“Buy the dealer, not the machine” is outdated

[Dranrab]

Once I had my short list and prices were all comparable, I bought the dealer, and that proved to be a good decision. The tractor has been back twice. One of the items that could have been an operator error was warrantied becuase the dealer went to bat for me.

 

[paulfun9]

See part of the problem is on your Amazon example, Amazon often provides way better customer service then these local mom and pop places. I order something wrong, they'll send someone to my house to pick it up. It comes in damaged, they ship me a new one before I send it back, or if I give them a specific part that sell to fix the problem, they just send it to me. I want the price on some other product I don't usually buy, its right there, upfront, with all my discounts I negotiate if I'm using Amazon Business. Like literally everything is at my fingertips that I could want out of a retailer for the types of products Amazon sells.

When you try to get customer service out of the mom and pop shops, even the ones that are really good and try hard, the owner clearly isn't thrilled when you're doing things that are cutting into the profit, such as returning items or claiming warranty on something that the manufacturer isn't going to reimburse the store for. And I get it: I own a small business and I'm not thrilled when I'm doing warranty work for free with my customers, especially when I view some of the items as very minor and nitpicking, instead of doing things that make me money. But the automated systems and disconnect between the financial impact between the person you're dealing with makes it easier to provide better, less emotional customer service. As a stupid example, if someone buys an oil filter on Amazon and the box comes in damaged and they want a new one, you know Amazon will just ship them a new one and pick up the old one. You do that at a dealer, they're gonna look and be like "the oil filter is fine".

In other words, a big part of the reason of Amazon and the internet giants success is precisely because they typically provide better customer service at a lower price then the competition. Yes, there's specific situations where they are worse... but typically, my experience is they're way better, on average. Even product support, one of the entire purposes of this forum is to help people get support on the equipment they're buying. If these places really had great product support at a low price, there'd be no reason for this forum to exist, and realistically, this forum and others like it provide way better support for my equipment then any dealer I've dealt with. For free no less.

Not my experiance with them?
My experiance with Amazon is cheep junk, you have to wait for a set amount of time before being allowed to ask for a refund when your product doesn’t show and the hole time your at a stand still waiting on it.
Product you can’t touch and feel to even get a clue if it’s good or junk before buying.
Product not built correctly, misleading adds, incorrect parts, parts with a brand name forged on them that don’t fit or work corrrectly and having to wait for response from them online before getting resolve.

 

[paulfun9]

My Dad always believed in buying base vehicle, on the lot. Find out what the asking price was, make saleman a 'CASH" offer, which was always refused. My Dad would bid the salemans a good day and proceed to leave with the salesman following at his heels like some irritating little dog. A deal was always reached.

Unless it's a sellers market, every dealer wants to move inventory. They may make very little, but if my Dad goes to the next dealer and makes a deal, it won't be them making even a little.

I did that when I bought an Accord for my Mom. They wanted to play their games but I played mine instead. I won, but they were clearly, not happy. Maybe, it's why they once charged my Mom an outrageous sum, to "clean" her brakes.

They would have charged that outrageous sum to clean the brakes even if you paid what they had listed on the sticker. Some want to screw you both coming and going and only fold when they know you won’t be a victim.