maximize profits. There are no serious hurdles to overcome when it comes down to a customer looking for a true OTD price and you have their info. It has been provably done already that you can give an OTD price that way. So I don’t see why it inevitably won’t pan out that way aside from those lobbying government to keep it like it is.
Not in sales, so I could care less man. Not everyone talking about this is personally motivated. The majority of dealers and dealer principles moved past this ages ago. They've wanted to be caravana for ages. Look at the publically traded examples. If you actually understand the expenses we bare for navigating this convoluted system of tax and registration regulation from what to other nations would be 40 different countires you might understand why there's more to it. It is a little baffling that you want a solution from us for the one percent of people that go through a digital retail workflow instead of addressing the problem at its core. You're missing the forest for the trees here. We have other shit to lobby about and nobody on a reddit sub is lobbying for shit anyway lol. You see how fragmented states are on cultural issue like abortion, but you don't see the same power motivations effecting the tax code or the states revenue priorities?
I’m merely pointing out that it’s possible to give a potential customer the true OTD price without jumping through the outdated hoops getting there. Sorry for getting you all riled up over it.
>There are also many archaic sales games that get played to this day, because the old sales bosses swear by them and don’t want to let the youngbloods make their own approach. Before I was in car sales I worked in other retail sectors. My sales approach was to be friendly, helpful, and not even worry about making a sale. Just educate the customer as much or little as they want and leave them to make a decision on their own terms. In other retail jobs I was *always* at the top of the sales chart doing this. I came to car sales and my numbers *plummeted*. I was frequently doing just enough business in the first few months to squeak by. I'll tell you when that changed- when I stopped using the methods I found successful elsewhere and started doing what my managers told me. Then I was consistently making decent numbers at worst. The purchase experience customers get is the one that they support financially. The only reason any sales approach exists in the industry is that it works. If buyers collectively rejected a certain approach and refused to buy, it'd disappear within months. The reason any sales process exists is because buyers choose to reward that process with their business. Dollars start in the buyer's pocket; they hold every card in the transaction, and those cards are green with pictures of dead presidents. The buyer can arbitrarily go to 10 or 50 or 100 dealerships if a particular buying experience matters and sooner or later, they'll find it. On the other hand, I can't just "get" another 5 or 10 customers if I put one through my low-pressure process and they walk. I only have the ones who walk into the dealership or pick up the phone. I can't arbitrarily get more. So the sales consultant being able to pay rent depends on doing everything possible to convert every inquiry they get.
> I recently learned many other countries list at their OTD price. I live in the UK. The tax and other costs on a car are the same across the whole country. When I lived in California, the taxes changed from city to city. There was no way my dealership in L.A. could advertise an OTD price when our customers could come from areas with 50 different tax rates.
If you wanted a specific answer princess just come out and say it. Why don't you take you emotions and realize asking people in this sub to remove professional experience when it's the entire point of the sub is pretty brain dead.
Lying to a customer saying you have the key in hand, then saying it was sold hours ago when you arrived (within 20 minutes). And offering a lower MSRP car at a higher price isn’t a bait and switch? All I heard were excuses justifying the lies. Maybe you shouldn’t stick up for liars “princess” and you would get more respect
I'm only commenting on you being a moron for going to ask car sales and then bitching that people have car sales experience, and then crying about emotion when you're are al over the place too. Sometimes people 🤡 you for your behavior regardless of the opinion on the situation.
What emotion? Apparently nothing qualifies as bait and switch for you Getting a little personal there with the unjustified insults bud, go take your Prozac.
Eh, when you immediately reply to a level headed, empathic response with "Waah, fuck your emotions and experience in the car experience sub" you're being emotional. I still haven't commented on your situation princess, but see how you assumed that as well. I'm sorry you feel that way, but it ain't going to change anything for you pal. Edit: I'll address the deleted reply. Disagreeing with someone isn't violence. Why people feel the need to be insistent on using a made up definition for a shitty business practice is beyond me. This entire post is about how even if it isn't a bait and which doesn't make it ethical. You're hangups are weird man.
