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Prices Paid: Buying & Leasing Experiences Volkswagen Passat Prices Paid and Buying Experience
3318 messages, Last post on Nov 12, 2009 at 9:57 AM
You are in the Prices Paid: Buying & Leasing Experiences Forum. Your Hosts are car_man & kyfdx
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If you live near Seaside CA and are looking for a VW, talk to Peter Savale at Wester VW (www.westervw.com). I live in San Antonio and am looking to buy there. I've had difficulties getting straight answers from local floor reps here without getting the full-on, stereotypical car salesman pitch. Not only that, the salesmen have been unknowledgable about the 2001.5, which I am going to buy. After seeing numerous, informative, posts by VWGUILD, who is also the VW internet sales manager for Wester VW in Seaside CA, I e-mailed him with a SLEW of questions regarding supply, demand, pricing, car specs et. He recommended I call him and we talked for 45 minutes. No sales pitch, no BS. Mind you, I live in TX, so he had no vested interested in talking to me for 45 minutes other than goodwill and hopes of receiving some good word of mouth. Yes he is a salesman and ultimately is trying to sell cars, but he is by far and away one of the easiest saleman I have ever dealt with! |
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| a free plug to a dealer? Technically, enthusiastic posts of this sort (with such detail!) do not violate any of the Edmunds Town Hall rules pertaining to solicitation, so feel free... | |
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If it 'technically' is not a violation--why do you even bother to comment on it? It is not a 'technical', 'legal', 'practical' or any other type of violation. It's an unsolicited opinion intented to help other users on this site purchase a car--if it also benefits this dealer--so what? You can't buy cars at a grocery store so if you have to buy a car from a dealer, it might as well be from one who is well informed and isn't trying to sucker you into a bad deal. |
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Thanks for the info. Brentwood- yeah fires are bad down there, aren't they! Thanks for the good advice. The reason I had asked about the JAX dealer is b/c I had been communication with the sales manager for a while. But I didn't think that they would be flexible on the price. I would like to buy locally too. I'm going to either fax or email surrounding dealers in FL and take my best offer to Royal when I'm ready to buy! Thanks again. |
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| Does anyone have advice or opinions about VW's Driver's Option program? I have read the details on vw.com , but don't know if it's just a glorified lease! Any experience with this or opinions would be great! Just trying to figure out how I can get into a Passat sooner! | |
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its_kristy--in the words of Donnie Brasco, "Ain't the Question..." The dealers who hang out here have protested over and over again that they *never* solicit business and that they have *no intention* of personally benefiting from their participation here. Even if they do not instigate a plug, however, I think your post (and other posts that mention salesmen and contact info) indicates that they do in fact benefit quite directly. As I understand it, this is meant to be a non-commercial forum; in my opinion, your post was a free commercial, and something that would be more appropriately displayed at a VW website. There is no question that some of the dealers here are helpful. For instance, I was surprised and pleased by brentwoodvolvo's post #624. On the other hand, I think that many of the questions fielded by dealers, could just as easily be answered in a non-biased manner by any number of your fellow net-savvy consumers who have easy access to reliable sources. After all, first and foremost this is a consumer forum. As many of the dealers have demonstrated, they are also here to shape public opinion--literally "pre-negotiating" for their fellow dealers. All you have to do is read the "2001.5 Pricing" forum, or track this discussion back a few months to see their biased "inside information" in predicting MSRP (or higher) pricing for the newest Passat. |
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More definitively, our ban on solicitation prevents anyone from plugging for personal gain. A consumer gets no gain from saying "Hey, I just got a great deal at XYZ Motors - go see Joe, he really treated me well." On the other hand, a salesperson is indeed attempting personal gain by asking another Town Hall member to contact him to see if he has the vehicle in stock. Similarly, if someone has created a webpage for the purpose of selling a product or generating revenue through hit counts, that too is considered solicitation and is not permitted. Hope that clears it up. kcram Host Smart Shopper and FWI Message Boards |
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| I was merely drawing attention to the fact that the dealers who frequent these forums have carved out quite a niche for themselves--and regardless of the actual mechanism, they are benefiting, both directly and indirectly, through their presence here. They receive a direct benefit if a customer comes to them "through" this website, and they receive an indirect benefit if they are able to discourage promising negotiating strategies in these forums. These dealers are not idiots; they know what they are doing here. Call me paranoid, but...(sigh)...well, go ahead, call me paranoid... | |
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Snurple, we all know where you stand on this issue, oh, how we know. Although I don't think you are paranoid, I do think you have a predetermined opinion of all dealers and are both unwilling and unable to deviate from it, even if it does not apply. If you think that my post was a 'free commercial', then that could be said about every single post on this site that praises the attributes of the passat. They benefit VW and ALL VW dealers because like I said, you can't buy a VW at the grocery store. Consumers WILL buy the passat, from the dealer I plug or a different one. I just don't see the big deal with dealers posting information on this site, ulterior motive or not. People on this site are not stupid. I know exactly why dealers are on this site but as long as they provide information and aren't posting spam, then I have no problem with it. I personally could care less where the information comes from, as long as I get it without a blatant sales pitch. Can the posts from the dealers be biased? Of course, but so can the posts from consumers. I think people on this site know how to filter posts, from dealers and consumers alike. |
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Hi, I live in St. Louis and am looking to buy a 1.8T automatic Passat in the near future. I have used the online pricing services like Autobytel, StoneAge, AutoAdvantage, and carsdirect. All these websites have eventually put me in touch with dealers who basically quoted me MSRP (or more) for the 2001.5 Passat. My questions are: 1. Has anyone ever gotten a good offer on a car website? 2. Because of these high prices, I am also looking at the "old" 2001 Passat (which I assume I might be able to get a much better deal on than MSRP), do people have an idea of what is a good price for the old 2001 Passat? 3. I read on the Edmunds website that VW dealers have a 1500 dollar factory to dealer incentive on old 2001 Passats that ends the first week of March. Does this mean that the incentive ends or could it increase even more to say $2000? 4. I am also tempted to look at dealer courtesy cars when I go to the dealerships, but got negative feedback about them on this website. One thing I have read is that dealer cars may be a bad idea because any mileage on the car will count toward the 2/24,000 warranty. When I have a car, I don't think I'll put more than 10,000 miles on it for the first two years due to my school situation (people in my class are averaging 5,000mi/year). Is mileage the only thing that detracts from the dealer courtesy car? Or have people found that dealers do not treat these cars very well since they know they will get rid of them in the near future? 5. I read on a website that a fair way to calculate the price of a car is to take the invoice price, subtract any factory to dealer incentives and "hold back" then pay 5% over that. Is that too much or too little to offer for the old 2001 Passat? How would I adjust this formula for a dealer courtesy car? thanks |
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