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You Will Soon Be Able to Buy a Car at Walmart (jalopnik.com)
35 points by t23 on Jan 23, 2017 | hide | past | favorite | 72 comments



You already can at Costco, so this seems logical. Many customers will always prefer a "non-dealership" due to the long history of pushy shady salespeople, which if my last 3 visits tell me anything, is still very deserved ( in north america ).


Purchasing a car at a dealership is honestly one of the most painful consumer experiences ever. Last car I bought, I walked into the dealership knowing exactly what I wanted and what it should cost, with my down payment check and loan approval in-hand, and it still took 6 hours to purchase the car.

The salesman kept "making math mistakes" on the invoice that would have inflated the overall price of the purchase by several thousand dollars. If I didn't know ahead of time what I was buying and what it would cost, I would have been taken for a ride.

One of the most frustrating, disgusting, and disheartening purchases I've ever made. Anything that can bypass that BS is a very welcome change.


If Tesla gets their way then hopefully this will change.

Buying our 85D was just a matter of sitting down with the rep at a Mac in-store and ordering from TeslaMotors.com. The most painless car buying experience I've ever had. We could have done it from our house if we wanted to.

[edit]

I should add that we've done the whole "pit 2-3 dealerships against each other over email with exact spec" before and while it does get you a good deal, it takes a ton of time and requires you to be willing to walk away and waste an evening if they pull any funny business.


> it takes a ton of time and requires you to be willing to walk away and waste an evening if they pull any funny business.

Can confirm, agreed on a price, the dealer wanted $3,500 for a pinstripe at the last minute. Had to walk, went to another dealership 40 miles away, got an agreement on the original deal negotiated with the original dealer, new dealer didn't have the car in stock, so the car I wanted to buy in the first place was shipped 40 miles to the new dealer. And I watched the new dealer's salesman peeled off the $3,500 pinstripe with his fingers before I'd take possession of the car.

Then after all the paperwork was signed, and I handed over a check for the full purchase price of the car, the new dealer refused to hand over the keys until I paid a $500 etching fee, and the saleperson re-etched the VIN in the car windows over the top of the VIN already etched in the car windows.

Fuck dealers.


  $500 etching fee, and the saleperson 
  re-etched the VIN in the car windows 
  over the top of the VIN already etched 
  in the car windows.
Wait. What?

My god. I don't even understand the necessity of... etching? a VIN? into a window? Why is that even a billable line item? It sounds like a form of vandalism.

Why did they insist on ruining your windows with a numeric marking? Windows can break. They're replacable parts. They carry no assurance of permanence.

Who requires this? Why is it required?

What is accomplished by this practice? Why does it cost the buyer money? Why does it fetch that much money, when it's essentially an unskilled task that occupies minutes of effort?

EDIT: Oh wow. I didn't even know this was a thing. [0] Certainly not anything of a $500 value. Certainly not a requirement.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIN_etching


What city/state was this in?

Is there no place to report such behavior to? The manufacturer?


Not really.

Fun fact, most dealers for a certain mfgr withing a metro area are usually owned by a single business and re-branded so they can collude on prices.

You find this out when you start shopping across state lines. All of the dealers in one state didn't want to come down on price until they found out I was talking to other dealers in another adjacent state, then they changed really fast.


> What city/state was this in?

New Jersey. But it's fairly universal behavior.

> Is there no place to report such behavior to? The manufacturer?

The manufacturer is at the mercy of the dealers. Do you really think it's in the best interests of auto manufacturers to have their customers bent over a barrel on surprise fees and gouged on maintenance? There have been a number of attempts for auto manufacturers to make things less shitty for customers (Scion, Saturn, etc.) but at the end of the day, these attempts were not in the dealer's interest, and failed.


Next time take a big sand hourglass say for one hour. Tell them I am going to flip this over, and if the deal isn't closed by the time the sand runs out I will walk.

[edit] you have to be willing to walk. You say, this price or I walk, and if they pull any bs, get up and leave. If more people did this, dealerships would change their tactics


Next time send the dealer a check and a letter. Demand all correspondence in writing. Don't allow calls. Expect your new car within a month or so ;)


You still have to visit and purchase the vehicle from a dealership though.

