Ok if you are looking for any "How to" articles on buying a car chances are you will or already have run into the story from Edmunds.com called "Confessions of a Car Salesman" by "veteran journalist" Chandler Phillips. I watched the video with him and Brian Moody from Edmunds.com hyping this story up and what a joke. First off, as you may have seen me write already in a past blog. I have a very high distaste for Edmunds.com and I will probably further mention that in blogs to come. Why the dislike you ask? Out of all of the consumer resources available not one of them sent me in so many misguided customers with unrealistic expectations. Edmunds.com touts themselves as the online authority when it comes to batting for the customer when really they are just "selling" you as much crap as any other.
I am going to tell you about a particular instance where a customer came in to buy a new car from me. He had his folder and his print outs and probably said "well Edmund's says" about 20 times while working the deal. After about the 5th time I had heard this I wanted to go find whoever the hell this Edmund guy was and wring his neck. We worked the deal to the BONE, and I mean to the BONE! Couple hundred bucks into hold back and everything. I will do a segment on hold back but in general it is a "buffer" in the invoice figures to cover advertising and other overhead cost. So now that we are down to what I as an employee could buy the car for he still insists that I am to high and "Edmund's says I can buy it for this." I ask for his printout and couldn't do anything but scratch my head as I looked at what I was reading. "What in the hell are they trying to do here and how are they getting away with this?" If I recall we were a grand or so apart from putting a deal together. Turned out that the specs he had chosen were something not even available in our sales region let alone very very limited when we did a national search for one. He had a print out on the most bare bones cars you could get and included a little disclaimer that the destination charge was omitted as well. So my customer, thinking his print out was the gospel and my window sticker was something I must have photoshopped to rip him off took his business elsewhere. That print out warped his mind so much he is probably still looking for a car and this was years ago.
Now that you have had a little taste of why I don't like Edmund's. let me continue to rip apart this story from "veteran journalist" Chandler Phillips. I don't highlight the words veteran journalist to poke fun a this guy for doing this. I am sure he is a very nice man and is good at being a journalist. I highlighted it to emphasize the first problem I had with this story. Wouldn't it have been wiser on Edmund's part to hire a "veteran car salesman" to have done this story. The second problem I had with the story was immediately they state "we sent in an investigative reporter in for three months to sell cars at a new car dealership." Three months!? Pardon my language, but are you shitting me!? I think about the most I learned in my first three months was the best places to eat for lunch and where to go get rid of it when my body was done with it. Little known fact about the new guy at a car store. Everyone hates you. You're dipping in to their piece of the "pie" and everyone would just assume see you fizzle out and quit. No one is telling you shit! At least not on their own will. The third problem I had with the video was if I was a customer. Nothing would scare me about walking into a dealership more than this video. The video has an erie feel full of black and white "spy" camera shots that present dealerships as if they are a crime scene. While some days at work my job did feel like a crime scene this video was meant to promote a story to give a customer an edge not a bad taste before they got there. I just don't think it was well thought out on their part. One of my favorite parts of the video is where Chandler Philips goes on to mention a lot of the guys he worked with were gang bangers and ex-cops. Ok this is where that sound effect of a record coming to an abrupt stop sounded in my mind. Excuse me!? I never worked with either of these and I probably worked with over 50 associates over the years. What I am trying to say is we don't all live in Los Angeles. I just don't think they thought before they spoke on this one. He then goes on to say at times he thought they were "onto him" and finishes with a comment about most salesman being inexperienced which I don't think can be any further from the truth. Inexperience will send you down one of two paths. One being a complete "natural" at it which at that point no one can really call you inexperienced or the other which is the unemployment line real fast.
The fact that this was a 3 month investigation kills all of it's credibility to me immediately for the reasons I mentioned before. To say that you are going to blow the lid off of this industry in 3 months couldn't be a bigger insult to a complex business. Sure you can pick up a few industry terms, clever things to say and get the basic idea of how the sales department works but in order to see how the whole "machine" works took me years. You are not going to learn anything about how finance and the "back end" of a deal in that time. At least not enough to really be able to go write a credible story on it. There is way too much to cover and you will not find it in three months. As I had mentioned before I started this blog because after 3 hours of writing I knew I could never conceivably write a short enough ebook on the subject and it was just quickly becoming a book. I will safely say I am going to be writing these articles for months until my mind starts running out of knowledge I can pass on. Like I said nothing against Chandler Phillips for this. I am sure his writing skills would run mine into the ground. I did read the article myself and while there is some useful info I think that I can be quite a bit more thorough and I have a real hard time believing he himself attained all of it in three months. It is Edmunds.com and their "we bat for the consumer" facade they put on is what I have a problem with. I think there are too many car enthusiasts and not enough "car guys" working for Edmunds. Perhaps someday they will see this article and hire me to write a story on the difference between the two. However, until then I am sure they will continue to send folks into stores in flocks with their print outs and false sense of confidence only to leave without a car and thinking every dealer in their region is a crook. Here is a link to promote the story. I hope you find it as entertaining as I do.
Chandler Phillips "Confessions of a car Salesman"
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Edmunds.com's "Confessions of a Car Salesman"
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