Court: Car Dealers Can't Stop Tesla From Selling In Massachusetts 155
curtwoodward writes: Many states have laws that prevent car manufacturers from operating their own dealerships, a throwback to the days when Detroit tried to undercut its franchise dealers by opening company-owned shops. But dealers have taken those laws to the extreme as they battle new competition from Tesla, which is selling its cars direct to the public. In some states, dealers have succeeded in limiting Tesla's direct-sales model. But not in Massachusetts (PDF): the state's Supreme Court says the dealers don't have any right to sue Tesla for unfair competition, since they're not Tesla dealers. No harm, no foul.
hahaha (Score:5, Interesting)
I love the courts logic.
Dealer Franchise Laws were prevented to promote the Franchise model.
If a car company sells franchises in the State, it can't then open Company Stores and undercut their Franchises.
But if the Car Company has no franchises, there is no one being hurt.
Car Dealerships can't sue because they don't like a new Car Company's Sales Model.
Reality is the Franchise owners were licking their chops thinking of all the money they would make selling Teslas in their dealerships. They got butt hurt when they found out Tesla wasn't going to sell them Franchises.
Re:hahaha (Score:5, Funny)
Agreed. Beautiful logic!
Q. What are lawyers good for?
A. They make used car salesmen look good!
Q. What does molds, ooze, pond scum, lawyers, and used car salesman have in common?
A. They're all slime.
Q. What's the difference between a car salesman and a computer salesman?
A. The car salesman knows he's lying!
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:hahaha (Score:5, Insightful)
I had a friend who worked in the finance dept of a car dealership. People would spend 2 hours trying to wangle the best possible deal from the salesman, beat him down, get free floor mats, whatever. Then they would walk into my friends office. How does $400 a month sound for payments? OK sure. And in 2 seconds they would agree to a loan at 12% where the banks would have given them 5%. And the dealer would earn an extra $3k on the car loan.
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Yup. The last time I walked into a car dealership I brought a TVM calculator with me. I didn't care what they told me about the price, interest, whatever. I punched in the terms into my calculator along with what I determined to be a fair price, calculated the effective interest rate, and decided if it was good enough. For my lease they ended up making it work by bumping up the residual value considerably. Whatever - just means I pay less now and we can play lets make a deal in 3 years when I've paid t
Re:hahaha (Score:4, Informative)
I had a friend who worked in the finance dept of a car dealership. People would spend 2 hours trying to wangle the best possible deal from the salesman, beat him down, get free floor mats, whatever. Then they would walk into my friends office. How does $400 a month sound for payments? OK sure. And in 2 seconds they would agree to a loan at 12% where the banks would have given them 5%. And the dealer would earn an extra $3k on the car loan.
I went into a dealer just about 3 weeks ago, told the salesman I wanted a new car, was trading in my truck, and wanted to spend no more than $130 a month over 3 years. He almost fainted and then basically called me crazy. The sales manager even tried to get me to lease a car instead of buying. Ended up walking out of there with a new car(end of the model year) for $125 a month for 3 years with $10,300 trade in on my truck (KBB value around $9900 and needed about $2k worth of work-not including some cosmetic body work) and $2k down. Think I end up paying about $300 in interest if I take all 3 years, but plan to pay it off sooner. I save more in gas than my monthly payments cost. The trick was knowing what we wanted and refusing to budge from it.
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For anyone out there reading this: Not saying Nidi62 got a bad deal but generally you want to negotiate the price of the car, not the payments. If you negotiate price then you can figure out financing /payment separately. You can still walk in knowing you only want to spend 130 a month, and it is very easy to know the price that 130 a month is equal to. A common trick is for car sales people to negotiate you a monthly payment but you are still missing a) the down payment and b) the term of the payment and
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I'd mod you up if I had points. Total money out of pocket is the most important factor, and focusing on monthly payment is either going at it bass ackwards, or risks allowing some shenanigans to slip in.
