NC files charges against Nissan dealership employees
jalopnik.com
jalopnik.com
I know on a smaller scaler that these things mentioned in the article happen all the time. In college I had classmates who worked at a dealership and they talked about all kinds of shenanigans they pulled.
For instance, it wasn’t all that uncommon for a relative percentage of the cars sold on the used lot to be from other states like Texas where they would buy low integrity vehicles and fix them to a minimally viable state before bringing them to California. This had something to do with how they could get a certificate from TX saying the car was okay for resale without conditions applied (IE they didn’t have to report the previous / original condition) and that was enough leeway to get it past state regulators if you didn’t do it to often
new cars had a bit less of this nonsense going on I recall because the manufacturers are more concerned and keep a closer eye on this sort of thing, though I’ve heard that often cars would come in from the factory with paint scratches and stuff from travel and dealers would just patch over it as quickly and cheaply as possible to get it on the lot without car for longevity
Enforcement costs money, and one of the easiest ways to attack the government budget is to argue that enforcement "isn't working" because it isn't yielding offenses. A perfect enforcement regime with zero offenders starts look like major government waste.
See also: To Big to Fail Banks.
I'll give you two guesses, but you're only going to need one! To save you the work, it was for Vic Buchanan's campaign.
source: I've sold 2 cars on Craigslist, bought 2 others using the same.
Actually, having a sole entity controlling all sales makes getting away with this criminal behaviour easier.
There’s less to compare to
There’s fewer people that need to be hush hush
You have much easier control over who comes in to the circle.
On the other hand, all it takes is one whistleblower employee at tesla to blow the cover on the entire operation if they’re up to no good.
That comes after you have bought the vehicle. At least in my case, in Norway, buying the car was painless and at no point did the sales rep attempt to persuade me to buy anything extra or do anything shady.
However, their service organization stinks at some locations in both in Norway and in the UK but oddly for different reasons.
When you walk into a Tesla dealership you know what price to expect, but that does not happen at other dealerships.
(I don’t own a Tesla)
> HB 637, "Motor Vehicle Dealers, Manufacturers, Importers, and Distributors," bans most direct-to-consumer vehicle sales if the automaker has ever sold any model through a franchise in Florida before (i.e. every major automaker). Manufacturers that didn't already have a dealership agreement in the state before the law are exempt, which includes Tesla and presumably other new EV brands such as Lucid, Rivian and Polestar.
[0]https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/politics/2023/06/16/e...
Also, a lot of what people dislike about dealerships is at least somewhat orthogonal to the fact that they're dealerships rather than something owned by the manufacturer. Any dealership can institute "no haggle" sales, you're going to have to take your car to a local authorized place for service/warranty work/etc. in any case, and a lot of people need financing.
The last few years of shortages notwithstanding, to the degree you can walk into a dealership, point at a car and say I want that one (or I've come to pickup the car I've ordered), I've got my checkbook--a lot of the hassle disappears. Yes, there will be various annoying upsell attempts but that mostly involves just saying no a bunch of times.
(Yes, there are some incentives that dealerships have that a manufacturer-owned entity might not. On the other hand, the inverse is probably true as well.)