Dealerships tend to take some hard knocks here, harder than deserved imho. I got to thinking that dealerships must sometimes be victims of fraudsters, folks “buying” a car with a bad check etc. Or I expect there are a variety of warranty scams.
So got to wondering, what are the main scams dealerships have to be on-guard against? Perhaps if we understand this better , we here would be more sympathetic to the dealerships.
George- thats a great question. Im going to ask it at the next meeting of my NADA chapter next Tuesday evening
Ill report back.
This will be an interesting tread… lol
Biggest scam I got was buying the 7 year 70k mike warranty. on a 2017 3 year old car bought off lease from the dealer that leased it. GMC . Needed a repair in 2023 I think, Window switch fail, $262 just for the part nope sorry the warranty is based on the date of manufacture. You missed it by 2 months! Of course I bitched to high heaven, we don’t sell those anymore and the guy who sold it to you is no longer with us. Never got anywhere.
Lucky only $1400 down the tubes. Unlike Toyota, $1400 extended warranty bought near the end of 3 year lease on a 2017, bumper to bumper till 2027 or 70k, less than 30k now. Only requirement oil change once per year to maintain warranty.
I’ll tell you it was a miserable ride 500 mile with plastic duct taped over the passenger window, did not eve use the radio due to the noise.
I bought the Toyota Platinum extended warranty plan with $0.00 deductible on her 17 Corolla (bought in 2019) that expires 4/2/2025 and 94,519 miles, pretty much bumper to bumper, even covers TPMS sensors…
Well she drives a lot and just hit 95,600 miles and guess what the 1st thing that has failed on it?? TPMS sensor and she is 1,100 miles out of warranty… 
Oh well…
I did not buy the extra warranty from CarMax (which seems pretty good) on my 23 Taco due to the factory warranty is still good… If I would have gotten an older one with higher miles I probably would have though, just for piece of mind…
When every we go buy a new car the process at many vehicles is unnecessarily adversarial. More than once I’ve come across a bait and switch. I’ve driven 20 miles past one dealership to another dealership because of how we were treated. Not all dealerships are this way. Many are great, but there are far too many of these shoddy dealers then there should be.
When we bought our 2019 Odyssey the general manager tried to sell us an extended warranty saying that the electronics in modern cars were terrible. I asked him why I should buy a Honda if their electronics were awful. He shut up fast and we bought the minivan.
+1
When I was shopping for an NX450h+ a couple of years ago, all of the dealerships I visited in NJ were adding at least $5k to the sticker price, due to the vehicle shortage that resulted from the chip shortage. And, some of the salespeople were offensively arrogant, and told me that I would likely have to wait at least 6 months for delivery. Luckily, a friend suggested that I check a Lexus dealership in nearby PA, and it turned-out that they were not adding anything to the sticker price.
Not only were they not adding any ADP, but the people at that dealership were very decent to deal with, and they offered me FAR more for my trade-in than the NJ dealerships were offering. The bottom line is that, by driving 70 miles, I saved more than $7k, and I was able to drive home with my new car in about 3 weeks after my initial visit to that dealeship.
The contrast between that Allentown, PA Lexus dealership and the highly-advertised Ray Catena dealerships in NJ was like night and day.
Praising a dealership is kind of pointless. It may as good as one can be this week but have new ownership next week . Or in my case the Volvo general manager changed and I no longer felt like doing business with them.
I’m going to be new car shopping soon and I hate the process so much, I have put it off for months. I want the Amazon of car shopping. I don’t have hours to waste on something this fundamental.
They purposely make this into a huge deal just to wring as much money as possible from people who are less adept at bargaining, perhaps ignorant of certain aspects or are just fed up and want to get the deal done with. Actually purchasing a car should only take 20 minutes tops. No I am not giddy about getting a new car, it’s not my first rodeo. I don’t need all your pomp and circumstance, it’s an appliance. I just want to pay for it and get out of here…
My brother had the perfect line IMO for the F&I guy regarding his insistence on the need for an extended warranty and feigned disbelief he didn’t want that added protection- “I guess I have more faith in your products than you do”.
