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Top 5 car dealer tricks

Buying a new car can be a big decision and sometimes a stressful one. Going from dealer to dealer, getting the best price, working out trade-in value and arranging finance is not always a straightforward task and there are those who may prey on this confusion.

PrivateFleet.com.au, Australia’s biggest online car buying service, can help to make car buying easy, offering independent advice on vehicle selection, a high standard of service and can save you approximately 15 percent off the dealer price.

“We do all the hard work for our customers,” said Private Fleet director David Lye. “We know all the tricks of the trade and like most industries there are dealers out there that don’t have customer’s best interests at heart.”

Private Fleet can help you to avoid the tricks some car dealers play on unwitting customers, however if you plan to go out there alone, here are the top five dealer tricks to be aware of.

1) The sacrificial lamb

This is where you see an advertisement for a car that seems to be priced very low, well below the competition. You then call up and are invited to go in and have a look, however when you get to the dealership, the car has strangely and coincidently been sold! Although the dealer is quick to assure you that they have other similar cars in stock, though not with the same low price tag.

Tip: If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.

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I am starting to wonder if the problems that Ford and Holden are facing in this country with their large cars – the Falcon and the Commodore – are going to be possible to remedy.

Holden is now talking a whole range of environmental and fuel-efficiency measures – from E85 compatibility to reducing weight – and Ford, despite having just released a brand new model, has already made public the next engine option, a diesel.

As I have written previously, both companies have only themselves to blame for their current woes – they were happy completely ignoring the changing marketplace and blindly heading down an ever-increasingly irrelevant path. It’s obvious they expected the market to change to suit them, rather than build cars that suited the buying public. That applies especially to Ford, a company that with the FG Falcon, had years more time to prepare for the changing times than Holden had with the VE Commodore.

But what makes me think that they may have lost it big-time is what I am seeing more and more: Holden and Ford are rapidly losing their loyal long-term potential car-buyers.

Now, self-evidently, they have lost some of these already; otherwise Ford wouldn’t be sacking production workers and releasing a market-special FG seemingly only minutes after the new Falcon was released; and Holden Commodores wouldn’t be being outsold (let’s talk private buyers) by a helluva lot more than just a couple of other car models.

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An Australian company has launched a car insurance scheme where your annual insurance cost depends on how many kilometres you travel.

This is significant for those who drive only to public transport, and also for those who choose to own multiple cars and drive each only for its best purpose.

The website is self-explanatory and I found the quoting quick and easy – and very interesting!

As you’d expect, it is beneficial only if the car does less than the average number of kilometres, but for those cars, it looks like insurance costs can be way lower than the current norm.

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So Mitsubishi’s Adelaide car manufacturing plant is to close. The Mitsubishi 380, the large sedan released in 2005, has proved to be a flop.

Now, and over the next few months, there will be a prolonged post mortem, analysing the reasons why the car failed. Already, I’ve seen statements excusing Mitsubishi Motors Australia from culpability for its failure.

But to anyone not wearing rose-coloured glasses, manufacturing by Mitsubishi in Adelaide has been doomed since the very day of the 380’s release. The company – perhaps driven by their masters in Japan – made the atrocious decision to build and release a car that had no market.

And this is not a retrospective, wise after the event, summary.

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Regular readers will know that when it comes to shopping, I am happiest digging through the junk at a tip shop, foraging at garage sales or even – if this can be called ‘shopping’ – picking up stuff that others have dumped by the side of the road. In short, glittering neon’d shops and my version of fun don’t go together. (Except, it needs to be said, when buying cameras or watches…)

So today was very unusual. I spent nearly all day with my wife Georgina and 3-year-old son Alexander shopping for brand new items: assessing and evaluating; picking up things, weight being felt in hand; turning products over and over while assessing quality; even putting some things down on the ground and lying on them. Yes, right there in the shop.

And when the day was finished, we’d spent something like AUD$700.

So what were we buying? Camping gear!

After doing a long drive in a diesel Hyundai i30 fell through, both Georgina and I felt all psyched-up for a tour. The Hyundai trip was going to have been a very long one, but when I was mulling-over its cancellation, I realised that the distance travelled wasn’t of that much importance. In fact, in my view, neither was the fact that it was to be done in a car.

Then, almost of its own volition, the thought popped into my head: why not go touring on our trikes?

Both Georgina and I are enormous fans of recumbent pedal trikes. These vehicles, which are simply nothing like a bicycle to pedal, incorporate stability and cornering fun in a way impossible to imagine if you’ve not experienced it. (In Georgina’s trike-selling business, over three-quarters of those who book a test ride buy a trike.) 

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An interesting press release:

NEW SERVICE TO KEEP MECHANICS HONEST

Mechanics and car dealerships that overcharge for services and repairs will now be caught because one of their ‘own’ has created a new business that guarantees fair prices for car owners.

The brainchild of Richard Palmer, a mechanic for more than 22 years, ausQuote protects its customers, from being intimidated by mechanics and paying for parts and labour at unfair prices, or worse yet, for parts and labour that are not even required or supplied.

Prior to any work being undertaken on the car, the mechanic’s quote is sent to ausQuote who carefully assess it and report back to the car owner on whether they are being charged too much and what repairs should be undertaken and at what cost.
Mr Palmer was inspired to start ausQuote after his grandmother was quoted $1596 for a roadworthy certificate in 2004 when all the car really needed was a new headlight globe at a total cost $105!

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