Blizza Blizza

I just had a brilliant insight. The reason none of the car dealers in south Florida are interested in selling cars is because they’re all run by Cubans who don’t understand the free-market economy.

This is excusable, considering they came from a country that has been communist for the last 50 years, where airport security workers make $10 per month and airline pilots for Cubana make the staggering salary of $30 per month, and where a can of Coke costs a week’s salary for most people.

Here’s the proof.

Being totally fed up with the process of “Walk into dealer, be ignored, spend three hours trying to test drive one vehicle, get jerked around by manager when it comes time to talk pricing”, I decided to get on Mazda’s Web site last night and request a quote on the vehicle I wanted from three dealers back home in Michigan, two dealers in Knoxville, and three here in Miami.

Knowing how the dealers in Miami have treated me, I added this in the comments field of the quote request:

S-Plan qualified, manual transmission a must-have. Would like out-the-door quotes for both leasing and buying with $2000 down. If you try to tack on $500 “dealer profit fees”, be aware that I will laugh at you and walk out the door. If you cannot support your business with the profit you make from selling other cars, then perhaps you’re in the wrong business. I’m tired of dealers wasting my time.

The dealer where I was subjected to the three-hour test drive ordeal on Thursday was one of the dealers from which I requested a quote. The Internet sales manager at that dealer got back to me this morning:

Hi Chris,

Well sorry, laugh and walk away.

After all this is a business and we are entitled to making a profit.

I’m sure that whatever your business is, the customer does not set the price. and here we do have operating expenses that must be covered. If I sell at invoice, our¬†income comes from dealer fees, and that is not even out net profit as from there comes our expenses/operating budget.

So please, feel free to take your business somewhere else where they may want to sell at a loss, but I won’t.

My response was this:

Thank you for not wasting my time.

>After all this is a business and we are entitled to making a profit.

Actually, I don’t see anything in any laws anywhere that guarantees you a profit. It’s a free market, after all, and I’m quite free to take my business where I choose.

I choose to take my business to dealers who are perfectly capable of making a profit after paying all their operating expenses from sales prices that do NOT include a $500 “dealer profit fee” added onto the vehicle’s purchase price.

Your loss. Sorry.

Some people just don’t get it.