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I had a friend who worked in the finance dept of a car dealership. People would spend 2 hours trying to wangle the best possible deal from the salesman, beat him down, get free floor mats, whatever. Then they would walk into my friends office. How does $400 a month sound for payments? OK sure. And in 2 seconds they would agree to a loan at 12% where the banks would have given them 5%. And the dealer would earn an extra $3k on the car loan.
I had a similar issue with the finance guy when I bought my car last year. He did his thing on the loan and came back with over 5% interest. I told him that I saw the promotions online for the manufacturer's financing and that I wanted the 1.9% rate. He stepped out and asked some other guy if he had checked to see if I qualified? As if I couldn't see through the game that they were playing. He was going to try to stick me with the highest rate he could, even though he knew I qualified for a much better
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Agreed. Beautiful logic!
Q. What are lawyers good for?
A. They make used car salesmen look good!
You got that one backwards bro.
Sad thing is: new car salesmen are bigger scum than new car salesmen are.
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pschoooooommmm... my head just asploded.
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I lawyers is needed if you have been wronged, to need to defend yourself.
A car salesman is needed when...well. never anymore.
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The car manufacturers originally offered a franchise model. Only after the franchisees had successfully set up the market did the manufacturers try to come in and eat their lunch with corporate stores. The anti-competition laws were put in place to prevent the car manufacturers from undercutting those who had built their client base for them. In the case of Tesla this issue doesn't exist because Tesla has never franchised.
A mo
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Does any other industry have similar legal restrictions? Or is it just an antiquated law that hasn't kept with the times?
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I doubt there are many similar industries, cars are the second most expensive item most people will buy in their lives, after their house. Cars also need specialty tools and parts (and with them a specialty parts warehouse).
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On RoadRunner I think you're confused, this was always a marketing brand name of Time Warner Cable Internet. At some point [dslreports.com] they stopped using the brand name, but the same people\ownership are still in place, even if it uses a different brand name now.
@Home was also different, in that Comcast and others paid them to build out their network and once it because big enough they just took the network back that they already paid for. This was in the original agreement with @Home and @Home still runs Interne
Re:hahaha (Score:5, Funny)
Well, you certainly save money on blinker fluid but you end up paying out the nose for voltage grease.
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No standing, no case (Score:2)
Interesting tack by the court. Did Tesla try that argument in the other states as well?
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Each state is going to have differently worded laws in this area. The Mass one sounds like the first case where it was worded to prohibit company owned outlets of specific manufacturers to protect only dealers of the same brand.
No standing, no case (Score:3, Informative)
A number of other states modified their laws. Most of them started with wording stating that companies could not compete with their own franchises, but the franchises in a number of states had the wording changed so that all car companies have to sell through franchises rather than branches.
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You might want to go re-read FTS.
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State SCOTUS. The op is mistaking which court it actually is.
Re:No standing, no case (Score:4, Informative)
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Yup.. I realized that after I posted but thanks for making it clear.
So lets see, SSCOM
(S)ate (S)upreme (C)ourt (O)f (M)assachusetts
Has sort of a gaming sound to it.
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so...SCOTCOM? Sounds like a nuclear missile satellite
Re: No standing, no case (Score:2)
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Well, actually it's the Supreme Judicial Court, or SJC.
STATE supreme court, not SCOTUS (Score:2)
Quoting TFS for your enjoyment:
> but not in Massachusetts. The state's supreme court says
Re:No standing, no case (Score:4, Informative)
actually, Supreme Judicial Court is the highest court, the highest "appeals" court in Massachusetts; whereas Trial Court is the ordinary court in Massachusetts and General Court is the legislature; and wherease, Supreme Court of New York is the ordinary trial court, and Court of Appeals is the highest NY State appellate court.
This terminology all varies by state (and/or by commonwealth or provident plantation)
Car Dealers should ask why they're being bypassed (Score:5, Interesting)
If they were offering Tesla what they wanted or needed maybe tesla wouldn't see a need to bypass them.