>CarSaver then will connect customers with a local, certified dealer and schedule an appointment to visit the dealership. If a shopper doesn’t contact the dealership, an auto adviser reconnects with that shopper.


Your interaction is with a no pressure internet sales manager though.

I bought my last vehicle (2008 Toyota Tundra) through Costco. If my next vehicle purchase wasn't going to be a Tesla, I'd probably do it again.


That wasn't clear to me from the article, it sounded like they mostly just arranged appointments. How does negotiating work in this situation? Do you negotiate beforehand? Is it a firm fixed price?


Firm fixed price (essentially cost plus). I checked with several other dealers and no one else was willing to go as low as the fixed price I was offered.


I did the same. No need to haggle since the internet sales w as straight up lower than any other dealer through conventional means. I has a loan pre-approved so the purchase was quick too.


This sounds fantastic!


Its a no brainer really. You will immediately save more than the $100/year Costco membership if you're using it to purchase a vehicle.


> You already can at Costco,

Not exactly, unless something changed. You get to go through a "Costco approved dealer" still, and the experience is still not all that great. You aren't just buying the vehicle directly from Costco itself. We tried this just over a year ago and ended up with the same unpleasant car buying experience. (backed out of it when a family member got a sales manager gig at a nearby dealership. Went through him. Zero stress and no shenanigans.)


For that matter, a lot of us aren't comfortable with haggling and are only willing to buy a car if we can buy it like any other appliance at Walmart or Costco.

The demise of Saturn means I'll probably never own a car.

My only hope is that some Chinese or Indian company will come to the US and strike an exclusive contract with Walmart or Costco to be the exclusive retailer (the contract will specify that the term "dealership" will never be used) of their cars in the US with a nationwide policy of only selling at MSRP.


There are some no haggle dealerships though I don't know how common they are. I bought my last Honda from one.

Honestly though. If you can detach the financing ("Got the cash. Nope. Not interested in talking monthly payments.") and trade-in ("If you don't give me X, I'll just donate it.") whether or not either of those things are true. Then look up the dealer cost on Edmund's or whatever. Add $500 and tell them to take it or leave it.

It's still a bit of a hassle and you may not totally optimize your purchase but there need be very little actual haggling involved.

The issue with your suggestion BTW is that manufacturers probably couldn't sell to them because doing so would violate their contracts with existing dealers.


Another nice technique is to pit dealers against each other. Pick a dealer, ask them for a quote on whatever car you're after. Be specific about exactly what you want. Once you get a number, ask the next dealer if they can beat it. Repeat until you're tired of it or salespeople start saying "wow, I can't beat that" in a defeated voice.

Of course, the process can still suck. They'll still give you a spiel about how you must have the undercoat or extended warranty or whatever. There's room for other shenanigans too. Last time I bought from a dealer they managed to overcharge me $1.25 (originally it was $20 over but I fought that, but figured $1.25 wasn't worth it) and then they filed a lien on my title even though I didn't finance with them, which I didn't find out until I tried to trade the car in much later. Untangling that mess was quite entertaining.


Yeah, a lot of dealers in CA will have you sign the loan paperwork even if you are paying in cash; this causes a hard query on your credit report even if they don't file the lien. If you say "but I'm paying with cash" they say something like "well we have everyone do it." If you get up and walk away you magically no longer need to sign it though.


I don't think I ever signed anything like that. But since I didn't find out what had happened until much later, there was plenty of time for memories to fade.


I'm pretty sure I didn't sure you're not wrong. I can't remember signing anything like that last time I bought a car.


That's haggling though which is what the parent doesn't want to do. My point was that if you disentangle the components and make a reasonable cash-on-the-barrel take-it-or-leave-it offer they'll probably take it with a minimum of pushback.

But, yeah, apparently stuff can still happen. Believe me. I'm not a fan of car shopping.


Right, but it's a lot nicer than going in and dealing with people in person. You can even do it by e-mail, so you avoid all that awkwardness. Just another option people may not have thought of.


> The issue with your suggestion BTW is that manufacturers probably couldn't sell to them because doing so would violate their contracts with existing dealers.