Not at the place I bought my truck from a few months ago, I found basically what I wanted, prequalified, said what my down payment will be and it told me what the payments would be for any vehicle I looked at, then I did a quick Qualification on line at my convenience, happened to be 2am…lol…
It gave me an answer very fast and the payments were the same as before, then I went down there with no appointment and with in about 10 minutes was taking to a sales guy asking him a bunch of questions, then we pulled up the same website as from home and picked the one and ordered it, paid for the shipping (mine was only $99.00 (not taxed), signed a few things and left…
A few days later I went down to pick it up and hard signed the finance paperwork and stuff, was done and waiting in the waiting area while they gassed it up and final cleaned it… It took 3 times longer waiting on the gas and cleaning then the paperwork…
I have bought a lot of vehicles from new car dealers mainly off the used car lots and this was the most pleasant and easy buying experience ever…
When my daughter is ready to upgrade, we will give them the 1st shot, same if I ever buy another one…
BTW, they pushed the warranty for all of about 30 seconds, I said no thanks and that was about it… I probably asked more questions about it then anything…
It also seems they do there own financing, I set everything up on line for payments (very quickly), you can pay weekly, every 2 weeks or monthly, you also pick your payment date… So everything about it was almost too easy…
I dunno, like everything else there are good and bad and you just have to take care of yourself and not fall victim at dealerships or any other business you deal with. Honest people tend to deal with other honest people.
I will say that I hate buying cars. But by the time we are at a dealer, we have already decided what to buy. The process is relatively smooth. The only thing worse than buying a new car though is a used car. I do pity the dealers though. They have to stay in business one way or the other and these are not good times.
I had the same experience as Dave at car dealerships.
I found what I wanted, told them what monthly payment I could manage, and that was it.
They sold me a bumper to bumper warranty for $1,600 while keeping my monthly payment within agreed commitment. Then I was out the door.
However, it took me a tough 2 hours to complete the purchase due to paperwork and insurance.
I bought my Saturn Coupe brand new from a dealer in Ohio. This was NOT my first dealer experience but it was surely my BEST. I ordered the car with no drama and no negotiation as Saturn sold at MSRP and I had a GM discount anyway so the price was set. Easiest purchase, ever!
When it came in, my wife was just going to drop me off and go home. She marveled at the process and stayed for the whole experience. He had the car brought around. We checked that it was what I ordered, went inside and he asked if I reconsidered financing (I paid cash) and signed the papers. He showed me the car’s features while the tech installed a temporary tag and after we shook hands and I went home. I got a follow-up call a couple of days later. I have a couple recalls on the car and they were executed with no drama. This was the total opposite of the typical GM dealer experience. Dayton area dealers treated GM employees like dog doo doo because they could. The Saturn dealer experience never did migrate to the rest of GM. Well, except Saab.
This experience was only bested by Saab. They did everything Saturn did and more. My wife’s new car was covered with the Swedish flag and unveiled to her in the showroom. The salesman walked her through every feature in the car and then they took a test drive. Of course, Saab is now dead, too.
That is something that I would never do. You should negotiate for the best bottom line price, and then determine what it would cost you per month if you are going to finance the purchase.
Yeah I dropped th3 wife off on my way to work to pick up our new car. She was pleased with how she was treated. If you want to test a dealership see how they treat a woman. That will tell you all.
There was a dealership in town that our superintendent went to buy a car from. Toward the end the salesman told her to discuss it with her husband. She said my husband is not buying the car, I am. Red face, sweat on forehead. Love it.
I can relate to this.
We also bought a Honda Odyssey once, with the power sliding doors. The Finance Guy was trying to push the extended warranty on us. He was telling us how expensive repairs to the power sliding doors were, and how his kids like to “ride” the doors on theirs. My first thought was, why do you let your kids “ride” the power sliding doors?
We didn’t buy the warranty. Never had issues with the doors.
We didn’t have any warranty issues with our Odyssey either. The general manager was polite, just tried to sell us the extended warranty. The salesman was enthusiastic and tried hard to earn our business. He showed us how to use everything and linked Mrs JTs phone to the car so she could use Apple CarPlay.
When I bought a new kitchen stove in 2005, the Best Buy salesman tried to push the extended warranty because, “when that touchpad goes, it will be very expensive to replace”.
I passed on his offer, and 19 years later… no problems whatsoever.
Just a friendly reminder, the topic for this thread is about scams that customers sometimes play on the dealerships.