ol' yeller wrote:
chevyman2 wrote:
Well let me say this from a dealer POV. Yes there are times that a dealer will lose money on a sale. Possibly more often than you might think.
Now figure this in. Trade-in value seems low to most customers, however consider this. When a dealer accepts a trade, they generally dont know if all appliances work, if brakes are OK, ETC. They take "your" word for a lot of things. That is why every unit (new & used) goes thru a PDI. Im sure every dealer works about like ours here. Service Dept charges the Sales Dept. for the PDI and any repairs, as well as detailing. A typical PDI will take 8-10 hours and a typical detail (wash, wax, buff, tire shine, windows, interior carpet, dust, ETC) can take 16 hours or more. At a rate of approx $120 per hour. You add up the labor costs. Not to mention each unit gets new batteries at $100 each. Add to that anything else it might need like bearings, brakes, tires, ETC. Yes we add literally $thousands to every single unit.
Sorry to rain on your parade, but Trade-in value is a very high amount to give for most trade ins.
We searched for 2 years looking for our last RV. We traveled up to 200 miles to go to a dealer who had something we were interested in. In all that time and after looking at many many RVs at dealerships, I never saw one RV that had been detailed or even the appearance of the service department spending more than an hour in it. This applies to ones that we called on and made arrangements to look at. Your dealership is not the norm when it comes to used RVs.
What I found was that all the dealerships we visited were willing to do a PDI (usually at my expense) after we had come to terms on buying it. They were not willing to spend one dime on any used unit until after it was sold. Generally they were willing to fix any problems I discovered but would not expend any effort looking for problems. This is the polar opposite of my experiences when buying used cars and I found it hard to understand. I then realized how much expense it would entail IF they did this and how the dealership COULD be upside down on a trade.
This is why I finally bought from a private seller and paid for a PDI from a respected RV shop.
EXACTLY RIGHT! And I for one really question the $120/per hour figure for Dealer Cost of Labor. That sounds like the RETAIL labor rate to me. And I had the same experience you did. In almost every used unit I looked at, the dealer ADMITTED they had done NOTHING to it.
And do not believe the old line that "We lose money on many deals" it's just not true...and if it was..well that dealer would be out of business very very soon. Or they would get a sales manager that wouldn't lose them money.
With all due respect to that poster (chevyman2) this all sounds too much like a bad sales pitch or an apologia for dealer behaviour.
