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Not “Twins” specific but salesman related.
Last summer the wife decided she wanted to trade her 2011 STi Sport Tech hatch in on a left over 2015 STi Sport Tech sedan. Her reasoning being that she’d get a discount on the “soon to be one model year old” sedan plus better trade-in value for her hatch.
We went to our dealer on a Saturday in August. They had a 2015 WRB STi sitting out front. However, the store was closed. No signs, no notice of why just nobody around. So we left.
The following Tuesday I stopped in and learned they are closed every Saturday in August. Nice to let the public know, eh? Also, the STi was sitting around the side of the building waiting to be picked up having just been dealer traded. The wife didn’t find another 2015 STi’s close so she decided to wait for a 2016.
In the mean time she had done her own appraisal on her trade. A little back story needed here. The wife has been in the business for over 30 years. She’s worked in the shop, sold on the floor, been a sales manager, a Finance and Insurance (Business) manager, comptroller and service rep. Suffice it to say, she knows her shit. Still, she had the used car manager at her dealership (Ford) go over her car top to bottom. His numbers were spot on to hers.
Armed with this she made an appointment to meet with the salesman who sold her the STi hatch. He knows her, knows she’s in the business and that she has access to the same knowledge bank, black book value sites and recondition cost stats as he does. All she asked was that he give her a fair trade-in value and she’d sign the papers.
Well, he didn’t. He called her car average when it was clean to extra clean with below average mileage. He wanted to do a full brake job; including rotors when all it needed was front pads and so on it went. Plus, he deducting full price and full labour rates for what he claimed the car needed for reconditioning.
But the kicker, the real deal breaker was when he also deducted the cost of the 96k service from her trade value. He explained he didn’t think it was fair to sell a used car to a person whose first service would be such a big expense. Mind you, the car only had 87k and she had just had a service done three days prior so, it wouldn’t need another for at least 6K. She let him know that she was not happy and would buy elsewhere then stomp out.
When we got home he’d left a message on the machine plus sent an email. The phone calls and the emails went back and forth all afternoon. In the end they dropped $2000 off the 2016 MSRP and the wife agreed to have the brakes done. BUT, they refused to change the value they first gave for her trade-in. Instead they kept dropping the MRSP $500 at a time. That’s just playing with numbers. Neither the salesman nor the owner would admit they messed up on the trade value. BUT THEN! The salesman screwed it totally demanding that we bring the car back in so they could measure the rotors. They still maintained the rotors had to be changed.
The next morning we drove to the first dealer west of us. I had the name of a salesman who was supposed to be trustworthy. She told him what she wanted and how much she was willing to pay including her trade. His used car salesman was blown away by her trade and gave her the price she know it was worth. It took four weeks to locate and deliver her new 2016 STi. They didn’t even wash her trade-in; just put it on the lot as driven in. They asked $2000 more than I thought they would and it sold within 5 days.
Local dealer lost out on a new car sale, a used car sale any referral business we might have sent them as well as our service business.
Like Julia Roberts said in Pretty Woman, “You wouldn't serve me. You work on commission right? Big mistake. Big. Huge!”
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