I'm sure some people would consider me a troll, while I think I'm just writing honestly when I see things I don't agree with. Yet reading what you just wrote makes me want to quit this site forever. On most sites we know not to reveal enough to get doxxed. Here we reveal a lot thinking we're dealing with serious people. Stupid mistake. Thanks for the warning about the stalkers.
I’m not too concerned about it. I’m a fairly tough old coot (I’m a reformed troll, myself). I’ve dealt with much worse. As you can tell, more folks seem to value what I have to say, than have issues with it. I make a sincere effort not to bring negativity (and boy, oh boy, is that something I can do).
I’m pretty sure that the ones that have problems with me, consider me to be an arrogant old “OK boomer.” Maybe they’re right. I don’t think so, but, as they say, if your feet are wet, and you see pyramids, you’re in de Nile (or a fountain in Vegas). I don’t attack folks, or try to intimidate them. My worst crime is to be annoying.
This is a professional venue. It may not always seem like it, but people can get and lose careers, by their behavior, hereabouts. I’m done with mine. I don’t really need to impress anyone, but if I fight with someone, it could have severe consequences for them. I know how to draw the worst out in people, and make them show their ass. They may “win” their fight, here, and lose everything else. A pyrric victory.
Even if I don’t like someone, I don’t actually want to cause them damage. I would sincerely like to be a positive influence, if at all possible. As I said, I used to be a rather nasty troll, and one of the reasons I participate here, is as recompense. I believe amends need to be made.
This site is Disneyland. Maybe it can’t last, but it has, so far. I like it here. Most folks here have some truly great stuff to share, and I learn something every day. I am truly humbled by some of the participants, here. I make a point of hanging out with people smarter than I am. I’ve done that, all my life. I participate, because I want to be a good citizen, and it’s actually kind of an honor to be here.
If it gets bad, I can always hightail it outta here. I have done that many times, in the past.
A 20 year old pickup is fuel injected, has a catalytic converter, and is checked by it's OBD2 controls constantly.
Unless the pickup is failing its smog tests, and driving around with expired registration, it's operating pretty well I promise.
Regarding oil consumption, that might be possible, but would eventually clog up the catalytic converters with an oily residue and also cause OBD2 faults for bad catalytic converter efficiency.
Take it from a car salesman, this is often a tactic to slow down the negotiation and make you feel like your offer was a good deal for you. I have said those words many times when I could have gone lower than their offer, but if you just go back and accept it, a lot of "hard negotiators" get cold feet.
Anyone that brings a friend to buy a car with them automatically broadcasts "I'm playing games and brought an extra player" so we turn on the games too.
Oh, I enjoy the game. I went along to make sure he wasn't rooked. He did notice that three times the numbers on the term sheet didn't add up, in the dealer's favor, and three times the salesman said he'd just made a mistake.
I knew about the term sheet ruse, it had been tried on me twice and on another friend of mine.
I also knew that I'd be up against a negotiator who does it all day every day, and so I expected game on.
I sold cars for a decade, at very busy dealerships, and I have no idea what a term sheet ruse means. The only 'ruse' in car sales is the game played to stop people that want to pressure a dealership into selling something below it's typical sale price.
If a car is in demand, it sells near MSRP. If it's a high volume commodity that's hard to sell in the required numbers, you can discount it heavily. If everyone wanted to buy a car at "the best possible deal you've done in the last 90 days" dealerships would basically be out of business by definition. So someone has to hold the line or the entire system doesn't even work.
Im a very frugal person and don't even buy new cars, but why some people think they deserve to pay less than their neighbor did blows my mind still to this day.
> some people think they deserve to pay less than their neighbor did blows my mind still to this day
Deserve has nothing to do with it. It's about both parties negotiating for the best price.
That said, there may be very good reasons not to push too hard. You might want to do business with the other party in the future. You might want a good review on Google. You might not want to take advantage of an elderly person or an inexperienced wide-eyed kid.
But any party going on about what they "deserve" is not going to earn sympathy.
BTW, did you ever watch "King of Cars", a reality TV show at a car dealership? I found it both entertaining and instructive.
My basic summary of the entire absurdity of the common tactic of "what's the best price you can do?" is as follows..