What I want is a Chinese manufacturer, who has no previous presence in North America, entering the US market and signing a nationwide exclusive contract with a single retailer.

Picking a name from Wikipedia's list of Chinese automakers, let's take Great Wall Motors. They have no presence in the North American market (the closest they come is Costa Rica, which is in CALA). Let's say that one day, they decide they want to sell in the US. So they sign a contract with Walmart where Walmart will be the sole retailer in the entire country who would be allowed to sell Great Wall cars, and Walmart will sell them the same exact way they sell any other appliance (though perhaps Best Buy would be a better choice of retailer than Walmart, since a much larger chunk of their business revolves around selling appliances).


So now you have a cheap Chinese-made car with no service network. I suppose Walmart could effectively become a dealer/service network for this manufacturer as people will also want to test drive, get financing, and trade-in vehicles. Hard to imagine Walmart wanting to get into that business assuming any Chinese manufacturer even has a viable product for the US market.


Tesla sells cars with a flat, non-negotiable price. And you can buy it online. The model 3 is somewhat affordable.


Did any other dealer ever refuse to sell a car on similar terms? "I would like that car. What is your flat, non-negotiable price?"


Somewhat affordable and non-existent.


Give it a year. He was implying that he would never buy a car again for the rest of his life!


You don't need to haggle. Just do your research before hand, find cars with the exact same options, and come prepared with what you just found.

Bought a new car for the first time this year. First I found the options I wanted. Searched all over from Southeast to mid Atlantic, found the lowest priced and documented it along with several similar cars locally.

Came in with print outs and links to my findings. Told them either they match or I talk to one of their local competitors or if needed fly to Virginia using sky miles.

A couple trips to "talk to the manager" and 7.5k off MSRP. All while the customer next to me bought a similar car at full price.

You need to be able to get up and walk out at any point.


7.5k off MSRP can be kinda subjective. 7.5k off MSRP on a 100k car is not the same as off a 35k car. What was it relative to the dealer invoice? That's the real metric. Sorry, programmer.

Also, my brother-in-law bought a RAV4 in a cold weather state recently and did the whole "I will only pay invoice!" thing. They were like, "Yes sir!. Sign this this this. Bye". It's hard to know what kickbacks the dealers are getting over invoice so the dealer may still be making a good 5% over invoice (and on volume this is really good).

Don't get me wrong, you did the right thing. I got hard core scammed when I bought my first new car and now only buy used. Fell in love with a car from a magazine at 22, walked into a dealer and bought a dealer car (essentially a used car) at near full price with their financing (something crazy like 22%).

I'm not against negotiation. Just buy used and negotiate. Dealerships are evil.

https://help.edmunds.com/hc/en-us/articles/206102377-Invoice...

Edit: deleted a hanging sentence Edit2: Tip #2: join a credit union. When I finally read the 22% rate (on a 35k car, in 1992) I called my bank. They gave me a 6% quote and said "don't do anything. we'll take care of this". I got so many angry calls from the dealership claiming my credit will be ruined, they will repossess the car, I'm a scumbag, etc. None of those are true. You have a few days in California to transfer a loan if you fuck up (thanks Cali).


> For that matter, a lot of us aren't comfortable with haggling and are only willing to buy a car if we can buy it like any other appliance at Walmart or Costco.

I purchased a used Toyota Prius from a Toyota dealership like this. I reviewed their inventory online, test drove the car, and paid the price they had advertised online.

The only thing they asked was if I would prefer their financing options over the loan I was preapproved for from my bank. They had a much better rate so I went with their financing. Overall, it took about 2 hours to do the paperwork and get the keys after the test drive. It would be been faster if I didn't need financing.


CarMax is no-haggle.


I bought my last two cars from carmax. It really is a superior process, but its hardly free from having to deal with car sales people.


At least in mine and my family's experience, if you find a Carmax salesman you like and remember to save their number/email, you can contact them directly. Happen to like dealing with this quiet older guy who's happy to get you out the door in ~1 hour.


people think they want "no haggling" but it actually results in worse prices for all. it's usually just a few "suckers" who pay a lot and subsidize the cheap rates hagglers get.


