Lexus dealer causes me much amusment

[99Flake]

My GS300 has never had a cd changer since we bought it six months ago, it wasn't a massive problem and I knocked £150 off the price because of it knowing that we could get a replacement from Ebay for that or under at the time.

Due to many reasons we never bought the changer at the time and have managed to get by without until now, whereby my head cannot take anymore Radio 1/commercial radio and I am longing for my own music.

So today I decided to go and look for a changer. After much (futile) searching on ebay I decided to phone the Lexus dealer to ask the cost of the part.

Now I knew before I phoned that it wasn't going to be cheap but I almost fell over backwards not knowing whether to laugh or cry when the parts guy told me it was going to be £1250 + VAT.

£1250??? + VAT???? We only paid £1600 for the car.

At that price I would hope that you get the royal philharmonic orchstra playing to you from the back seat.

As you can imagine I declined their kind offer and kept hunting.

I have now managed to get a changer for £70 from a written off GS300, and to quote the guy 'I don't know how much they are worth so make me an offer'.

Offer I did, and here's hoping he never phones a dealer to find their real cost.

[rastamanblues]

Ahh yes dealers and there prices!

Whilst I understand it might cost a bit more for a car that hasn't been produced for a few years some things really do take the P.

My local Nissan place is actually brilliant for 200 parts, usually most stuff within 24 hours and fairly reasonable. However I did ask for a quote for a new VVT sprocket. . . . . Yeah it's almost the value of the car!

[alpha channel]

It makes you wonder just what some dealers are on at times.

The Lexus dealer that my sister and husband dealt with weren't too bad, mind you they did have to practically rebuild their car (a brand new IS250) after a house roof fell on it. They got rid of it shortly afterwards (though I suspect that that and the fact some gobs#%"! in a car park decided to do a bit of remodelling by scraping their car down the side of it while pulling out of a car parking space had something to do with it, had terrible luck with that car).

[Saracen]

Ah, car dealers. And manufacturers.

Some years ago, I bought a BMW M3. I opted for no air-con. When I came to think about changing the car, the BMW dealer told me the car now came with air-con as standard. Well, quote me without, I said, because I don't want it. He told me it can be removed from the spec, but won't affect the price because .... and I quote .... "it's free".

"Oh really," said I. "In that case, make me an appointment and you can fit it to my existing car, because it will probably bump the value up a bit when I sell it."

It turns out that "free" had a very special meaning. It was only "free" if you were buying it in a car .... and a car which, I might add, had gone up more than £5000 in price.

"Free, my <insert rude word here>!!!".

I must admit that he didn't seem pleased when I told him I thought air-CON was a very apt term for it, and walked out.

I ended up keeping the original car. Still got it in fact. The air-con was one reason. Another was that "for security reasons" they'd decided to do away with the old standard stereo DIN fitting and build a proprietary model into the dash. Well, I always have a custom system fitted to my requirements, and it's far harder, if not impossible, to do it with a non-standard hole. Then they told me what the options were, and the prices for it. "Hifi-con" doesn't have quite the same ring to it, but in my view, it's equally apt.

Anda friend had much the same issues with Mercedes. So at least it's not a Lexus issue, as BMW and Merc at least have much the same attitude.

[99Flake]

I don't know if I would accuse them of being main 'stealers' in general. I have been there before for the odd bit and they have been very helpful from not charging for certain things (taking the remote locking relock timout off) to charging less than Halfords for a set of wheel bolts.

I think it is just their stereo stuff, I know that it connects with optical cables and is highly proprietry, and you can't use any other changer. Also it is of very high quality to the point that you wouldn't want to swap it out but £1250+vat is taking the biscuit, I could go to many live concerts for that!

[Konan555]

Probably just the original price for the unit still loitering in their computer. Did they still stock it?

Originally Posted by Saracen

He told me it can be removed from the spec, but won't affect the price because .... and I quote .... "it's free".

What he means is that BMW, like many manufacturers, have discovered it's actually cheaper to fit air-con as standard on certain models as most people opt for it. The less variations they have on the production run, the less complex it is and costs go down. Asking for the car without it, would probably cost them more.

[dangel]

Ah Lexus..



Nice.

But seriously - not unheard of, especially for what's marketed as a 'premium' brand.

[Saracen]

Originally Posted by Konan555

...

What he means is that BMW, like many manufacturers, have discovered it's actually cheaper to fit air-con as standard on certain models as most people opt for it. The less variations they have on the production run, the less complex it is and costs go down. Asking for the car without it, would probably cost them more.

I understand the argument, but I just don't believe it. Not when they accompany it by a flipping great price rise. What they did was take several things that were options and build them in, meaning that we get to buy them whether we want them or not. Or in my case, not buy them since I walked away from the car completely.

It might lower their costs, but it sure as hell also upped their price.

[Konan555]

Absolutely. By 'cheaper' I meant cheaper for them.