The best price is a vague concept depending on where we want to draw the line.
Best price I can do and keep my boss happy with my performance?
Best price I can do if I want to be below average at this company?
Best price I can do if I want to ask for a personal favor from my boss to allow me to heavily discount this car beyond established metrics we have and sell it this one time?
Best price I can do if I want to be yelled at tomorrow morning?
Best price I can do if I want both my boss and I to be yelled at tomorrow?
Best price I can do if I want my boss to negatively impact his career by the owner seeing him make deals like this too often?
Best price I can do if I want to get myself or my boss fired the next day? I could probably somehow secretly sell a car $10k under what I should... Once.
Where do we stop? Some nice people pay MSRP. Some people ask for a gesture of a discount. Some people ask for what discount is fair to market and we'd be ok with, and take it. Some people want below market, and we try to stop it if the car is in demand or we have enough volume. Some people want prices so low they'd fall into the "negatively impact the salesperson or teams career". Sometimes we even take those, but it's always a calculation between taking a below market average offer or waiting for one of the earlier described people to walk in.
I happened to know beforehand that the car had been on the lot a while, and the dealer probably wanted to be rid of it.
Unsold cars on the lot are burning cash, as they're there on borrowed money.
BTW, he had to get the manager's signoff on the final price, so I'm sure he wasn't getting fired for it. A savvy manager isn't going to let a salesman underprice a car to sell to his buddy.
You mention a lot of considerations, all perfectly valid. That's what makes the game interesting and fun :-) I'm sure the salesmen also size of the customer based on his clothes, the car he arrived in, his demeanor, etc. I remember shopping for a new car long ago, arriving at the dealer with my usual worn out jeans. None of the salesmen would talk to me. So I bought the car from the dealer's rival. These days, Seattle is full of millionaires wearing jeans, and the salesmen know that, and don't make that mistake.
Unless there's value in it to me, I generally dress down for anything where I'm paying money.
My thinking? If I'm polite and verbally confirm that I'm good for the amount and the salesperson treats me poorly? Not someone I'd want to do business with anyway.
I'm from California where ignoring someone for the way they dress doesn't really happen often. And honestly, any car salesman that's been in it for more than a month has seen a blue collar worker come buy a $80k diesel pickup or escalade for their wife.
What we do screen for a bit is basically time wasters. It is possible to be accidentally picked up in this net, and then say "they sure missed out, I bought a car at the next place". That's unfortunate for the salesperson sure, but you're ignoring the countless hours saved by quickly dismissing the true time wasters.
I sold cars and was very good at it (better than top 1%) and would sometimes get in a mood when I would ignore intuition for a few weeks and just do an amazing job with everyone. Doing an amazing job works well, and you can get people to buy a car who swear they stopped with ZERO intention of actually buying a car that month even, very often. But you almost never even get CLOSE to selling a car to someone you have a bad vibe about, even if you go all in.
If you're good at car sales, you have more people to follow up with and do a good job with than you have time. I sold 34 cars a month average over years. National average is 11. Eventually you have to trust your judgement to save yourself 10+ hours a week, even if once a month it costs you a sale.
Fair enough. I have another anecdote about this. Another friend went into a Ford dealer to buy a truck with all cash. The salesmen just ignored him, chatting around the coffee machine. He came up to them, and pulled out the roll of cash, saying he came there to buy a truck and "I'm going to the other Ford dealer." The salesmen rushed him, but he said "too late".
He walked out, went to the other Ford dealer, and drove out with a new truck.
I can see not wasting time if there are many customers in the place, of course you triage them. But if you're chatting around the coffee machine because there are no customers in the showroom ... !
1. Weird fraud I've never seen done, if the actual original interest rate was "agreed upon", and not just a "potentially if you qualify at our source bank".
2. I assume the car was looked at and maybe test driven. I find it hard to believe this was a 'ruse' left for the final moments. I can imagine people getting confused or not hearing or understanding I suppose.. someone wants a discount, salesperson says we have a demo over here we can do a large discount on.. and somehow the miles or reason for discount were not discussed. I wouldn't call this a ruse, and once again not something I've done or seen since it's just a waste of time. Obviously the person will discover the miles at some point, so why have the drama.