Tesla for example likes to have their dealerships in normal store fronts where they have ONE car in the middle of the store and a lot of information. They sort of look and feel like apple stores. Very minimalistic, hip, modern. If the dealerships were willing to do that then maybe Tesla wouldn't have needed to do this.
Tesla points out that new car companies in the US tend to fail and they blame the dealership system for this because they say they're invested in existing auto companies and brands.
For Tesla to be comfortable the existing dealerships would have to be willing to commit themselves to Tesla in the same way that Tesla's company run dealerships are committed to Tesla.
And even then... Tesla doesn't have to deal with the dealerships. That whole model of sales is obviously going to come under challenge from all the other car companies now that will all ask "why do we have to deal with you when Tesla can do what they want?"
Maybe Toyota or Ford will want to have their own stores. And the dealerships are going to have to justify themselves to those organizations.
Re:Car Dealers should ask why they're being bypass (Score:5, Insightful)
Tesla points out that new car companies in the US tend to fail and they blame the dealership system for this because they say they're invested in existing auto companies and brands.
I blame the dealerships too. The last time I went shopping for a car, I told the salesman I was looking to replace my Chevy Malibu, and wanted something small to midize that was good in the snow. Despite the bevy of options on the lot, he walked me over to a Challenger SRT ... a rear-wheel drive boat that most likely isn't even particularly good in the rain. Looking around, though, the dealer had invested in a lot of special edition models of sports cars (2 Mustang Roushes, a GT500, the Challenger, etc) and that was what he needed to sell that day. If I was the guy making midsize sedans, I wouldn't want that guy involved in selling my cars either.
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Clearly, you went to the wrong dealer. This highlights one of the benefits of the dealer model, there are almost always a *lot* of dealers to choose from and try to get a better deal/experience/vehicle from. You've got a single place to go to get a Tesla. If you don't like them, or they don't like you, you're outta luck unless you find one on the used market.
Re:Car Dealers should ask why they're being bypass (Score:5, Insightful)
This highlights one of the benefits of the dealer model, there are almost always a *lot* of dealers to choose from and try to get a better deal/experience/vehicle from.
I'm of the opinion that it highlights one of the disadvantages of the dealer model, you often have to go from one dealer to another, haggling and bullshitting, before finally settling on the car you want at a price you feel comfortable with. I'd rather have one place in town that sells what I want, with a clearly marked price, skip the haggling, and do a transaction. Maybe some people enjoy the car buying "experience" but I look at it like any other purchase. I want to do some research ahead of time, walk into the store, buy the product I came for, and leave. It's 2014, it's no longer reasonable to expect consumers to waste an entire weekend trying to buy a car.
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Agreed. If I want to comparison shop just about anything other than a car I can just do an online search by model number, see all the asking prices, and purchase one in 5 minutes. A car turns into a high-pressure negotiation on my day off. With anything else if it turns out to be defective I just return it and get my money back - not so with the car.
I can understand that it has to work this way with houses since they aren't mass-produced. The car sales model is a dinosaur, and half the tactics that are
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My algorithm for buying a new car is:
1) Spend about a year deciding what I want and/or need.
2) Simultaneously, start saving the cash.
It's not like you can't tell when a car is nearing the end of time, relative to whatever your own level of love for car maintenance is.
When the time comes, you know what you want and you've got the cash, which makes the bargaining rather trivial.
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Unfortunately, the last two times I bought a car it was following a collision, so I didn't really have the luxury of picking and choosing the time that I made the purchase.
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You've just highlighted the problem - what is there for them to not like about someone, and vice versa? Do shoe shops have these problems, too? Or delis? Of course not. It's some weird thing specifically to do with car salesmen, and precisely to do with their weird way of bargaining and the "dance" that must be played just to purchase some hardware.
