gt68

"I want your best price on this 911."

this is my first post and probably my last, an homage to all the anonymous "buyers" that send this request to the dealer body and that are then never heard from again after receiving a quote.

i have been in the biz over 20 years and remember the early '90s market. wiedeking should read his own play book. porsche's arrogance in repeatedly increasing pricing while decreasing content is an embarrassment. we dealers want and need to sell cars to stay alive, to keep open the franchises we paid millions of dollars for and that employ dozens if not hundreds of people. do you think we want to inventory 20 or 50 or 100 porsches with no support from the manufacturer?

let me be blunt. asking for a "best price" is the biggest joke in this business. we dealers want nothing more than to sell the cars we have in inventory, plus the several thousand porsche has in port for us to sell before we get our 2010 inventory. all i ask is that if you really want to buy a car, make an offer as a commitment to buy a car for $x, either by phone or email.

as a dealer, we receive over 200 emails a day, from complaints about service to offers to buy a car to ways to increase our marketing effectiveness to increasing #enis size. your "gimme your best price" email is just white noise amongst all the messages we get from any/all crackpots with internet access.

separate yourself from the noise by making a serious offer to buy a car and you'll be surprised how easy it is to buy one. but throw out the "best price" email, and it is very hard to take you seriously. we've seen that email thousands of times, and so even a truly serious buyer is not recognized as such. are you a real buyer, or are you a 12-year-old porsche-lover on his iphone? given that you don't include a phone number and physical address in your contact info = or that your contact info is in oregon while we're in connecticut = means that we'll assume you're the 12-year-old iphone kid. and we don't care if you're a "cash buyer" because we're paid cash either way, whether you write a check or finance it (but given that 85% of our buyers pay cash, you are not impressing us with your uniqueness).

if you find a car in our inventory and you want to buy it, we simply want an honest dialogue with you. if it's a 2009 911 with an msrp of $98,000 and you want to buy it for $70,000, just tell us! you will have demonstrated that you're probably living at home in your mother's basement, but at least it's an offer to buy, and we'll know what we're dealing wtih.

you're porsche enthusiasts. act as such when you want to buy one. help us preserve resale value. if you find the sleepy dealer that gets an allocation of 50 cars a year but can only sell 20 and needs to dump 30 at cost to stay alive, and you buy one at invoice, keep the car and keep the deal quiet. advertising your "screaming deal" price on this forum just devalued every 911 in the country.

i'm not a hater. i just hope i opened your your eyes if you're trolling the web for a great deal and you get a less than encouraging reply from the dealer body. don't be that 12-year-old kid or the crackpot living in mom's basement. want to buy a 911? prove it. we'll need your personal info to bill out the car anyway.

thanks for your passion, and thanks for listening.

redbaron01

admire your candor, and understand the frustration. As a first time buyer this month for a 997, I was taken back at the brashness of one sales mgr, from one dealer and the desire from another location to actually want to sell me a car... However I confused by PAG for the 2% price increase for 2010 in lieu of the downturn in the U.S. sales ... makes no sense . But I'm the consumer, and your the poor sole in the middle. Time for a wake up call ..

Edgy01

It's the games that are played by car salesmen that have often resulted in this like behavior by buyers. No one wants to pay more than they need to for a particular car.

When I chose my dealership I simply went in and told them what I wanted to do. I then began to sort out my options. Price was discussed much later in the process,--way later. It worked out that way because I felt that we had established a mutual respect and rapport and price negotiations came as needed. Clearly, you appear to be referring mainly to buyers of cars in your existing inventory. I'm writing about special ordering.

Arrogance is not attractive in car salesmen. "Preserving resale value?" What game book are you reading?

gt68

what? this is what i'm talking about. you're the kid with the iphone, right? kidding bud, don't get excited.

i agree, and the mid-2009 1% price increase was pure arrogance on PAG's part. it's alright, though, it's all we have to sell. we survived 1993, we hope we'll survive this too, for my family's sake and for the sake of our 29 employees and their families. remember them when you're going for the jugular and that extra $500. relax, man, just giving you a hard time.

going to bed so i can celebrate the 4th with my family before starting my next 70-hour week, where i'll be home after they're all asleep. buy some porsche's this month, y'all. it's the last month of the fiscal year, and recovery starts with your purchase.

jpcourt

Bad day at the office?... hang in there things have to get better soon.

gt68

if that's how you bought your car then you're not the problem here. as i said in my original post, the internet troll is the problem. but arrogance is not attractive in porsche buyers either. not an attractive trait, generally speaking, wouldn't you agree?

