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Re:Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag by dmix on Thursday April 25, 2019 @11:31AM (#19749175)
This is why online car shopping needs to be a thing. I experienced the exact same thing. I'm a highly informed customer who knew every car I wanted to see but almost every sales guy ignored that fact, besides at a Honda location. Which isn't surprising that I ended up with a Honda.

I would have bought it online if I could and it's very possible I wouldn't have ended up with a Honda, that has to play a role in each company's auto sales.

Re:Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag by Klathmon on Thursday April 25, 2019 @11:38AM (#19749250)
Same here, I ended up going into an Audi dealer after the Bolt fiasco, and it was a night and day difference. When I asked a question about a car, they answered it happily! When I wanted to look at a car, they took me to a few. When I wanted to test drive one, they pulled up their inventory of cars and asked what one I want to test drive.

No "you don't want that", no "we are trying to keep the miles down on that one", no condescending talk about how some other car is probably more in my range.

And unsurprisingly I ended up getting an Audi!

It's one of the big reasons why I think the whole "online sales" thing is perfect with Tesla. They have showrooms in many places where those who want to look at and ask questions about the cars can go, and when you actually want to buy, you buy it like something off amazon, and it gets delivered when ready.

Re:Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag by alexhutcheson on Thursday April 25, 2019 @11:49AM (#19749361)
The Costco Auto Program is worth checking out: https://www.costcoauto.com

You can pick the car and get pre-negotiated pricing online. You still have to go to the dealer to actually pick it up, but you don't need to be "sold to", negotiate the price, etc. The people I know who have used it have gotten excellent prices, but it's always worth comparing to the estimates from Consumer Reports or other sources.

Re:Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag by dmix on Thursday April 25, 2019 @11:50AM (#19749379)
Good to know.

I used https://www.unhaggle.com to find out the MRSP of the car and saved about $2k from the list price, basically the lowest price the dealer could offer. It's basically a lead-gen system for dealerships which I discovered after my experience mentioned above. The dealer was very welcoming with us using it and said it was getting more common.