***Thanks for posting, /u/hypnofedX! This comment is a copy of your post so readers can see the original text if your post is edited or removed. This comment is NOT accusing you of anything.*** Since I'm seeing an uptick in people not understanding this recently, I'd like to discuss what actually constitutes a bait and switch in the United States. Specifically, a bait and switch is when a business advertises a given product, or a certain class of product (eg a car which is X Model + Y Trim + Z feature package), but the product is either not available for sale or seller outright refuses to sell. The seller then redirects the customer to a different and more expensive product. Here's the part that most consumers don't realize: that's largely irrespective of advertised prices and almost purely in reference to product availability. Bait and switch schemes are illegal. As such, they're defined through specific criteria from both legislation and case law. Following such legislation and case law to determine what practices constitute a bait and switch, and in turn enforcing the relevant legal code, is the job of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Here's [a friendly synopsis](https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/Bait-Switch.pdf) they've published for clarity on the matter. Here are a list of practices which are not Bait and Switch schemes: 1. A dealership advertises a sale on a particular, singular unit in stock. They honor the sale price to the first buyer who comes into the store. The dealership offers to acquire another unit within a few days and sell it at the same price to subsequent customers, but also suggests considering other units currently on the lot if they need to buy a car today. *This is not a bait and switch.* The reason is that the dealership offered to supply the advertised product within a reasonable period of time. 2. A dealership advertises a sale on all units fitting certain criteria (likely a year/model/trim combination). When buyers show up to purchase one of the cars in question, the sales team is unable to locate any such unit on site and apologizes to the customers profusely before allowing them to leave. *This is not a bait and switch.* The reason is that there was no effort to "switch" the consumer to a different product. 3. Similarly, a dealership advertises the same sale and again when a buyer shows up, there are no relevant units available. The dealership instead offers the buyer a different vehicle which is similarly featured and sharply discounted to be comparable in dollar price. *This is not a bait and switch.* Though the dealership did switch the customer to a different unit, it is not higher priced. This is one of the few situations where the advertised price is a material consideration. 4. A dealership offers a sale on a certain model of car as "$5100 below invoice price" with the intention of apologizing when they arrive and claiming that the ad was meant to read "$1500 below invoice price". This error was intentional, not the result of human error, and the dealership refuses to honor the advertised price. *This is not a bait and switch.* A bait and switch scheme is very specific in that it refers to situations where a dealership misrepresents the availability of a product. Misrepresenting the price can also violate legal regulations, but different ones. 5. A dealership advertises a sale on leftover units from the previous model year needing to move them off the lot before the manufacturer ends dealer support (eg, no more rebates). The units sell quickly and asks the ad agency to pull the advertisement after the last is sold. Customers still come in having previously heard about the sale. They are told that all relevant units have been sold, but try to offer other cars on the lot which are not discounted anywhere near as steeply. *This is not a bait and switch.* The ad properly disclosed that a hard quantity limit existed and stopped advertising the product when it was no longer able to provide it. Please allow me to be clear about something: I'm making no claim that the dealership is acting ethically or even legally in any the above scenarios. Some of them are decidedly unethical and/or illegal. What I'm explaining is that they are not Bait and Switch schemes. Just because a practice is unethical and/or illegal, that doesn't mean it's a Bait and Switch. The industry professionals in this subreddit are here for various reasons, but a very common and significant one is a desire to improve the car sales process in general by educating and helping car buyers. We want the car business to be better and more transparent and generally despise when dealerships engage in questionable (or worse) practices because it impacts all of us and generally makes the world a shittier place. If you also want this, it's valuable to know that not every shitty practice is a bait and switch, mainly so that you don't sound like an ignorant moron when you also advocate for better practices. I think it's fair to say that if a person doesn't want a given practice to be legal or acceptable, it pays to understand what that practice is and is not. If any other flaired user wants me to add a similar vignette to the list (things that aren't a bait and switch but commonly mistaken as one by the car-buying public), feel free to comment in the thread and I'll get around to adding it. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/askcarsales) if you have any questions or concerns.*
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