You do realise that it's simply not normal for how a person feels about a salesperson or vice versa to affect anything.
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I blame the dealerships too. The last time I went shopping for a car, I told the salesman I was looking to replace my Chevy Malibu, and wanted something small to midize that was good in the snow. Despite the bevy of options on the lot, he walked me over to a Challenger SRT ... a rear-wheel drive boat that most likely isn't even particularly good in the rain.
Oh come on. It's only got 475 pound feet of torque. It'll be great in the snow! ;-)
Re:Car Dealers should ask why they're being bypass (Score:5, Informative)
The original post indicates he didn't go in uninformed. A classic negotiation tactic is to let the other side go first. Asking a salesman to show you something is a good opening move for an expensive purchase even if you know exactly why you are there and what you want to buy. When the salesperson went immediately to the product of the day, that gave away that they were acting in bad faith.
Re:Car Dealers should ask why they're being bypass (Score:4, Insightful)
You are the one who made the first mistake.
If you do that kind of research by looking stuff up on-line, reading Consumer Reports, and digging up information about the automobiles before you show up to the dealer.... what is the point of the dealer in the first place?
I agree with you so far as that is the best way to avoid getting screwed over by incompetent salesmen, but you can intelligently use sales reps to get more information about their products. This is not strictly about the automobile industry either, and I've done that with electronics, software, and even groceries.
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I've been trying to buy a new car. It may just be the southern tier of NY, but finding a Subaru dealer that
a) knows even close as much about the car I want as what I know *from the Subaru web site* and the *Subaru Drive Magazine* is basically impossible.
b) Is willing to quote me a price (why can't I call, e-mail or even walk in and just list the car + options and GET A PRICE? This is as bad as the phone companies.). Granted, many have prices on what they have in stock...
c) Will actually order what I want.
I
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I figure, much like Apple, Tesla wants to control the experience, from the product to the showroom and the sales people and the after sales support. If there is a problem Tesla can deal with it directly, not leave it up-to some middle man with their own agenda.
Re:Car Dealers should ask why they're being bypass (Score:4, Interesting)
They would have to cancel all their franchises first. The State Supreme Court ruling said they couldn't sue Tesla because Tesla were not franchised Tesla dealerships. So if Ford or Toyota had franchised dealerships- they would have to get rid of them first in order to sell direct.
Tesla could open franchised dealerships and sell in the states they are restricted in. But my guess is that margins are paper thin and they do not think the markup necessary for franchised dealerships would be attractive enough to sell the cars.
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... if Ford or Toyota had franchised dealerships- they would have to get rid of them first in order to sell direct.
Why then is it that there are no manufacturers who sell directly to customers? Or, put it another way, why do all manufactures have dealerships?
Re:Car Dealers should ask why they're being bypass (Score:4, Informative)
Historical reasons. Manufacturers could book a sale when they shiped a car to a dealership. Want to keep your dealership franchise? You'll accept X cars per month. You figure out how to sell them. So now manufacturers have stable 'sales' figures to make investors happy.
After some time, laws were passed against these abuses. But the same laws protected dealership franchises, so they persist.
Re:Car Dealers should ask why they're being bypass (Score:5, Insightful)
You are right about historical reasons but I believe wrong about the ones you have supplied. I believe the primary reasons are more likely to do with distance and communication.
When you were a factory in the 40s and 50s pumping out cars you were focussed on the manufacturing aspects and your business was located in a single location - ie Detroit. The idea of trying to manage a network of stores across the country when communication was by post or expensive phone calls just simply didn't make sense. It was more cost effective to outsource that work, in exactly the same way it makes more sense to outsource things like accountancy, IT services and legal in many organisations.
Selling cars is a different business to making cars. And there is no guarantee that if you are good at making cars you will be good at selling them. The original idea was that these dealer were to be your customer interface, and ideally do a better job than you could.
