So yesterday, I bought a new car for my brother, who’s about to get his driver’s license. A 2007 Toyota Yaris RS 5 door hatchback. A funny story on why I ended buying my brother car…
The evening before at dinner, we were talking about a few of us shaving our heads in the form of a cul-de-sac for charity. We tried to convince my brother to do the same, knowing that it was tough for him looking like a moron for 2 weeks while in highschool. The rules were that he would shave his cul-de-sac, and leave it for 2 weeks with no hats allowed during this time. We offered him a lot… a new car, use of my E55 AMG once a week, use of Will’s M3 Cab once a week, as well as a test drive in a Ferrari F430 Spider.
He turned the offer down. We were all in shock… we thought everybody had a price, and sadly, we were wrong. So to fuck with my brother, I went and bought the car (I needed it anyways on occasion to carry my dog and my bike) and we gave him a really hard time last night in front of all his friends. Showing off the bill of sale, showing off the wheels I was going to get, showing off the fake carbon fiber trim that I bought as an option. It was well worth it, even though he’s going to be using the car most of the time.
Back to the story… I’ve been researching Yaris classed cars for a few days now so I was fairly set on buying the car. I went to the dealership to see the car in person, and after looking at the car, I ended up buying it. I got there at 5pm, and had purchased the car by 5:30pm.
As the internet’s wealth of information grows to a size unimaginable 10 years ago, brick and mortar companies have adjusted their business plans to reflect this change. With so many internet savy people out there, it poses the question of car salesmen at dealerships, and how important their jobs are.
I’m sure that there’s a lot of people out there like myself who do most of their shopping online, and just walk in and pick up what’s needed. It allows me to bypass the usual salespeople bullshit… I’ve been in sales before and it’s not about educating the customer on what’s good and what works, but to try and squeeze every bit of profit off the customer to line my own pockets. I mean, that’s how a salesperson gets paid, so simple white lies to sell a higher margin product/accessories is part of the daily grind. As a result, the customer doesn’t get what he wants (even though he might THINK he got what he wants).
The only thing that was missing for me yesterday was to purchase the car online. It would be nice if manufacturers had this option available, and cut out the salesman, passing the savings onto the consumers. One has to wonder how much longer until we can see that happen?
