Quote:
Originally Posted by fbodfather
Great idea -- now all you have to do is travel to all 50 states and get each legislature to change their individual franchise laws! The franchise laws in all 50 states strictly prohibit the manufacturer from selling directly to the customer.
Don't like it? Call your state legislators!!!
Ladies and Gentlemen:
This subject comes up every day on the internet --
IT IS ILLEGAL FOR GM/FORD/CHRYSLER/HONDA/TOYOTA -- or any other manufacturer to tell a dealer what he or she can sell a car for.
There are only TWO instances where we can 'set' a price -
1. MSRP (mfgr. suggested retail price)
2. Special "suggested lease payment" (and there are all kinds of disclosures when that happens...)
That's it.
If the dealer wants to sell a $30,000 Camaro for one penny -- we can do nothing about it. If he wants to sell it for $3 million -- we can do nothing about it.
We want them to sell for MSRP or below -- but we can do NOTHING
Let me repeat that....
NOTHING .....
....about a dealer who wants to mark their vehicles up.
No -- we cannot 'slow down' or 'refuse' shipments. If you attempt that -- and are convicted in a court of law, you can go to jail. (ask Honda)
There are 3,900 Chevrolet dealers in the United States --
JUST SAY NO if someone asks over MSRP.
NOW - that said -- you DO realize that any car that's 'scarce' tends to get marked up -- right? Further, it appears that there is a 'state' on the west coast where dealers tend to mark every car up over MSRP........
......JUST SAY NO!
If you want to be the very first on the block to have the newest toy - most likely you're going to pay for that privilege -- it's called the "Law of Supply and Demand"
When demand outstrips supply -- prices rise.
When supply outstrips demand -- prices fall......
Lecture over!
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I wanted to reiterate a very important point in this post. The theme is that democracy places the power of government in the people; capitalism also places that power with the people, often called the market. Buyers control the market based on what they buy. What they buy leads to improved future products in dominant categories, and people get what they want because it makes companies money.
In other words, don't make unnecessary sacrifices. You may want a Camaro with a HUD, but that won't sell unless the Camaros without a HUD sells. That is a necessary sacrifice. Price, however, is not a necessary sacrifice. Pay the market price. The dealer will not tell this price to you, but I can assure you that retail tends to be on the high end of the market for any car at this juncture.
Those of you with terrible math skills are asking, "How is the market price set?" Primarily, it is never set in stone. It changes. Secondly, it changes based on previous or current sale prices of a product. If someone sells a product for $25 and someone else sells the product for $15, then the mean of these prices—add them, then divide by the total—is $20. The mean of all sales is the market price. Your sale represents a numerical value that impacts the rest of us. If you pay more, then future buyers may have to pay more. If you stick to the cheapest possible price, then you keep the rest of us in that price range. As a community, Camaro5 members should be sticking to MSRP as a maximum price for the Camaro. Paying more is unnecessary for a car that does not have limited production, competes with cars that are all over the place, and represents an opportunity to promote and sell more Chevrolets, which keeps GM healthy.
If you pay above the market price, then you represent one of the many idiots who foolishly cater towards the dealers, who are also idiots. You make it impossible for those of us who are already stretching our budgets to ever get our dream cars, and you make lots of enemies. Threads will be posted about you, and I will respond that you "are an idiot," and I will tell mean stories about how stupid you are. Enough dealers have suffered
this fate that you don't need to be added to the list.