3. Illegal to pad a term sheet and then stuff a $1000 'charge'. You'd atleast have to have the customer sign the contract for what they were getting for their $1000. Dealers attempt to add things often, but they can't be secretly padded into the initial payment discussions. It's superficially easy for a customer to snap a photo of a preemptive term sheet and burn a dealership at the DMV dealers office or back out a whole deal months or even years after purchase if this was documented. Again, not something I saw in 10 years.
4. I saw countless people get confused by the "total" on the contract, usually when selling a used car to a less mathematically and logical buyer for some reason. You can sell a Porsche to an accountant and all goes great everytime, but sell a used Corvette to someone that personally requested a 72 month loan and watch drama unfold as he wonders why the total of payments on his $50k car is $70k. Luckily I was good and could always explain reality of sales tax, registration, and interest to these people. But not everyone is so lucky.
Maybe the dealerships I worked at were above average in integrity, because they were high performers and high performers don't have time to fraud induced drama, but honestly if you land on a dumb salesperson that can't explain your confusion to you, you can end up thinking your confusion was their attempt at a scam.
1. It was a handshake "come back tomorrow for the paperwork" deal with the manager. The underling who handed me the papers said they would never have agreed to the lower interest rate. I told her to go check with the manager. She did, and came back complaining that she'd have to redo the papers (!).
2. A "new" car doesn't have 5,000 miles on it. They told me it was new. There was no ambiguity there. They pushed the papers at me hoping I wouldn't notice it.
3. Illegal or not, that's what they did on the next day final paperwork. Of course, they said it was just a clerical error and they'd fix it. The original deal was not documented.
4. When you have a column of numbers and a total, the total should match the sum. There's no excuse for this.
These issues were from multiple dealerships, so I figure it is common practice. One was from a friend of mine, who I warned to check the numbers on the final next day paperwork. He laughed at me, saying nobody would do that. The next day he called and thanked me, as he discovered a $1,000 error in the dealer's favor. He said he'd have never checked it if I hadn't warned him.
1. I wouldn't call a miscommunication between a handshake deal with multiple people and departments involved and the next day the exact same as a "term sheet ruse" which implies there are games being played on the actual term sheet in front of you. I would say in many industries there are terms on the final documents that don't always exactly match what earlier communications, and yes it's important to make sure they match up.
2. A new car is new as long as it hasn't had a registered owner. You can even have a new car with an already started warranty sometimes. I still wonder how you made it to the paperwork stage without seeing the car and noticing it wasn't exactly 'new new', but if you landed on a very shady salesperson it could be covered up (simply leaving the dashboard display on a trip meter instead of odometer could do this I suppose)... But once again.. I STILL think it's more of an accidental miscommunication than deception since everyone knows it will eventually be discovered. Dealerships sell many "demos" year round, and I've also never seen this drama in person even though demo sales are common industry wide.
3. Clerical errors do happen when a salesperson gives management a summary, a salesmanager loads a deal into the system, and a "finance manager" (I hate them) finished loading things so that the DMV and banks are happy. It does happen. It isn't a tactic because once again, people rarely miss a $1000 line item, or the payment going up suddenly.. so why have the drama, potential deal blow up, yada yada.. the salesperson doesn't get paid on non vehicle adds ons or fees, and management gets such a small cut of gross profit I just don't believe it's done on purpose since it has a high threshold of drama.
4. I have never seen this, and I can't even imagine how we'd get the computer system to do this. Also, the banks would reject a contract later that doesn't add up and send the deal back. And finally, who is intentially commiting this kind of fraud on a document that will forever exist in your hands and the banks hands. Would there be an easier way to get caught for some crazy fraud than having numbers not add up on a final contract?
I understand that clerical errors and miscommunication happen. I make those mistakes myself.
But when they always err in favor of the dealer, I get suspicious.
> I still wonder how you made it to the paperwork stage without seeing the car and noticing it wasn't exactly 'new new'
I foolishly had not checked the odometer. I assumed that if the salesman said it was new, that it was new. Anyhow, on noticing the mileage on the final documents, I pointed it out, said I wanted a new car, and walked out. They watched me go, and when I was backing out of the parking lot, came running out and said they'd make buying it worth my while. And they did.