the game book i'm reading is this one. let's say you thoughtfully dialogued with your dealer, agreed on a price, ordered your car, and you're happy as a clam. and let's say for argument's sake that you were happy with a discount of $1,000 off a $100,000 msrp on your ordered car, which paid your dealer $9,000 gross profit. your neighbor is a commodity buyer, though, doesn't care about service, would buy the car at circuit city on a bankruptcy sale if he could, and hammered your dealer down to $92,000 on the same car, then posted his price triumphantly on this forum. ok, now you, the guy who happily paid $1,000 off, wants to come trade your car in at my store. my used car manager's job is to give you a value. well, he looks at the auctions and the black book and he reads this forum. when he sees on this forum that a new '09 can be bought at 9% off, what does that make your car worth (while you "only" paid 1% off)?

this is a perceived value issue, which we all learned about in marketing 101. your opinion of what a 911 is worth has little or nothing to do with its market price. it's what makes you happy and makes you buy one. so stop worrying about whether your neighbor bought his for $1,000 less. it's all good. and if the $1,000 is that important to you, you probably shouldn't be buying a 911.

gt68

bad day? bad MONTH at the office, man! 902 new cars sold in north america in june? ugly.

ok, i'm really going to bed now. alarm's in 4 hours.

hello911

this is a real crackup

no offense, but hearing a dealer cry about an extra $500 is funny. you guys forget you pretty much created the game, and used it to your advantage for as long as i can remember. i don't remember you guys offering me $500 more discount when the market was strong.

also, it is clear you don't understand the changes in market dynamics that have happened with the internet and easy access to information. unfortunately for dealerships, the shakeout in the dealership world is just beginning. consumer's can't wait for franchise laws to fall, manufacturers can't wait, it is not a good time to be a dealer, sorry...

on the other hand, maybe you are one of the survivors that will figure out what customers really want (and stop focusing what you want them to want), then you will be positioned to be the big winner in the end. Good luck!

gt68

it's tough to go to bed when this opportunity presents itself!

i'm not crying about $500 dude, so what are you talking about? actually, it's clear YOU don't understand the laws of supply/demand. if we don't need to discount a car $500 when the market is strong and people are falling over themselves to buy 911s, then why should we? all manufacturer's have an msrp, from microsoft to canon to the new york yankees. what do you want to pay for any of these products or services? i'm just saying be honest, not anonymous, when you approach me and are ready to write a check.

you can't wait for franchise laws to fall? cool, man, good luck buying your car directly from PAG or PCNA. i'm sure they'll be very responsive when you need service or warranty work and a loaner to drive while your car is down. i don't care about service when i buy a ball point pen either. but a $100,000 car? think a manufacturer will satisfy your need for service?

p-cardriver

I miss stoppie...

dD/dt

From the buyer's perspective, aggravating is when the dealer's "best" price is 18% higher than retail, down from the 22% he had on the sticker. Don't waste MY time, buddy.

Don't devalue the brand by making lowball offers? If PCNA needs socialism to survive, it's over anyway. Go ask Obama for a handout, not us.

$70k on a $98k MSRP should at least be given some consideration in this market. Too low to make ends meet, but that 'living in your mother's basement' comment probably explains why you're having so much trouble finding a parking spot when you go to work. At least you've shown you can insult serious buyers too.

And glad to hear that 85% of your buyers are cash, and that you took the opportunity to insult all of them too by pointing out that you don't care.

The bright side of this thread is that you saved me a drive over to Greenwich when the time comes to buy. Really, I'd sooner drive a Corvette than buy from a guy like you. Ranting insults against buyers on an owners forum in a sh*tty market is really one of the stupidest things I've witnessed. Hope you feel better.

stumil

gt68? Greenwich? Welcome back Stoppie!!!!

Jlangmd

I think he actually is not insulting the buyers, but explaining the realities of trying to do business in this economy.

I think he is responding to several threads here that state "i can't get a call back from a dealer".

Do you doubt that there are people who randomly email or fax requests to dealerships who can't afford the cars? or who aren't even old enough to drive? Fact is there are lots of folks who spend 14 hours a day on the net finding stupid ways to spend their time. Should the dealership deal with these anonymous requests? seems like time not well spent.

Supply and demand. When the market is good, you pay a premium. Even on the GTR when it was launched, there was a severe markup over MRSP. When the market is down, you can get a good deal, but the dealer can't take a loss on every sale. A $70,000 offer on a $98,000 vehicle is not a serious offer, and in business this is clearly and from the get go a lost cause.

Economics should be a required high school course.

uvgaal

Awesome stuff, the guy is complaining he actually has to work for once, 200 emails a day to find a real buyer?? That's an outrage!! Must have been pretty easy selling cars in Greenwich when everybody around you was a hf manager huh

ELUSIVE

Sounds like the guy who got a whopping discount of $1k is the shmuck here...not the guy who got a great deal and then advertised it for other Porsche enthusiasts.

Sounds like you have an ideal buyer in your mind who will just walk in and pay you MSRP for your cars. Sorry bud, but that's just not how it is anymore. Everyone wants the lowest possible price. Period.

I hate dealers.