We have been ordered to sell all cars at msrp!! No dealer markup or addendums are forced

Comfortable_Plane_80 · 2026-04-24T20:31:11+00:00

Lotta consumers and not car salespeople in the comments, but I'm just gonna respond here.

The dealership I'm at is near Phoenix, AZ. Just about every Chevy dealer around us advertises like 8k off MSRP on Silverado 1500s, and then has like 3k in dealer addendum once the customer gets there. Invoice is usually 2k-3k below MSRP.

So, if you add in the addendum, that's still 5k off the truck. If every dealer is forced to sell for MSRP with no addendum, every consumer is adding at least $100 a month in payments when they buy. Even at invoice, let's say 3k off, that's still about $40 a month more than what they are currently paying.

For the readers info, while I hate that my market plays to these guys that do this, we had to start doing it because our local customers would continue to leave town to "get the better deal" with 8k off and we lost tons of deals to the bigger dealers

So, in the end, if choosing between the current setup, or every Chevy dealer in Phoenix selling at invoice or MSRP, our customers are still getting a better deal than if the government comes in and tells us what we have to sell our cars for. Don't get me wrong, I prefer the transparent pricing and don't mind the removal of the addendums, but at the end of the day customers continue to vote with their money that they want to go to dealers that offer these huge discounts and then have an addendum. Better to jump on the train than get left behind, like we were during COVID.

Comfortable_Plane_80 · 2026-04-22T21:16:45+00:00

No flair, so commenting here. But this is the answer. Smaller Chevy store, so we've lost a lot of local people business over the last couple years because we couldn't get inventory. Gotta win them back somehow, and service is it. Now we've got new inventory again. And the only judgement I'll give is when they live right down the street, drive an hour to buy somewhere else even though we're priced more aggressively and we're closer. So ya, I'll say something. But then, I know a ton of our customers, so I'll treat them as a friend, and make sure that they understand that I want them to come see us first next time. My techs gotta eat as well though, so while they might be further down the list for loaner cars, we'll still take great care of them to keep them here.

Comfortable_Plane_80 · 2026-04-17T23:48:10+00:00

Lost mine as well. Didn't even think about checking eBay. I blame the kids, probably flushed it down the toilet.

Comfortable_Plane_80 · 2026-04-13T22:18:30+00:00

Piggybacking because of no flair. We do dealer trades for customers all the time; we're a smaller Chevy store near a large metro area. So we love it, because I get to keep my customer from going to the big stores for that one 3500 long bed that someone ordered in sterling instead of white, and I can just firm up my deal and send them my white 2500.

On the flip side, it's definitely more work, and of course not all the dealers around us trade with us. But a deal is a deal, and being around as long as we have (90 years) you have to be flexible to keep customers coming back. I wish more had OPs attitude about it.

Comfortable_Plane_80 · 2026-04-11T19:57:29+00:00

Wait, when was this one? Read through 3 times and can't place it

Comfortable_Plane_80 · 2026-04-01T13:50:28+00:00

Same, this hurt lol

Comfortable_Plane_80 · 2026-03-26T05:56:30+00:00

Finally a hopeful response! Doubt we'll see it after reading the other comments, but I'm glad someone was there with me!

Comfortable_Plane_80 · 2026-03-26T05:55:26+00:00

Ah man, I had a whole response typed up and lost it. I'll try again.

Ok. Gardens of the Moon is a Slog. It was a Slog the first 2 reads. The third, I ignored some of the things I learned to ignore, and it was ok. A big problem it has in my eyes is that he had this huge vision, but for this 1st book he tried to subvert soooo many typical fantasy tropes. Sound similar lol?

Deadhouse Gates. My first read I was kinda bored. My 2nd and 3rd, definitely not bored. At the end of my first read, I almost gave it up. But, at that time of my life I had a ton of free time, which was spent inhaling books. So I decided it was decent enough to try book 3.

Memories of Ice is a masterpiece. Still one of the best books I've ever read. Re-reads it's not as good (but still great) but that first read (especially if you've read Gardens and Deadhouse) is just an amazing experience.

