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Comment by devit | Hacker News Reader

Maybe the dealerships and in general physical shops should evolve into paid-for showrooms?

That is, you pay, say, $50, and you get to try a bunch of cars or in general products that they have on loan from various manufacturers and get some guidance from the staff if needed.

Then once you figure out what you want, you buy it online and get it shipped to you.

Then there is no need to "protect" those shops, since the customer is paying precisely for the only value they add, which is the ability to try out things and ask for advice, and in fact the value of the advice would increase since there would be no conflict of interest.

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If you're selling me something very big and expensive I better get a chance to look at it up close and try it out. If you're going to charge me for that experience then I will go somewhere else.

What should happen is the car manufacturers buy out the best dealerships and simply sell the cars direct. It'll allow them to optimize their distribution and inventory channels and give them a bigger margin overall. It's going to put many dealerships out of business but it's an old business model that no longer works in the world; you can't expect to keep it afloat when there is no good business reason for doing so.

The car manufacturers actually lobbied for laws that prevent them from cutting out dealerships, to remove barriers to entrepreneurs investing in building brand-exclusive dealerships. The dealerships wouldn't have been built without these laws protecting them, that's why the manufacturers lobbied for them.

The legal system in place was a precondition for the development existing American car dealership network, and I doubt that the dealerships are going to go down without a breach of contract fight.

Sounds like the same kind of nonsense that came with taxis.

Except that the largest margin for dealerships and car manufacturers is the Aftersales parts/accessories. There is a good reason they exist, it's just that companies like Tesla are offering a different business model of packaged accessories (some other car manufacturers do similar but usually on top of individual accessories not instead of).

> Except that the largest margin for dealerships and car manufacturers is the Aftersales parts/accessories

Isn't that always the case? Regardless, cutting out the dealership gives the car companies more margin for this stuff and possibly lower prices for consumers (possibly though probably doubtful).

No, because the manufacturers don't make all the accessories (think window tinting, etc). And the dealerships, which typically become multi-brand dealership groups can get economies of scale the manufacture typically can't.

I would prefer paying for trying. It's added to the price anyway, it would be more customer friendly to have the fees exposed and not bundled with the purchase itself.

A lot of things people say they would pay for, when speaking to the press or market research etc, in practice they never do -- and obviously not in large numbers.

I've read several stories of founders for example hearing people say "I'd buy that" etc, but in practice they found out nobody would bother with their product/service, it solved a non-painful enough problem, etc.

Paying for checking out cars to buy seems like one of these things.

I see an even bigger problem. Most people hate car salespeople. I hate car shopping and mattresses are even worse because the salespeople's incentives are very unclear and they clearly dick around with people. That perception isn't going to change overnight (and the salespeople's tactics would be tough to change quickly), so I won't pay for it any time soon.

The last new car I bought was a Saturn in 1992, mainly because their business model involved no haggling on prices and salespeople were there to help customers find the best match for them. I don't understand why this model didn't spread further.

The are no haggle dealerships generally and Scion, I believe, is a no haggle brand. There may be others. (Of course that doesn't necessarily mean that trade-ins and financing deals are no haggle.)

As for why it hasn't spread further, I imagine it's partly because a lot of people go into a car dealership expecting to apply their (they think) leet negotiating skills and will walk if told that the price is the price. From the dealer perspective, bargaining is also an opportunity to price discriminate. Given that dealers don't in general make a lot on new car sales, the best answer is probably that it's the system everyone is used to.

I am definitely not saying people would pay for trying stuff - they wouldn't and they would think it's ridiculous. I am saying I would gladly pay being an informed consumer.

It's the same with people thinking loyalty cards are good for them while banning that would actually benefit them.

I'm very curious as to how much time did you spend thinking about this solution before proposing it to fix the extremely complex problem of distributing durables.

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