The fact that manufacturers obviously decided that wasn't working at some point in the past and tried to open dealer owned stores is a sign that that system broke down.
Today, communication is almost instant, manufacturing processes and methodologies are more flexible than ever before and there is far more information available to your average consumer. A lot of what were "meant" to be the value adds of dealers are gone. Dealing directly with the customer allows you better control of your brand and if done well will increase profitability by removing a stage in the process.
But it can't work for every product. You still won't be buying your softdrinks direct from Coke or your shampoo from Unilever. Because in these situations the dealers (ie supermarkets) still make more sense.
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I believe the primary reasons are more likely to do with distance and communication.
But there's no reason to believe that.
The idea of trying to manage a network of stores across the country when communication was by post or expensive phone calls just simply didn't make sense.
What? Why not? Cars are expensive items, phone calls are minimal by comparison. If you have an order for a car, you drop the form in the post. At least, they did back then.
In fact, the reasons are as stated. The manufacturers want to make cars at X dollars, which requires building Y cars. Right now there are cars which can't be sold piled up all over the world, for reasons like these and others (e.g. "the economy, stupid")
Re: Car Dealers should ask why they're being bypas (Score:2)
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The point of the dealership is to have a local representative who can help with compliance with local regulations. A hundred years ago, selling stuff was a whole lot more complicated in terms of trying to keep track of things each state wanted or didn't want, not to mention often even different laws for each city even in the same state. Communication was also a bit slower as well... and more importantly the system simply worked for almost everybody.
The problem is that once you have the franchisee in place
Re:Car Dealers should ask why they're being bypass (Score:4, Interesting)
Dealers are their own worst enemies.
Recently a co-worker of mine went shopping for a car and the local dealer treated her like shit. (She made the mistake of knowing what she wanted, and what she was willing to pay.) At one point the sales slime flat told her "Can I talk to your husband? I don't think you understand buying cars" - This did not fly well with the single, divorced professional woman who's been buying cars longer than that young prick has been alive.
The above scenario would not fly at a chain owned by a national or international auto outlet. One phone call to a news station and the media would be all over said auto maker for how they treat their female customers. On the other hand, people sort of expect local dealers to be corrupt, sleazy middle men. And they are. They're nothing but entrenched middlemen hiding behind old laws and inherently corrupt local politics. (Car dealers are infamous for greasing the palms of mayors, county clerks, governors, etc)
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Haha... same here. Last weekend my wife and I set out to test drive the brand new Sequoia. We made a bet before we got out of the car... I bet we wouldn't be able to walk from our car to the new car before being assailed by a hungry salesman, she bet that we wouldn't even see a salesman. She won the bet, and we were ignored for 30 minutes while we poked and prodded the SUV, and then we walked back to our car and drove away without a test drive since nobody gave two shits about us. The dealership model i
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Let her go by herself and see what happens.
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"Dont[sic] be a fucking feminist"
so... she should just be in the kitchen all day? WTF
Women get treated far worse them men in dealerships. You were ignored, but where you treated like you where stupid? Talked down to? If you asked about an engine would they change the subject to talk about color? Where you hit on? Did someone imply you would get a better deal if you went to the back room for a bit?
You're post comes off making you look like a misogynistic idiot.
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I don't have a particularly high opinion of car dealerships; since all the used dealers in the area were inflexible run by a bunch of sleaze balls I went to a Ford dealership that had been advertising how flexible they were and willing to work with anyone.
I was merely considering the possibility of getting a car in the future and since I didn't have any credit (but a rock solid job) I was merely evaluating what kind of car I wanted (not necessarily new), what would be involved and what kind of down payment
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I'd generally agree. Another issue is why we have so few car companies. We could have smaller car companies that make few cars and are perhaps regional brands. Look at restaurants or ISPs or whatever that only exist in one part of the country. We could have the same thing with cars. The dealerships make getting into the car making business more complicated. They can't directly sell their cars. They can't put an AD in the paper saying "this car, with these specs, at this price, to your door... call this numb
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Some of the issue with automobile manufactures is that the vehicles are so complex and need so much capital that almost everybody who tries to build a new manufacturing company in this industry usually goes bankrupt. Tucker and DeLorean are really good examples of this, in spite of conspiracy theories that suggest ulterior motives of existing manufacturers.