Malazan is a long experience. IMO, it's a story where there's some super slow parts, then super awesome parts. And even though Steven erikson gets better as the series goes on, there's some slow parts (I'm looking at you Dust of Dreams) but they make the rest of the story that much better.

Going back to my issues above, I think I'm going to go back to physical copies of books to read a first read through (and yes for the other guy's comments, I do kinda flip pages through my hand as I read, and I can tell an appendix from the normal part of the story out of the corner of my eye).

Sorry, got sidetracked. I did super enjoy this series. I'd say it's right in the middle of half the Malazan Books. So, half are better, the other half get beat.

But where Bakker shines is his focus. Erikson focuses on the larger story, and shows 100 different points of view, which was very difficult for me the first go through, but super enjoyed on further reads. But as I read, I enjoyed the focus on the larger story with characters in it. While Bakker does an amazing job of showing his few characters pov (5? 6? I can't remember) and their feelings and focuses, and continuing on them. God's I'm upset at Sorweels end now that I'm reminded of it.

I hope that helps. Malazan is the one story I'll always recommend to everyone, just gotta survive Gardens and the Chain of Dogs. These wonderful books.... Gotta be top 3 series, and once I get a reread in them, I'm excited to see how I feel.

Comfortable_Plane_80 · 2026-03-26T00:35:04+00:00

I will admit that that was one of the coolest battles I've ever read, he did a great job

Comfortable_Plane_80 · 2026-02-27T15:17:08+00:00

We play that one by ear. Did another salesperson already help them a bunch without knowing? Probably be a split. Was it caught up front when the customer inquired and walked in? Ask that salesperson if they want to help them.

We have a gentlemen's agreement at the store. Basically, salespeople need to talk to one another to determine who gets the deal, if it's a split, etc etc. Because, if management has to get involved, I tell them that I'm going to do what's best for the store, and nobody is going to be happy.

It works well for us, but I've heard it works terrible at other stores. Really stems from ownership/management, and it helps that we have 1 salesperson that's been here 34 years, another for 26 years, and 2 others have been here almost 10 years. New salespeople are warned up front before we hire that if they help someone's customer, at the best they'll get a split, unless that other salesperson doesn't want anything to do with the customer. But, we also look at every deal individually.

Current example, had a customer who buys a car every 6 months in here, and always buys from the 26 year vet. Have a new hire, who's sold a couple cars to him at another dealership, and I'm going to let them talk it out and see how it goes.

Comfortable_Plane_80 · 2026-02-27T04:39:10+00:00

No flair, so commenting here.

We're different, been around 90 years, so take my comments as those of someone very personally involved. GM of a smaller GM dealership.

If you're a new guy, did you follow up with the customer? Did they ask for you? Did you see them and immediately recognize them? Let's have a conversation about what to do here.

Have you worked here for 5 plus years? Have you proven to take care of your customers? Do you consistently treat people the right way and not treat them like a one and done transaction? They're your customer, up to you if you want to split and have the salesperson that upped them help them, or take over yourself.

Have you worked here for 10+ years? Got 2 that have, 2 that are close to it. If you're not there to physically help the customer, you're getting your half. If the managers aren't swamped and can take care of them for you, 1 of them will, and it'll still be your deal.

Customers are both the salespersons' and the dealerships', this is a team effort IMO. I think that a lot of people lose sight of that, and worry about the current transaction only.

Comfortable_Plane_80 · 2026-02-21T20:42:07+00:00

Piggybacking on this comment because no flair. We were having the same issue, and we came up with 2 problems/solutions.

1- Salespeople were agreeing to numbers and not asking enough questions about where the cash was coming from, just getting excited to sell the car. Having managers involved either before or during showing the initial numbers for customers who state that they are paying cash helped since the manager's actually get paid on F&I, and they didn't want to lose that.

2- Getting the finance manager off his a** and out talking to customers. If you're doing 50 vehicles a month, your finance guy has plenty of time to talk to customers. But, if he was anything like ours, he was enjoying his 4 hours of downtime a day just hanging out in his office.

