Some people even  pay extra for “patina”!

At least the fire happened on the open road. If he had got home and parked next to the 1,000,000 rolls of toilet paper he still has left over from last spring, it could have been much worse.

“The thing is, there were no shortages in Florida.”

There are pictures of people filling Rubbermaid tubs and plastic bags. Even Beavis knows you need a proper container:

Before this I hadn’t realized how much a full conflagration improves the look of an old Hummer. People should do this to all of them.

What you’ve described is simple mathematical calculation that pretty basic software can perform. What am I missing here? There’s a zero percent probability that a dealer is actually looking up the various county specific tax rates. They put an address into software, the answer spits out. If they can’t figure that out…

Nah.

@tjlazer. Sounds like you may be giving misguided advise to your clients.

Every system is complex. Nothing is as simple as it seems on the outside or even the inside. Sometimes it’s needlessly complex. Other times, it’s unavoidable. In this case, however, refusing to send a quote including taxes an fees is not a technical challenge. It’s a matter of either laziness or spending all that time…

How does having the customer drive to the dealership make TT&L less complicated? The work is the same whether the out the door price and itemized costs are slide across a desk or emailed.

Calling BS on this. If a salesperson doesn’t want to quote registration fees (and perhaps tax), I get it because those can vary across counties. I have successfully shopped cars by emailing competing dealers with exactly what I want, asking for a out the door quote without tax and tags. Since those are set by the…

How does having a customer sitting in the dealership lessen that complexity in a way that his sitting at home and waiting for an email or telephone call does not?

I’m sorry, but this is nonsense. I buy way too many cars, often out of state. TT&L is complicated, I will give you that. Sometimes it creates some minor extra headaches for me that usually end with a refund. It’s just part of the territory.

Taxes are a set rate and are a 3 second Google search away. Titles are a set price that are a 3 second Google search away. So the only way to interpret your drivel is that “we need to rip off people to make ends meet”.

What on earth are you talking about? As complicated as TTL may be, nobody is complaining about getting ripped off over that. Nor are those costs negotiable anyway.

The system is so complex that the dealership is unaware of the price for the car?

I will say that most dealers “get it” but there are still far too many “old school” dealer stores that insist on this nonsense. 

Dealers will never cease to amaze me with their stupidity. One of my first jobs was running internet leads for a network of about two dozen Ford and Mazda stores throughout Virginia and Maryland.

In my limited experience, I’ve understood the dealership sales approach thrive on in-person customers that are impatient or unprepared in one or more ways - urgent need for a car today, financially illiterate, impatient, uninformed, don’t know what they want, etc. A professional shopper is usually none of that, so…

Now that it is “dead” the internet is free to remember fondly about the vehicle.