Pricing in ads

Something that has always bothered me when buying a car from a dealer is how the negotiated price never seems to hold through the entire deal unless you play hardball. They want to add in “ad fees” “doc fees” and any other fee they can think of in an attempt to squeeze more money out of you.

The smart shopper asks for the “drive out price” when making a deal, but even then it’s hard to do as the sales guy will have a difficult time getting the exact price on his own, so you’re going to be sitting extra long as he goes back and forth with the business office.

Why do I bring this up? I’m looking over competitor ads and am noticing the same tactics being used.. “plus fees” is a common thing to read, and even those that don’t state it are still doing it.

So I’m wondering if I should use “drive out pricing” in my ads. It would certainly be different, but at the same time it makes my prices look higher than my competitors on first glance. Basically I’m left with the challenge of educating the customer, a task that is not easy to do.

And again… decisions, decisions.

Warranty Game

I’ve noticed that a good many of my competitors are offering warranties with their vehicles, which of course is a great sales tool. If you were choosing between two similar vehicles, of similar pricing, you’d choose the one with the warranty wouldn’t you?

So I’m looking into this. I have some theories as to how this particular game is played, but until I have a face-to-face with the warranty company I don’t want to speculate too much.

But you can bet that dealers aren’t losing money on these things, and in fact these are like warranties you get a Best Buy.. a nice profit center.

Large market, or small?

When shopping for a car at auction you have many decisions to make, but one stands above all the others… how easy will it be to re-sell the car.

Assuming all cars you look at get a 5/5 rating (ha!), some cars will still move faster than others due to their market size. Buy an Accord and you have hundreds of potential buyers, pick up a Porsche and your list of shoppers just got a lot smaller.

But, and here’s the big issue, which will sell faster? Sure, you have hundreds of people who would be interested in an Accord at any given time but you’re also competing with hundreds of other Accords that are available. Conversely if you go with a Porsche you’ll have relatively few people interested in it, but will also face much less competition.

This is a tough call. And one that I recently found myself facing.

So, given the choice between a Mazda RX8 and a Nissan Altima, which would you gamble on?

Mmmm… coffee…

OK, we’re good to go now, we have coffee at the office!

It’s a minor thing I know, but having a hot cup of quality coffee on demand is a great thing. If you haven’t discovered the joys of Keurig coffee machines yet you really should give it a try. Totally awesome.

I think I’ll go make a cup now to sip on while I return some phone calls.

That’s right, I’m getting calls! Now to just get those sales rolling along…

Computer upgraded

I’ve been working on the cheap ever since starting this thing up, and one way of keeping the budget in line was to use an old iMac I had stuck in closet. Not one of those multi-colored things, but the first of the flat screen iMacs with a G5 chip in it. Not the worst computer in the world, but not very fast by today’s standards.

I really hate slow computers.

But I trudged on, using the iMac for everything that I could. Unfortunately, some things require me to use a PC with IE/ActiveX, so many days I had to stay out of the office just to get work done.

Well, enough is enough and I finally snapped. I’m now running an quad core HP system with a 23″ monitor, 8GB of ram and a big honkin hard drive. I feel much better now.

Though I will say that this keyboard totally sucks. It has to have the worst tactile feedback I’ve had to use since my Timex Sinclair. The mouse kinda sucks too. I’ll use them until I can’t stand it, cause I really don’t want to spend more money.

And the iMac? It’s now sitting on my desk with FriendFeed full screen, keeping me in tune with what’s going on in the world.

Impressive

It’s impressive.. or depressing, I haven’t decided yet.. how much family matters can interrupt ones life.

For the last month I’ve been dealing with some issues involving siblings and elder care that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. But, it appears that the hardest part is behind me and I can get back to the task at hand, trying to make a go of this biz!

A few interesting things have happened since I last posted here, but one important thing hasn’t happened, I haven’t sold the Pathfinder. This isn’t the vehicles fault as I just haven’t advertised it worth a damn.

I’ve had more fun with the auctions, which I will detail in a later post.

So I’m delayed, but not out of the biz. I haven’t given up and will start back up with documenting things as they happen. Though don’t be overly surprised if not a lot happens here over the holiday weekend.

Spam call

Ever since the business has had a phone number it’s been getting sales calls. Everyone from superpages to people wanting to sell me software, but today’s was a good one.

“Hi my name is (noise) and my husband (noise)y and I were interested in a uh automobile you have on the lot. If you could please give us a call at (redacted) we would like to come by. Just give us a call whenever you’re available.”

Great! A customer!

Wait.. where did they find that number as it’s not the one used when advertising. And wait a second.. we don’t have a lot!

Sneaky way to get a call back though, I applaud their ingenuity.

Remote key fob, dealership should be ashamed

The Pathfinder has remote keyless entry as you might expect, but I don’t have the remote. Furthermore, I only received one key with the vehicle when I got it.

One of the first things I did was head to a hardware store to get a new key made. It would just suck to lock the key in the Pathfinder and not have a spare. Unfortunately, like most cars these days the Pathfinder uses a transponder in the key to make it harder to clone so my backup key does nothing buy open the door. That’s ok for my purposes.

But not having the remote to open the doors, that’s a negative for a buyer so I needed to solve it. I knew a dealership would be too expensive but I called anyway. For the remote itself they wanted $105, then another $100 to program it. If I wanted a transponder key, that would be another $95 and if I didn’t order them together it’d be another $100 to program it. So, for $300 they’d give me a key, remote and make them work. That’s completely insane!

Haven’t programmed keys myself before I hit Google to see what it took to do it for a Nissan. It’s so simple that the dealership should be ashamed for what they’re trying to charge. How simple? Insert and remove the key 6 times within 10 seconds, the hazards will flash. Put the key back in and turn to ACC. Press any key on the remote. That’s it, you’re done. And they want $100 to perform that bit of work.

What do you think the odds are of me using that dealership for any work?

As for the prices on the key and remote, you can get them online for less than half of what they were charging.

So yes, I’ve ordered a remote online for the Pathfinder and will do the “o so difficult” programming myself. The buyer of the Pathfinder will be able to lock and unlock their doors properly.

Pathfinder rides like new

I guess I can’t say that as a statement of fact since I didn’t drive this Pathfinder when it was new, but you know what I mean.

The problem turned out to be the upper and lower control arm links, all had to be replaced. This was only a 2 hour labor charge, but unfortunately the parts are a bit expensive, so it cost $765 to get fixed.

Yeah, that’s expensive. I certainly won’t be putting 4 new tires on it at this point, maybe not even the two I was considering.

Mechanically the Pathfinder is now complete and ready to sell, but there’s a couple of cosmetic things I need to take care of before placing an ad. Soon though.. soon.

Still waiting

In case you think I’ve fallen off the real-time wagon, I haven’t, I’m just still waiting on word that the Pathfinder has been repaired.

Heck, I’m waiting for the shop to call me and tell me exactly what’s wrong with it so that I can give them permission to repair it, but I doubt that’s gonna happen.

They’ve had it since Wednesday morning, you’d think they would have at least given it a test drive by now since I was told it would be done today. But then, maybe I’m jumping the gun here and my phone will ring any moment now with them saying “it’s done, and it was only $200!”

Sorry, I have to keep a little bit of a fantasy life going ya know.