The other issue is simply complying with government regulations in the industry. Some of those regulations certainly have been established because of m
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Some parts are complex and successful company's often part out things to others. To bad most of the changes that drive up the price are cosmetic. Does every model year need new headlights and thus slightly different body panels? A different but otherwise the same stereo?
Frankly cars should be a platform. More like a piece of farm or construction equipment where refinements are made to efficiency, durability or safety. Upgrades are made where it makes sense, engine blow well might as well get the new on
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Re:Car Dealers should ask why they're being bypass (Score:4)
I do not want to buy my expensive Tesla from a smelly "genius" walking around with a corporate-logo polo shirt snug around the belly that hangs over his belt, which sports an iPhone holster. I'd rather just order the damn thing on-line and have USPS deliver it to my front door.
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Same. Though assuming you were Musk and were putting some stores out there for people to look around... how would you structure it?
One thing that might be a reasonable compromise is if the Tesla franchise had to be exclusive. Consider fast food franchises... they're exclusive. You can't sell subway sandwiches and Quiznos sandwiches in the same restaurant.
What is more, the corporate office can set policy, set prices, etc. Do that and you can let dealerships sell the cars while at the same time controlling ho
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Keep his idea of the slick showroom, but leave out the Apple geniuses.
Put all the data online and populate the store with the equivalent of well-trained booth-babes from both genders. Have a kiosk for payment. Low overhead. Have a couple of cars for test driving.
By the way, I finally drove a Tesla a little bit. They're really nice. The chair of my wife's department at the Univers
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What you just built is a Tesla place you want. Not one good for most people.
You need to have people on hand to answer the questions, because most people won't research data on line.
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I do not want to buy my expensive Tesla from a smelly "genius" walking around with a corporate-logo polo shirt snug around the belly that hangs over his belt, which sports an iPhone holster. I'd rather just order the damn thing on-line and have USPS deliver it to my front door.
Same. Though assuming you were Musk and were putting some stores out there for people to look around... how would you structure it?
One thing that might be a reasonable compromise is if the Tesla franchise had to be exclusive. Consider fast food franchises... they're exclusive. You can't sell subway sandwiches and Quiznos sandwiches in the same restaurant.
What is more, the corporate office can set policy, set prices, etc. Do that and you can let dealerships sell the cars while at the same time controlling how it is done.
Putting the condescension aside that is positively dripping off of the GP post, why should there have to be a compromise? Where the hell do car dealers get off whining about this? As far as I can tell Tesla went for these Tesla stores because the good hard working folks of the car dealing industry put very little effort into selling their cars so it's the car dealers own bloody fault Tesla went for this solution in the first place and as far as I can tell Tesla is well within it's rights to do so. I don't s
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Tesla doesn't have dealerships, which is part of the problem though. They have stores... like stores which sell soap or drugs like aspirin. That is also the point of the ruling as they are trying to tell these mega-dealerships who own the rights to every automobile brand that they simply can't add Tesla to their list.
The reason why Tesla doesn't want these dealers to have their cars is primarily because they are afraid that these dealers will throw a couple of Tesla cars in the corner of their showroom an
Re:Car Dealers should ask why they're being bypass (Score:4, Interesting)
Apparently that is exactly what happened when Japanese cars first came onto the US market, until some very unsubtle bribes and buyouts changed things. Skills used when doing deals with organized crime such as the Yakuza were applied - that really say something about car dealerships doesn't it? The Japanese treated them as crooks and it worked.