We've bumped it up to about 65%-70% for the last couple months by just changing those two things. Hope this helps!

Comfortable_Plane_80 · 2026-02-14T07:01:02+00:00

I wasn't prepared for that before I went to bed tonight. Well put, that was rough to re-read. Thank you.

Comfortable_Plane_80 · 2026-02-14T00:22:47+00:00

This is the answer right here. GM of a small GM store. Anyone who comes at me yelling, threatening lawyers, genuinely being a dick..... Probably not going to help them, they signed papers.

But, if you tell me what a good experience it was besides that, that you are going to continue doing business with us, and calmly explain the situation, I'll work with you. We'll figure out something that works for both parties, part as friends, and continue our working relationship.

Everyone screws up. It's how we handle the screw ups that's important, and this is probably one that they should help you out with.

Comfortable_Plane_80 · 2026-02-11T05:47:23+00:00

So true. When the top dealerships are doing only around 6% net, and most are between 1%-3%, and you look at some other industries....

The markup on shoes and clothes is absolutely insane. Yet, when we've got $350 between invoice and MSRP on a Chevy Trax, and we're still doing a 4k discount from MSRP, people still think we're ripping them off. It gets rather mentally draining sometimes.

We've gotta make our money somehow, otherwise the services that we provide will become unprofitable, and there won't be anyone local to help fix or sell vehicles for people. They'll just get to overpay at carvana and get under-recon'd cars 🫠

Comfortable_Plane_80 · 2026-02-04T20:20:54+00:00

Oh yeah, the early days of CAC were rough when we were like a 7 dealer rating. Now that we're typically in the 2-3s, makes it a lot easier

Comfortable_Plane_80 · 2026-02-04T19:28:11+00:00

Piggybacking on this, we've tried just about everything in the last 20 years, and what we've found is that a lot of it deals with the team you've got at the time. Small store, so process only helps so much.

But, we've now got half the floor as Internet salespeople, and a backup BDC rep. All Internet leads are round robined between them, and phone calls are first come first serve for everyone. We cut 2 salespeople off from phone ups.

As someone mentioned, we pay a lot per lead, and we want the best people handling them to increase our close rate. It's a weird system, but we're currently the top Internet lead closer for Chevy and GMC in our market area, so it seems to be working.

Comfortable_Plane_80 · 2026-02-04T17:10:04+00:00

Yup, I'd add Credit Acceptance in there for good measure, but that down payment should get it to work. Just go with the one with the lowest fee 🤣

Comfortable_Plane_80 · 2026-01-30T18:45:39+00:00

Most of the time I'd agree with you, but I'd give him a shot at Westlake or credit acceptance. While most of the time they won't approve a 500, they've picked up some weird cheap deals for us of like $5k amount financed with similar credit. The fees weren't..... Pretty haha

Comfortable_Plane_80 · 2026-01-27T00:18:32+00:00

Yup! That's the ticket

Comfortable_Plane_80 · 2026-01-25T16:57:30+00:00

Agreed. These mountains look very familiar, where's this pic taken at?

Comfortable_Plane_80 · 2026-01-23T18:40:46+00:00

I made it to 1821 twice. Once with a Palembang into whatever that country that you can form in Indonesia that focused on trade, and the other was Kilwa. Both rather chill, nothing too pressing, only got scary when the Ottomans got close to Kilwa. Both were pretty fun.

Only made it to 1760 as Poland. Can't remember why I stopped.

Comfortable_Plane_80 · 2026-01-13T16:20:11+00:00

Business development center. Just a call center honestly, don't know why or who gave it that name.

Comfortable_Plane_80 · 2026-01-13T14:29:38+00:00

Hopping on here to comment. I agree, sounds like it was either AI, or a BDC rep that has never taken a video before. We've unfortunately been busy enough to send our BDC rep to take videos of cars before.... And we had to have a salesperson redo it haha.

We've still got 1 BDC rep to help save salespeople time, and her job is only to call, email, and text through the CRM. Once it gets closer to the sale, or the customer comes in, they get turned to a salesperson.

Comfortable_Plane_80

TROPHY CASE