A car is designed for 200,000 miles. 5,000 is a significant chunk of that, and also the new car warranty is based on absolute mileage, not miles since buying it.
4. The various printed sheets that were not the final documents were printed separately and had no signature block. "I can't even imagine how we'd get the computer system to do this" You can probably do it with Excel. The idea is to focus the customer on the bottom line, and then he likely won't notice the column numbers were different on the final sheet because the total would be the same.
Good catch, you're right. It happened with both a non-final sheet and the final one. The final one added in another line item that had not been agreed on.
I've had a statistically unusual amount of clerical errors after a deal is struck at car dealerships going from salesperson to the finance guy. I've politely corrected them each time and only once did I walk away because I "must be mistaken"
BTW, my dad once was negotiating for a mortgage with the local bank branch manager. He said the manager gave him a long cock-and-bull story about how mortgages worked. Finally, the manager asked him what brought my dad to town. My dad replied that he'd been hired as head of the finance department at the local college.
My dad said the manager's expression was priceless.
No, I am not confused about things like compound interest, what the sum of all the payments would be, etc. I often tell kids who complain "who needs math" that failing to learn about compound interest is going to cost them plenty.
The terms sheet ruse as I've heard it and seen it, aka the triangle game, is pushing a sheet with down payment, monthly payment, and total price in front of a customer.
The salesperson then attempts to discern which of the 3 the customer is actually paying attention to and optimizes that one at the expense of the others.
Because the input vars (e.g. interest rate, term length, MSRP) and dealership profit are concealed behind the displayed numbers, the deal can be "adjusted" to please the customer but keep the same sale profit.
You can buy any car in America using the Tesla model. Just call them, tell them you'll pay asking price (just like Tesla requires) and tell them you want it delivered to your house with the paperwork. I have done this countless times, even for people negotiating a discount.
This might be why every single car I have ever bought has been from Craigslist (or a local equivalent), private-party, cash or cashier's check. Except for the one I bought from ebay which wasn't too different. But I've never had a new car.
They are definitely compensated via a gross profit commission split just like others at the dealership. They do have volume bonuses to make up for the fact that most of their deals will be low or no profit, but if you inquire on the internet about buying a rare model, it's not like they're going to discount it drastically and get a low commission... It's a rare model after all.
Is there anyone that genuinely wants people a few steps down financially from them living near by them? If you make $150k being an decent but not fantastic engineer and you get into a nice enough neighborhood, are you really that excited if the vacant land down the street is being turned into low income duplexes for tow truck drivers? Honestly?
Most that answer with a categorical “yes” (I want that) haven’t lived what you are suggesting.
I’ve lived next to low income + “project” housing. It’s physically dangerous, in the form of gun violence. Sucks but it’s true. When you’re in your 20s it’s whatever, what are the odds that you’ll be hit by a stray bullet?
When you’re pushing 40 and have kids? Fuck that. Build your housing elsewhere.
Jesus. Go more extreme then. Do you want to live next to the barely employed, social services using, bike stealing crowd? Are we really pretending nicer safer areas aren't more desirable than areas of low income housing?
So let me get this straight, in your mind, every person making below, say, 35K, is a barely employed, social services using, bike stealing bum?
I’m gunna be honest, if we’re making broad generalizations now, silicon valley snobs are by far the most selfish, inconsiderate, lack of empathy having, inflated ego persons in the entirety of the country. Texas and Arizona needs to be bussing those immigrants to SF area and not NY.
I think you're free to use your money to buy yourself out of discomfort and into a nice place for your family, but to gate-keep others out of the freedom you enjoy is wrong.
Yes, you might have to face discomfort so that others can afford to put a roof over their head. There is a housing affordability crisis in North America for which it is necessary to build (on top of many other efforts required).
Yes, it's completely rational for you to be a selfish actor in this instance. But I don't believe it's rational for government to continue to support NIMBY'ism for the long term health of its society.
Lol. My dad was a janitor. It's hard work but he wasn't some kind of different species of human and he didn't rob our neighbors during his time off. What exactly is wrong with living next to a tow truck driver?
honestly yeah, I like living in density with other people around. It generally leads to more local businesses too: even if the number per-capita is the same, you get more choice, better opening hours etc.