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From what I see about Musk through interviews, articles, etc.. I can imagine that there is one obvious reason why Tesla would never enter a dealership model:
'Cause they don't want to get customers' shit on their dicks while they fuck them repeatedly for every penny they can.
good news (Score:2)
The auto dealer protection laws were put in place to prevent local dealerships / franchisees from being screwed by automotive manufacturers at one time in history. Now they themselves wield that law to screw automotive manufacturers and the consumer.
Let them be screwed by a more innovative company again, and the tables be turned to the side of the consumer for once...
Rules for fat cats versus rules for smallbies (Score:2)
I believe it's reasonable that if a company is too large relative to the market, then restrictions on dealership ownership & control make sense to prevent collusion and killing seller competition.
However, for a smaller car company, such rules work against it, protecting the big boys from competition, which was allegedly the reason for the dealer restrictions to begin with.
Thus, cross-sector collusion rules should be tuned to mostly apply to companies with a large market share of car manufacturing. Maybe
Carma is a beautiful thing (Score:4, Insightful)
The big car manufacturers have been trying to use the dealership laws to prevent a competitor from bring a product to market, dealerships have been trying to use the laws to force Tesla to cut them in on their sales. This court ruling bloodies both of their noses for their foolishness, now if only more courts follow in this ones footsteps. I wonder how these laws even came into being in a society that claims to embrace free market mentality in the first place. I realize that Ford once tried to bypass the franchise model, but if they were able to provide their product to customers cheaper then what was the issue? Replace "car manufacturer" with any number of other products (corn, light bulb, TV, desk) in these laws and it becomes quite clear how foolish the whole thing is.
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Its in the dealer's best interest to do as much warranty/recall work as possible
Sure doesn't seem that way to me... At least with Subaru it's the local dealer always trying to weasel out of doing *anything* under warranty and central Subaru 1-800 getting them to do the *damn* work they are supposed to do under Warranty.
Why not just work like the aftermarket warranty companies where they pay local shops by credit card over the phone for warranty work? Has to be cheaper than setting up garages if your Tesla
Footnote mania (Score:3)
19 footnotes for a 24 page opinion, including one so long that spills over from one page onto the next. Ouch! Detracts from what is otherwise a great read, including delving into papers from the file of the acting governor at the time that the legislation at issue was passed.
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19 footnotes for a 24 page opinion, including one so long that spills over from one page onto the next.
You obviously haven't read many legal opinions. Such footnote practice is commonplace.
Ouch! Detracts from what is otherwise a great read
Uh, you do realize that footnotes are optional to read, right? That's why they are footnotes, as opposed to part of the main body of text.
I've never understood people who complain about excessive footnotes -- either they're so ADD that they get distracted by the numbers and the text so they can't stay focused, or they're so OCD that they can't resist reading words at the bottom of the page, even if they are tangential
I was prepared (Score:2)
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Tesla's taking a cue from Apple (Score:4, Insightful)
For those of you old enough to remember a time before Apple had their own stores, the Apple fan would go into most electronics stores and be lucky to find an Apple-related product. Finally, Apple basically told the Cramp-USA's of the world to take a hike and opened their own stores where people could go to get an untainted look at Macs, iPods, etc. The plan worked like a charm. IMHO, Tesla is looking at the market and the fact that many car dealers have multiple brands under the same corporate umbrella and they know they're not going to get the attention they need. Tesla wants a stage that they don't have to share with other cars or even fight for a share of the sales staff.
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This is only partially true. You have to remember that Apple products used to suck. People did not want them.
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This is only partially true. You have to remember that Apple products used to suck. People did not want them.
In my modest experience with older Apple products, I have found that they were about the same as others in quality. They didn't "suck" any more or less than their competitors.
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One word: Performa
But there were still some pretty bad models sold without the Performa mark of crapulence. I once got a Power Mac 4400 [lowendmac.com], one of the ten worst Macs ever [archive.org], from a CompUSSR and realized how bad it was, so a few weeks later I sold it to a friend. I still feel bad about that.