Depending on the particular sales guy, he knows is he can't get hold of them without air con and has to try to swing the deal with some kind of excuse. Overall, it's a problem with BMWs strategy, not the dealers that have to order them.

[Zak33]

don't blame the dealer... he has a margin of under 10% in that unit.

[Skii]

Replacement heated glass for my wing mirror - Eurocarparts £18
Replacement heated glass for my wing mirror - SMC Seat Datchet £50.60

..go figure

[99Flake]

Originally Posted by Zak33

don't blame the dealer... he has a margin of under 10% in that unit.

I'm not blaming the dealer, more that when he told me the price it caused me much mirth.

I know that dealers don't take much of a cut (have worked for BMW in the past), what I would love to know though is who it taking the profit?

Is it Pioneer/Nakcamichi (not sure who makes it out of those two) or Lexus themselves? And is there actually a lot of profit in it or does the unit really cost that much?

[Lee @ SCAN]

For that 'quoted' price you could build an in-car system with storage to playback mp3 media files.

[99Flake]

I could but then it wouldn't sound as nice, to be fair the system in the Lexus is exceedingly good, even off FM.

[rastamanblues]

I'm pretty sure it would be Lexus making the huge profit.

A friend of mine works for Ford, and I can't give away figures for obvious reasons, but lets just say on the TDCi engines the Turbo/Manifold costs roughly £1k to replace, Ford certainly dont pay anywhere near that to Garrett

[Saracen]

Originally Posted by Konan555

...

Depending on the particular sales guy, he knows is he can't get hold of them without air con and has to try to swing the deal with some kind of excuse. Overall, it's a problem with BMWs strategy, not the dealers that have to order them.

Originally Posted by Zak33

don't blame the dealer... he has a margin of under 10% in that unit.

We cant blame the dealer for the prices they buy at, but we can blame then for how they choose to sell to customers.

I can't speak for 99Flake's stereo price, though I have had similar discussions over manufacturer stereo in the past. My experience of manufacturer stereo, over 30+ years, is that they have ALWAYS been grossly overpriced. They are, IMHO, an utter rip-off, and that includes whether it's manufacturer-supplied on build or ordered afterwards.

My belief is that they rely on people either not knowing any better (which, much of the time, may be a valid belief), or simply adding things on when ordering the car because it's easier. I also suspect it's because most people wouldn't know a decent car stereo if they heard one, or at least, don't know what one sounds like because they've never heard one. Obviously, manufacturer car stereos range from barely adequate up to "quite good really", but never to top quality (outside of ludicrously expensive and specialist marques anyway), but from one end of the market to the other, they do, in my opinion, grossly overcharge.

But there's nothing unique to the car market in that. If they have to compete on price on the car, you can pretty much expect them to sting us for accessories. It's the same with many other industries too. Ever been thinking about buying a printer for £100 or so, only to have some dealer try to tell you the USB cable you need is an additional £15? I remember getting quite a shock many years ago when buying a cable from a friend that ran a large mail-order outlet (and no, if anyone knows my forum background, it's NOT who you might think). He told me I could have the cable at cost, and it was £9.99 on the shelf. I was shocked when he rang it up at £0.78p.

Another example would be subsidising the cost of inkjet printers with the cost of cartridges. Another would be buying a colour laser printer "with cartridges" only to find out a few days/weeks later that they're "starter" cartridges that last no time at all, and that a full set of cartridges will cost you more than the printer did. My advice to anyone buying a printer, especially a colour laser, is to find out the capacity of the cartridges it comes with, and the cost of replacements, before you buy. And while you're at it, find out what other components are user-replaceable, what they cost and how often you're expected to replace them.

They're all examples of the same type of marketing, and in each case, are designed to skin the customer.

As Konan said, including air-con, in my story, is BMW strategy, but the way the dealer tried to present it was that he (or BMW) was doing me a favour by including it free. And that attitude really annoyed me, because he's taking me for an idiot, and I knew he was. He might have got a sale if he'd just been halfway honest and said something like "most people want air-con, and BMW decided to include it as standard because it's too expensive to carry multiple models".

But the trouble is, I wouldn't believe that either.

It might well be true for a mass-market car where you're taking a car from a pre-built pool of cars. But in my case, I was talking about a factory order. I order the car, to my spec, and they build it accordingly. There were a whole series of options I could have had, and I don't remember the exact list. But it included (obviously), paint colour and interior choices including quite a range of trim colours. It also included whether micro-filters were fitted, bodywork options, and so forth. Some, like wheels, were obviously something that could be and maybe would be fitted at the dealer, but others, like sunroof, were build options. With modern computerised manufacturing, if they can custom-build to include or not include all sorts of other options, tracking systems, braking variations and so on, I simply don't believe that leaving out the air-con (and perhaps fitting blanking plates) would be that difficult to do or change their cost structure that much. I am convinced that what it was actually all about was them selling me the air-con option whether I wanted it or not. Instead, I didn't buy the car. But no doubt, most people would have bought anyway, and I rather doubt BMW's commercial director is still having sleepless nights about the one that got away.