In cities like Atherton and Woodside if you earn $150k you're the person a few steps down and just a low income computer guy! Consider that next time you write that sort of comment - there's always a bigger fish.
Treat others how you'd like to be treated. I'd rather live next to a decent guy who's a truck driver than a rich idiot. I'd also hate to live in a bubble. Look at London - you have places like Camden with multi-million pound town houses opposite council estates.
This wasn't about me, I wasn't the one I described. And I totally understand why people in Atherton wouldn't want people like me as their neighbor. I'm not goofy enough to think we'd be best buds if only given the chance.
Every time I've seen that flag, it's next to a Lets Go Brandon sticker or a Gadsden flag or similar. If I heard someone claim it was to show support for their local police department, I'd expect to see them smirking as they said that.
If that were true, it would have arisen spontaneously and not been rolled out as countermessaging to a protest movement about police violence.
No, this is 100% a political symbol with partisan (though not strictly party-aligned) intent, not a celebration of law enforcement. I don't think it's helpful to call it "racist", but neither is it appropriate to pretend that this isn't at least in some sense a "Fuck BLM" symbol either.
It can be a response to people taking a handful of incidents and ignoring the millions of safe and courteous police interactions a year. So while it may have been a response to cries about police violence, it doesn't automatically become some white supremacist pro police violence symbol....
Way back when EVs/hybrids were first hitting the market, I remember some chatter about basically adding an external speaker to play fake engine noises. Not perfect, but it might help a bit.
I've personally encountered a decent number of Tesla/e-bike drivers who have... nonstandard views on what a stop sign means, and the fact that the vehicles are silent is always a bit disconcerting.
Most EVs do have such a speaker. But it only plays when they're driving at low speeds where they could be a threat to pedestrians, bikes, etc. And also there's no standardization of the noise.
All EVs have a speaker and the noise is standardized. The problem is there is a different standard in each country and the solution is to make one noise which covers all of the standards - thats why it ends up sounding so strange. The combination of the various standards varies from OEM to OEM - thats why it ends up sounding different OEM to OEM.
I mean... maybe in the US? Here in Canada all the EVs seem to make a different noise. The noise my Volt makes is entirely different from my friend's 2nd gen Leaf, for example.
Maybe that's changing with the latest round of vehicles, but I don't recall hearing about any regulation passed.
That’s an interesting observation that I hadn’t considered. My enthusiasm for EVs has been pretty unmitigated previously. I still think climate is important enough that dealing with the safety stuff is probably tractable and also the lesser evil, but it’s good to have line of sight on it.
A Tesla Model 3 weighs 3,582 lbs. Even if you chose a Smart Fortwo (1,984lb) as your comparison instead of an equivalent-size ICE vehicle, it's still not doubling the weight.
None of Tesla's sedans or compact SUVs are over 5,000lbs. Their only vehicle over 5,000lbs is the Model X, their big SUV. The only ICE vehicle you mentioned that weighs less than half of that was a sedan. And the Cybertruck is going to be in the same class as the F-250, the lightest of which is 5,677lbs.
I'm not really. The vast majority of infrastructure degradation is because of trucks which weigh 100 times as much as cars. Their weight will be decreasing by a much smaller factor.
No, because it's still going to be negligible compared to the wear done by trucks. The average 18-wheeler weighs ~80-90,000 lbs, and the relationship between wear and weight is exponential, not linear. So while 25 Teslas weigh the same as a single 18 wheeler, the 18 wheeler contributes a lot more to road wear than those 25 Teslas. And in any case, infrastructure costs are going to be a rounding error to the economic costs associated with climate change.
Heck, even the safety aspect. And the mining of materials. The recycling aspect (or lack there of), or the disposability of the vehicles if the battery/charging system bricks itself. The Chevy Volt forums are full of people losing thousands of dollars because their low miles car worth about $10k, needs a $10k battery module or two.
Well, we're talking about the safety aspect right now. I'm not particularly worried about the mining of materials or even the disposability because (1) those are tractable problems and (2) ICE cars do many orders of magnitude more damage to the environment even ignoring their associated manufacture and disposal costs.
