Anyone else sick of Employee pricing?
 

ok GM had a great marketing idea with it and it seemed to do well but now im getting really sick of every car company having some sort of employee pricing....and even yesterday i saw a commercial for Menards hardware store and there advertising employee pricing....

i really like that there giving people this "discount" but for some reason im just getting sick of it

anyone else feel the same way?

only when I want something cheap and I dont work there..lol

eh it's no different than any big business trend that catches on... everyone wants to cash in on the trends.

true but myself(for a few years) and my father worked in the car busniess for many years and i never got a discount on a car i just paid "x" amount of money out of each check to use demo cars,

the car busniess is very stange with sales and "rebates"...which are another fancy way to call it a sale

and thats kinda my point this is all just a sale and they just decided to call it something different which is fine

but im more just sick of seeing 300 commercials back to back to back for every car comapny on every single day

The real catch is that it's employee pricing ... plus dealer processing fees. And I'll be willing to bet money that the dealer processing fees have gone up since they started offering employee pricing to everyone. They're still making money from customers, no matter how much it sounds like a good deal.

The thing that really gets me about this whole employee discount scheme is that it shows clearly, for any poor souls still in doubt, that the auto industry is reaping some very, very large profits on each vehicle they sell. I drove a Cadillac the other day where the employee discount was more than $10,000. Alas, the barriers to entry are so high in the auto industry these days that we aren't likely to see competitive pricing changes in the near future, I fear.

that said, there are some GM vehicles being sold at a loss currently. i think it's a low end chevy that's going for 2k MRSP less than the cost to build. American car making seems to be in some serious trouble these days.

i just bought my wife a new car, the discount thingy helped a bit iguess. I would have bought the car no matter what anyway. i see though that ford is giving away a free laptop now. I always justed assumed that the employee pricing was no discount, that the prices were all the same.

for the record she wanted an Uplander, so thats what she got.

I am not fooled by this white noise.

I realize that high priced purchases come with a 'buffer' in the pricing, but would rather have a firm price on purchases like these.Considering it is all bullshit, INCLUDING THE MSRP, I would pay someone good money to find me the lowest price on a vehicle.

Just think, before the internet, people were not even given the "Invoice" price on cars, just the MSRP.What is wrong with saying "I will give you the money you paid from the factory plus 500 bucks please"?

If someone came out and said what their overhead and supply chain costs really were, I think I would have a heart attack.

Hmmm... I wonder if we'll be sick of this sort of thing when the U.S. car manufacturers are out of business. You have to wonder how long what's left of the big three can continue to have their margins eroded by these sorts of deals and continue to survive. I like product competition and product choices. I don't believe we'll like the consequences of one or more of these companies going under.

Competition must thrive for capitalism to survive.

It's difficult for me to comprehend why someone would buy a Chevy before a similarly priced Toyota, when the latter has been consitently rated far better by the Consumer's Union and Consumer Reports for years.

Maybe these people think, "I'm helping the American economy." What they're really doing is reinforcing the bloated, fat cat US carmakers' crappiness and showing them that their shoddy cars will sell, even if they are non-competitive.

I think I'd much rather own a 10-year old Honda or Toyota before I'd ever dream of taking on the burden of a new GM car, regardless of its cost. Employee pricing ads fall on deaf ears in my house.

I bet it will take something like one of the big three going under for the remaining others to actually get competitive again.

edited for speeling.

I work for a software company that runs a huge car sales website, so I have been eligible for employee pricing from Ford & GM for years. When I bought my Mustang this year, I thought I would use Ford's Xplan employee pricing. It turned out the Xplan prices was 3000$ MORE than the price I paid. I think employee pricing is just another marketing hoax to bring in customers.

Employee pricing means that the dealerships are less likely (really not at all likely) to haggle with you over the price.

There goes half the fun of buying a car.

yea... its not really worth it and ur right.. haggling is fun!

Instead of having sale after sale after sale... DROP THE PRICE OF CARS...


and gas while your at it.

nothing to say

From their most recent confession season GM filed a 10-Q stating that for the most recent 3 months (that's a quarter to you and me) they lost $0.51 per common share or roughly a net loss of $286 Million. For the most recent six months they have lost $2.46 per common share or roughly $1.4 Billion with a capital B. That's not setting the kind of record that makes me want to own them. The previous four quarters have all been losers as have six of the last eight.

And arguably 2004 was a better year for the auto makers in general but how many consecutive quarters can you lose an average of $700 mil and still manage to survive? It won't be long and I only hope it's a merciful ending.

I work for one of the Big 3.. We got a memo from the top that if we wanted to buy a vehicle that its a better deal for us to use the program, in our Employee program we still pay $200 freight, but its still a good deal, the only exception is those cars not covered in the nationwide plan. The ones that are the losers in this is the dealerships, they are getting more traffic, but they make very little profit selling so they have to make it up another way, they don't give you much on your trade or sell that optional crap (credit life, disability). We win cause we don't have to give as much back in rebate or low APR like they did in previous years.

