<story><title>Amazon announces online car sales for the first time, starting with Hyundai</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/16/23964233/amazon-car-online-sale-hyundai-dealer-alexa</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>theGnuMe</author><text>There was a program where you could fly to Germany and buy a BMW there, drive it for a few days and ship it home.  Ended up being cheaper than buying it at a local dealership. Not sure if it is still available.&lt;p&gt;Dealerships are local jobs programs in some sense and they got State laws enacted to secure their positions.  Tesla went up against them and won I guess.&lt;p&gt;My guess is the Amazon program will be similar to the Costco program.</text></item><item><author>Spartan-S63</author><text>So much this. I&amp;#x27;d much rather pay a shipping fee from the factory to my address than a dealer handling fee.&lt;p&gt;I honestly wish I could just order a Tacoma straight from Toyota, pay for it to be shipped to me, and avoid the dealership rigamarole altogether. I&amp;#x27;m okay waiting my turn in line from the factory. I don&amp;#x27;t want to deal with artificial dealership &amp;quot;market adjustments.&amp;quot; I don&amp;#x27;t understand why we haven&amp;#x27;t deregulated the car sales industry to allow (and even require?) manufacturers to directly sell to consumers, circumventing dealerships entirely. It would upend that industry and force them to prove they actually are a value-add service.</text></item><item><author>gwbas1c</author><text>The issue isn&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;online buying.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The current dealership model creates and tolerates incentives for dealers to rip me off at sale time. It also injects a set of complexity into the model, where if I choose to buy a car of brand X, I then have to comparison shop for the exact same car at multiple dealerships.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve bought two Teslas, and the nice thing about the process is that it doesn&amp;#x27;t matter where I pick up the car, I get the same price, and the exact same experience. Tesla also won&amp;#x27;t try to rip me off on buy-ups like tire protection and seat protection. (Then again, Tesla really needs price protection because they significantly dropped the price of the Model Y shortly after I bought it.)&lt;p&gt;One of the most annoying situations was a Subaru dealer that made me sit through a pitch for various upsells (that were rip offs) and then sign a form that I listened to them.&lt;p&gt;I really hope the Amazon car purchases explicitly prohibit upsells and other nonsense. Just bring me the car, give me the keys, and stay long enough to make sure that the car works. No BS upsells.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lastofthemojito</author><text>Volvo does it too (for Europe-made models, not China-made models): &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.volvocars.com&amp;#x2F;us&amp;#x2F;l&amp;#x2F;osd-tourist&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.volvocars.com&amp;#x2F;us&amp;#x2F;l&amp;#x2F;osd-tourist&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Amazon announces online car sales for the first time, starting with Hyundai</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/16/23964233/amazon-car-online-sale-hyundai-dealer-alexa</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>theGnuMe</author><text>There was a program where you could fly to Germany and buy a BMW there, drive it for a few days and ship it home.  Ended up being cheaper than buying it at a local dealership. Not sure if it is still available.&lt;p&gt;Dealerships are local jobs programs in some sense and they got State laws enacted to secure their positions.  Tesla went up against them and won I guess.&lt;p&gt;My guess is the Amazon program will be similar to the Costco program.</text></item><item><author>Spartan-S63</author><text>So much this. I&amp;#x27;d much rather pay a shipping fee from the factory to my address than a dealer handling fee.&lt;p&gt;I honestly wish I could just order a Tacoma straight from Toyota, pay for it to be shipped to me, and avoid the dealership rigamarole altogether. I&amp;#x27;m okay waiting my turn in line from the factory. I don&amp;#x27;t want to deal with artificial dealership &amp;quot;market adjustments.&amp;quot; I don&amp;#x27;t understand why we haven&amp;#x27;t deregulated the car sales industry to allow (and even require?) manufacturers to directly sell to consumers, circumventing dealerships entirely. It would upend that industry and force them to prove they actually are a value-add service.</text></item><item><author>gwbas1c</author><text>The issue isn&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;online buying.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The current dealership model creates and tolerates incentives for dealers to rip me off at sale time. It also injects a set of complexity into the model, where if I choose to buy a car of brand X, I then have to comparison shop for the exact same car at multiple dealerships.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve bought two Teslas, and the nice thing about the process is that it doesn&amp;#x27;t matter where I pick up the car, I get the same price, and the exact same experience. Tesla also won&amp;#x27;t try to rip me off on buy-ups like tire protection and seat protection. (Then again, Tesla really needs price protection because they significantly dropped the price of the Model Y shortly after I bought it.)&lt;p&gt;One of the most annoying situations was a Subaru dealer that made me sit through a pitch for various upsells (that were rip offs) and then sign a form that I listened to them.&lt;p&gt;I really hope the Amazon car purchases explicitly prohibit upsells and other nonsense. Just bring me the car, give me the keys, and stay long enough to make sure that the car works. No BS upsells.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bobthepanda</author><text>They haven&amp;#x27;t won in every state, I don&amp;#x27;t think.&lt;p&gt;Not only do dealerships provide local jobs but generally their owners tend to be well to do and donate prolifically to local elections, where dollars are normally otherwise scarce because of their lower participation rates.</text></comment>