> Atleast when a Dodge Charger is charging up from behind, I can hear the thing.
Do you mean while driving? How does that work? Even with my windows open I can't hear vehicles until they're at least next to me. I don't have a loud vehicle and hearing tests show I have good hearing.
Either dodge chargers in your area don't have the loud exhausts that they do here in California, or you have a problem of some sort. Loud noises bounce off the road, off buildings. Basically the reason you can hear someone talking yell even if they are facing away from you.
Maybe it's because I rarely drive in cities where there are buildings around for the sound to echo. 95% or more of my driving is in the country at 45 MPH or higher, or on highways at 65 or 70MPH. There are plenty of very loud vehicles in my area. Maybe the sound just can't go as fast as I'm usually driving. Or an idea I just thought of, maybe at the speeds I typically drive, by the time the sound does get to me, it's not enough to hear over my tires?
Yes, obviously the danger of getting passed by a much faster silent vehicle is much less in an area with low traffic density, low intersection density, yada yada. I'm glad we finally got to the bottom of your confusion.
Edit: Also I feel like, from your last reply, that you might have taken one or both of my replies in a way that wasn't intended. It's also possible that I didn't word my replies in a good manner. I'm not always good at that. I am genuinely curious about how it is that others can hear loud vehicles behind them when driving while I can't. Your mention of echoes off buildings got me thinking of driving through a big city surrounded by big buildings, and that's an environment I am not familiar with except in pictures and videos. If that's the reason then it answers the question I've had for a couple years now when I first saw someone mention that they hear loud vehicles behind them.
I was recently driven by someone in an EV in a busy parking lot and the amount of pedestrians that were entirely not aware of our presence as we slowly creeped up behind them was disturbing. Some even had to be horned. Ten or twenty years ago, people would notice you approaching just from the engine sound and naturally move aside or at least turn around and look.
The fact that the artificial sounds some of them have are not all that different from the sound of the wind doesn't help either.
My Pixel 4XL, that I bought second hand, had it's battery replaced TWICE under warranty. Then, it started failing against, and I got an OS level alert saying they're detecting another battery fault and that I was eligible for a warranty extension at no cost, and to go and get it fixed. I just take it to the nearest UbreakIfix (or something like that) and they fix it in an hour sometimes, once it took a few hours because they were extra busy.
I was so impressed I bought my dad another used Pixel 4xl because I trusted them. And I'm someone that in general dislikes Google for losing their way the last 5-10 years.
I'm sitting in a car with 150k miles on it, with the original windshield. It has one chip from when I followed a gravel truck too closely once.
Sometimes I even take it to a carwash in the summer with a baking hot windshield. Sometime I turn on the heater in the winter while it's snowing.
Amazingly, engineers have designed a glass product that is as heavy, thick, coated, whatever... To survive common usage for a decade.
> My car windshield defies the laws of physics, so Apple's devices should too!
You do not understand thermal shock. Remove your windshield and bring it inside. Lower your thermostat to 63° and let your windshield equalize at that temperature overnight. When the outside temperature reaches 90° the next day, rush your windshield outside.
Conversely, wait until winter and your windshield is left overnight in 35° temperatures. Boil a large pot of water, and dump the boiling water on your windshield.
It is not at all surprising that for 150K miles, your car's windshield has never experienced thermal shock.
? I explained in my post I take it to car washes on hot days. Cold water conducts way better than your idea of "shock" via air and sun rays.
Your winter water idea shows you might almost understand water conducts better than air. So it's just proof you don't read well. And either way, it's 1000x more extreme than what an laptop screen experiences.
Again, what you are describing will not produce thermal shock. Car wash water isn't "cold water" and is probably less than 10° colder than the ambient temperature, and it is applied relatively slowly, allowing the glass to equalize before it is stressed.
What is required is a sudden change in temperature. For something as thick a car windshield, you'll need a near instantaneous 40° temperature change. If your car windshield was blazing at 150°F and you tossed a bucket full of cold, equalized ice water on it, it's going to shatter.
But you have some good ideas, and I welcome new Apple laptops with quarter inch thick glass displays.