I hear a lot about how the auto industry is doing really badly right now from my dad, who designs automotive parts for some of the bigger companies. He says employee pricing is kind of a last ditch effort to bring the industry back up and that it's probably not going to work.

Car industry is flat now, and besides, I'm not buying a car now. After the housing bubble pops and rates rise, then look for discounts!

I worked in the car industry a year ago, and my old colleagues are about to slit their wrists here in the northeast. Their sales are OK, but prospects for the future are bleak, and the next six months will hit many vendors very hard as sales go to zilch.

I'm not particularly sick of the marketing idea... I mute the TV ads anyway.

But I do think about what all these "rebates" are going to do to the resale values of these cars 5 to 7 years from now. It may be a mixed blessing for used-car shoppers like me.

But like the zero-percent financing run before it, this GM "discount" is not the right way to drive sales volume. Eventually, the margin per vehicle has to increase if GM is going to recover its losses.

IMO, GM needs to recognize that means beating the Japanese with superior engineering, durability, service and refinement.

if you dont like the MSRP / Invoice / Haggle and Dicker game, then go buy a scion, pure pricing, you pay X$ for each one no matter who you are.

Here in Anchorage i heard a commercial with employee discount.. for PIZZA HUT!!

Also, people are going to expect this kinda discount, so expect this type of deal to be repeated, repackaged,etc.

I also don't get the whole buying a Toyota is bad for the economy argument. When I bought a Subaru in '97, I didn't fly to Japan to buy it, I bought it here in Anch. from citizens of my town, got it financed by a local bank, etc. how does it hurt the econmy to buy local? Also, am i the only one who finds it funny that you can buy a Honda built in the US, and a Ford built in Canada, yet the Honda is considered a foreign purchase.. heh.

I fell into the GM pricing trap, but i got a truck for 10K below sticker, and 3K below invoice. Good deal? maybe... Did they make money? yes. am i happy? you bet.

My wife just bought a new 2005 Subaru at $500 below dealer's invoice. Subaru isn't offering employee discounts, but they do have to compete.

While I'm reasonably good at haggling, I really don't care for it. Just put a fair price on the car and skip the car salesman bullshit.

I agree with that. I bought two cars in the past 20 years that I didn't even see first. I called the salesman, a guy I knew since we were boys and told him what I wanted on the car and asked what price he could do, because I'd already priced the car and knew what it should be. He gave me the price, I gave him the money and neither of us felt cheated. I don't mind what I think is a fair mark-up, because that dealership has to pay its adminstration staff and keep the light bill current. I just will not be hosed.

You and me both. That's why I still drive my 1998 Honda Civic. Still purring at 100K+ and counting!

Show me ONE GM or Chevy that can do that and I'll buy one.

While I completely agree, i will say that the big 3 make trucks that do run forever.

Nah, if it wasn't for employee discount, I would've had to pay like $5k extra on my car. Screw that!

I'm just tired of Lee Iacocca commercials. WTF is Snoop doing in a Chrysler commercial? And his annoying little granddaughter? STOP THE INSANITY!

-Mikey

not sure if this has been covered here, but this is one thing that totally pisses me off about buying a new car.

In most of my purchases in my everyday life, i go someplace, i see something i want, i see a price tag, i say, "i want this" give over the money on the price plus 6-8% sales tax, and leave with my new whachamajiggy.

with cars, i go, i step out, 4 people ask me how i'm doing and what i am looking for in a new car, etc, i am followed around a lot while people are asking questions, i find somethign i may want, they takl numbesr, i never know what their price is nor the markup, but i have an idea of what i am going to pay, they come back with a number that is always $2000-3000 higher than i am going to pay or that i could find on ebay anymore...and they go back in, come back out with another number and some weird offer like a laptop or something, i reject again bc it's still higher than i want to pay, and this goes on ad-infinum.

I was incredibly happy when saturn came out with the no haggle pricing dealio. You go, salesmen weren't on commission, you knew the price they were asking and you could buy with a minimum of interaction and taht was it. I have no idea if saturn is still that way or whatever, but it was a good idea..

i mean, honestly, why can't they run a normal business model, cost plus reasonable profit percentage to get retail. I just never understood what was so special about buying a car that required hours of haggling.

and yeah, i would not buy a domestic for anything anymore. It's a sad state of affairs to say that when my dad owned a 71 Ford F100 truck until two yrs ago and replaced it with a mazda bc the new ford trucks are overpriced for what you get..

sad sad state

and don't even get me started on the American SUV markup craze. Do you really need an SUV weighing 10,000 lbs and getting 12mpg? buy a bus if you do :) It's just funny how a truck can be $20K, but an SUV built on that truck frame will be closer to $50K. There just isn't $30K difference in building costs