Quote:
Originally Posted by dbtheo
Sitting on the other side of desk, I'm gonna have to disagree (understandably) with the majority. IMO, you & dealer B entered into & had a contract, you tried to change it at the last moment.
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I understand where you're coming from and agree with you up to a point. But the thing to remember here is that while they may have had a contract, that contract did not require him to pay for the car and allows him to get his deposit back otherwise we wouldn't be reading this thread right now (although we'd probably be reading one about the dealer who won't let someone out of their contract). He's acting within the bounds of whatever it is that he signed. If he had purposely screwed with these dealerships I'd agree with you, but at the end of the day he's supposed to walk away from a discount of thousands of dollars?
two wrongs don't make a right, but there are plenty of times when a car buyer gets screwed because of something that a dealership does, sometimes by accident and sometimes on purpose. I'm not saying that anyone deserves to get stuck with a car they don't want or can't sell, but at the end of the day these things even out. I'd have a lot more sympathy for the dealership if the industry as a whole would make an effort to treat their customers better. Yeah, the sleazy car salesman is a stereotype, but stereotypes are at least somewhat based on reality even if they aren't universally true, or even true in a majority of cases.
Your analogy of selling the car to someone who will pay more might be applicable, but this is more of an issue of "what am I contractually obligated to pay for and what can I get away with not paying for" and I can think of plenty of times a dealership has refused warranty work on things (once for me, and many times from talking to other people) because it just barely falls outside of the defined limits or even simply because of a creative interpretation by the dealership, even though common sense says it should be covered.
As for individual programs...this is VERY easy to solve. Simply require a much larger and absolutely 100% non-refundable deposit. I absolutely guarantee that you can sell an individual program car off the lot if you sell it for invoice. And if you've got a non-refundable $5k deposit, you're probably making money on the deal.