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Ah yes, now I remember the rest of the story... I seem to recall that a few weeks later I got a good deal on a Power Computing [wikipedia.org] Power Tower Pro, which was a quite nice clone (except that 8.0 locked up all the time, so I downgraded to 7.6 until 8.1 came out), and that's what motivated me to sell the 4400. I hadn't really had the 4400 long enough to know just how bad it was. I kept the PTP as my main non-laptop long enough to get it running (actually more like walking) OS X. I long ago downgraded it to 9.x for
Throwback (Score:3)
This seems to indicate that the same laws were good then & not good now. How?
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This seems to indicate that the same laws were good then & not good now. How?
Back then, Detroit was trying to pressure their own retailers to sell their cars at a lower markup. The law was Good (TM) for the retailers because it protected them from their suppliers. There were plenty of retailers to drive prices down through competition; they didn't need the suppliers to compete in the retail market.
Now, Tesla doesn't distribute to independent retailers, and they want to keep it that way, because they're not keen on having their products in the same showrooms as retailers showing other products. As far as they're concerned, Tesla is revolutionary, and would look queer and out-of-place amongst other vehicles with internal combustion engines.
Tesla doesn't trust retailers to present their product fairly in this context. And I can see their point: if their only contact with the consumer is the conventional auto retailer, you can bet all the other car manufacturers would freak out at having to share the showroom with Tesla, and would put pressure on the retailers to sing their own song.
In short, Tesla doesn't think the market will be fair to them unless they sell their product through their own stores. And since the retailers aren't selling their product, they're not competing with them, and so the law is an anachronism in this context.
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I think part of that is also from a "morality hurdle" mentality. Many religious people don't want the alcohol market to be efficient in order to squelch consumption. It may not merely be old-fashioned protectionism of mom-and-pop stores.
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I think part of that is also from a "morality hurdle" mentality. Many religious people don't want the alcohol market to be efficient in order to squelch consumption. It may not merely be old-fashioned protectionism of mom-and-pop stores.
I can imagine that explanation being plausible in a Jesus-belt state, but not Massachusetts.
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Yup. Mass was the place that brought us the Salem witch trials, The Scarlet Letter, and plenty of similar themes. They made the Westboro Baptist Church look like a gay pride parade, though perhaps only because all that stuff had the full force of law.
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Interesting to see that version of history making the rounds - the pilgrims weren't kicked out of England for anything, they left because they felt they didn't have the freedom to oppress their group members under English law. So they went somewhere with no laws.
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Close.
The illegal broke fro the Church of England, because the Church of England was extreme* enough) and went to the Netherlands.
Then they started to fears the would loose the English language, and went to America, landing on Plymouth Rock.
After which the people from the new world and the local natives lived happily every after.
I might have made up that last bit.
*eXtreme!
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As someone who is presently drunk on slivotiz -- fuck those puritans! Without condoms. In the eye. On Sunday.
Seriously, slivovitz is awesome: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]
Better than god. And the name is vaguely kinky.
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A good dealer can integrate a variety of aftermarket add-ons, have alternative financing and insurance packages on-site, provide extra customer services such as roadside assistance and no-hassle inspections and initial tuneups. Not much of a reason, but it's what they give for their existence.
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You're right -- not much of a reason. Financing: credit union. Roadside assistance: my friends. My state doesn't do inspections so: irrelevant. Initial tuneups? It doesn't come properly configed from the factory?
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I have found most dealers in my area are willing to order a car how you want it. You just have to wait, and may have to put down a down payment towards purchase of the car. Whether they actually order the correct car or not apparently varies.
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Oh, shut up.
Listen you patronizing jerk, you aren't the only 'car guy', so get over yourself.
I ave no idea why you think you won't be able to test drive.
Their sales paradigm is design to grab customers and fleece them for all they can, otherwise everything would be fixed price.