I'm fine with paying higher prices if it means I don't have to negotiate with anyone.

The experience of buying a car should be the exact same as the experience of buying a refrigerator or a washing machine or any other appliance.


why? should your insecurities/shortcomings cause everyone's prices to be higher? You're massively screwing over people who actually want to haggle and save money. this is a common game theory scenario, and what ends up happening is more money just ends up going to the car dealers and consumers spend more on average.


Scion has a no haggling policy.


Toyota pulled the plug on Scion almost a year ago: http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/03/autos/toyota-killing-scion/


Can't you just order a car online, on the car manufacturers website? I've not yet done it, but I have built a few custom vehicles, to checkout out options and configurations. I've done it on Nissan's website, as well as GMC, Chevy, Audi, and Jeep.

Is there further haggling on the price once you have your car custom built and shipped to the dealer?


>due to the long history of pushy shady salespeople, which if my last 3 visits tell me anything, is still very deserved

It's hard for me to understand how people get pushed around when they're walking into a situation where they may be on the verge of spending tens of thousands of dollars.

The car dealership industry is hyper-competitive; if any part of the transaction makes you feel uncomfortable, let them know and take your money elsewhere. Dealers are a dime a dozen.


Huh? This really isn't true. For a given brand, there's probably between 1-3 dealers within a reasonable distance of you. For many people, there's only 1. Most people don't want to drive around to all the dealers in a 300-mile radius.


>Most people don't want to drive around to all the dealers in a 300-mile radius.

You're spending $20,000+ and you don't want to drive around to a few dealers? Spending a day or two to make the best decision is too much for you? That's why you get pushed around.


"Drive around to a few dealers"? It would take me a week to drive around to all the dealers in 5 different states. Do you really have that much spare time?

A much better strategy is to figure out which car you want, then go online and contact all the dealerships within an 8-hour drive asking them for their best price on it.


>"Drive around to a few dealers"?

First of all, I didn't mention "driving around" all over the map; you did, along with what a problem it is. Now you're coming up with some ridiculous scenario about driving around to 5 states? Complete strawman. In every metro area I've lived there are larger suburban areas filled with dealerships of all brands.

If 8 hours is too much time to spend helping form a decision on such a large purchase, than by all means go get "pushed around" by the scary car dealer.


I don't want "all brands", I want just one. Maybe you're not set on a particular brand and model, but when I buy a car I am, because a single, somewhat lackluster dealership buying experience is far preferable to having a POS car that breaks down a lot or that I'm not very happy with for some reason. There are not dozens of different dealers for the same brand in the same metro area. So that leaves me driving around to a bunch of different states to cover all the dealers.


I, for one, very much look forward to the day that I can take a day or two to actually make the best decision about my purchase instead of spending several days playing some weird song and dance with multiple people who want to take a cut of the purchase.

Sadly, outside of perhaps a of brand or two that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of tens of thousands, that doesn't seem to be a particularly viable option today.


>"I, for one, very much look forward to the day that I can take a day or two to actually make the best decision about my purchase instead of spending several days playing some weird song and dance with multiple people who want to take a cut of the purchase."

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that half the people complaining here have never actually bought a car.

This isn't 1988. All the information is out there. Arm yourself with the price you are willing to pay for the car and make it known. Don't pay more. There is no need for any game, and I've never been forced to play any, having purchased 10-15 cars in my lifetime.


You have purchased 10-15 brand new cars without having to deal with a middleman who is only there to take his cut?

If so, I'm guessing you are not from a region of the world where dealerships are given special protections against competition and actively prevent the sale of vehicles the way the consumer wants to buy them.


And we would much rather be able to do all of our comparison shopping from the comfort of our homes, like civilized 21st-century humans, which is why dealerships are so hated.


If you have a demanding job and are raising kids, your rare, few hours off are very precious - you'd hardly want to spend them driving back and forth between dealerships and haggling. And you're just too tired to put in that effort.


>If you have a demanding job and are raising kids, your rare, few hours off are very precious

Then you'll pay slightly more for your vehicle. Just like you'll pay more for a shorter commute or nicer school. No big deal. Life is about trade-offs.


How much driving around would you do when shopping for a mortgage? How many lenders would you actively talk to?

If we estimate the purchase price of a home to be roughly 10 times higher than a car - and following your logic - is sounds like you would be willing to spend 10-20 days driving around shopping for mortgages and would talk to 20-30 different lenders at minimum.

Is that a fair assumption?


If you've researched your car options and decided that the best car for you is a Honda Civic then your local Honda dealer becomes a de facto local monopoly on cars. The fact you could go and buy a different car somewhere else means that you have to choose to spend thousands of dollars on something that you know isn't the right choice. Dealers know this, and they're very good at making the most of it.

As you say though, the best way around the problem is simply to make sure you don't settle on a specific car so you're in a position to walk away if the dealer isn't great. That's easier to say than do though.


> a de facto local monopoly on cars

I like the implication here.

Because they're not going to have the specific car/options you want anyway, are they? No, you're going to need to accept what they want to sell...


That's one of the many tactics car dealerships use. If you want the model with some fancy options then you can drive it away today. If you want a car without additional extras then it's not in stock, so you'll have to wait 4 weeks (or more) for delivery, but the finance deal they're offering has to be taken before delivery of the car and it expires in a couple of weeks. Consequently you can only get finance if you pay for the options...


This can all be avoided by buying a used car from a private seller, or at CarMax.

New cars purchases are a bad financial move since you're going to lose thousands more on depreciation vs. buying used.


I prefer to lease. Sure you don't get the equity in the vehicle, but many people turn around cars every 3 years or so anyway. I like the peace of mind of not having to worry about mechanical issues due to the age of the car (and most issues that do arise are covered under included maintenance agreements or recalls) or missing out on new features.


Depends on the manufacturer and your area too. Something likea Honda Accord or Pilot has about 5 choices. When I bought my Accord it was LX, EX, EX with Leather, EX V6, EX Leather V6. If you look at some of the Ford or Chevy trucks, there are probably 100 different combinations.

It also helps that in the NY suburbs there are about 4 or 5 other places to buy that same exact car within a 30-45 minute drive.


>If you've researched your car options and decided that the best car for you is a Honda Civic then your local Honda dealer becomes a de facto local monopoly on cars.

How you feel about the dealership should be accounted for in your model. If the Honda dealers are jerks, don't buy a Honda, or buy a Honda elsewhere. Buying a car is a huge expense and shouldn't be taken lightly.


There's some really weird downvoting going on here. It seems that all the comments that suggest some practical, if not ideal, way to deal with the current dealership setup are being downvoted to obscurity. Who would want to downvote these? Car dealers? People who are certain that the current setup has no redeeming qualities?

Of course eventually some corrective upvoting like I've applied already will fix the imbalance for some of these wrongfully-downvoted comments. Perhaps even parent, making this comment look silly. However this is still a phenomenon that has occurred on this page, so I thought I'd point it out.


It's partly because the process is so painful; they throw a curveball at you after you've been to the dealership for 3 hours. At that point you start thinking "do I want to spend another painful 3 hours at a different dealership that is more than an hour drive away rather than just suck it up and spend $500 on something I don't need or want"


Walmart has been trying to get into the car biz for a long time. Here's an example from 2002:

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/retail/2002-04-23-walma...

Here's an example from 2008:

http://adage.com/article/news/wanna-buy-a-car-head-walmart/1...

(Nitpick, but it's "Walmart" not "Wal-Mart".)


They are still officially Wal-Mart Inc, so either would be accurate.


Offically, they are "Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., doing business as Walmart".


I think that depends on what preposition you use.

"You will soon be able to buy a car from Wal-Mart" sounds right, but *"at Wal-Mart" rings false to me.

Wal-Mart is the entity selling to you, and Walmart is the physical location.


I have now bought two cars through a broker, in my case "Autoland". I got a price over email, we chatted on the phone to confirm, they delivered the car to credit union where we signed papers on the pre approved loan. No bullshit, took 45 minutes I think to transfer the car, which was exactly to spec. Will never buy a car any other way.


I'd still rather go like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carvana

I remember the old iMotors experience. It was nice. Too bad in some states, car dealers are still ridiculously powerful. (ahem. Texas.)




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