bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

did travel agents justify their value? maybe they did until the internet of course. the airline business is one of direct competition, and sure it's brutal, but the last thing we need is travel 'dealers'.

respectfully to you, as we've discussed, i don't think your profession (realtors) acquits itself very well either, although there are good realtors. i think there's huge opportunities to make real estate sales more self-empowered but the national association of realtors and their powerful lobbyists and controlling interests hold on tight, despite redfin and other sites trying to get closer to a direct model.

then you have insurance agents, financial 'advisors' (usually just selling insurance mostly), and on and on.

but back to car dealers... i don't want to pay for all that marble, glass, pool tables, coffee bars, vast amounts of real estate and land, just to be 'shmoozed' with a germ-infested hand shake i don't want either. it's a huge waste of money and time not to mention aggravation.

SW17LS

Have you ever booked travel with a good travel agent? Believe it or not, when traveling someplace I don't have experience going or doing something I am not accustomed to doing...I'd rather book it with a travel agent. You save money a lot of times, they know how to make the facets of a trip fit together in ways you yourself can't do, you get tips about things to do that are worthwhile without having to do a ton of research.

I think a lot of times you'll get a better trip, for less money and less stress booking it and making choices with a travel agent than you will booking it all on your own. That's been my experience.

Same way with insurance agents. I would never buy insurance directly from a company, I want a good insurance agent I trust and can get guidance from, who will go to bat for me if I have a claim, etc.

Now not to say dealers aren't a ****show, they are, but if you use them to your advantage I am very confident you will save money over buying direct from a manufacturer. You're either going to pay for the leather and marble or you're going to pay for more profit for the manufacturer, you're going to pay one way or the other.

As for my industry and Redfin, LOL. They don't want a direct model, they do the same thing we do they just pay their agents nothing, and you get people with little experience, overworked, underpaid and they still loose money as a company. Seriously you may as well just do it yourself vs hiring them.

They're a great example, the savings is a smokescreen. Check the stats, their clients pay more as buyers and get less as sellers, which more than negates their lower cost.

gengar

You're free to post your own viewpoints. But this is a discussion board, so you should expect that if you post incredibly questionable viewpoints, they'll get questioned.

In this thread, you haven't exactly done me the courtesy of explaining why you disagree with some my posts (e.g., your post #9). So not exactly sure why you try to turn this around and try to play victim now.

SW17LS

I am perfectly happy to discuss my opinions, and I have done so repeatedly including in this thread. It's hard to have a mature discussion with someone when they make personally disparaging comments about you and your viewpoint. I shouldn't have to direct you to the sites rules.

YOU feel my viewpoint is "incredibly questionable", I think it's incredibly naive to think carmakers are going to pass any savings from the lack of a dealership arm on to us as consumers. Why else would they want to get rid of dealers? Because they love us so much they want to sell us cars for less? Hardly.

gengar

Well, the interesting thing about travel agents is that modern travel agents typically depend on either bundling into packages or, more rarely, consolidator fares. So ironically (but probably not surprisingly), today's successful TA business model depends on opacity and hiding things from the end consumer.

As a side note, I know a couple luxury-oriented TAs and they don't actually get paid that much, but they get massive kickbacks from their preferred vendors. So again, transactionally quite opaque.

SW17LS

At the end of the day though, if you're getting a good trip and you're getting a good price for the trip and good value out of the trip, it's been planned for you with little stress to you, why do you care what "kickbacks" they got? Should they have planned your trip for free?

gengar

You can keep talking about mature discussions and disparaging comments and site rules all you want. I'll just repost from before:

SW17LS

I posted my viewpoint and why I feel that way directly above. How many more times can I post it?

I think giving manufacturers total control over the cost and distribution of vehicles will increase profit for manufacturers, but also increase cost to the consumer because you won't have the local competition between local dealers. Good example? Apple. Do you think Apple products would be cheaper if Apple allowed their authorized retailers to have greater flexibility over pricing, and allowed more and more diverse retailers? I think they would be.

Is that clear enough for you?

gengar

And again, that doesn't at all address my post that you quoted. Since then, you've only talked about potential external factors to that.

That's why this entire back-and-forth is so strange. You keep wanting to talk about mature discussion and respect, yet you have posted responses to me indicating you disagree without even explaining why. It's ridiculous.

SW17LS

I'm sorry if you don't understand why I disagree with you, in my mind I've explained it, clearly to you I haven't. Not sure what else I can do

Toys4RJill

Not sure how this thread got so personal, but there is the ignore feature to block out people who annoy. I use it on a few.

Anyhow, eliminating dealers is not good. The manufacturer has no incentive to pass on the savings to the end user if they cut out distribution.

Competition among dealers is good for the consumer.

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

that's how i feel about most realtors, that there's no way in hell the 6% or whatever involved is justifiable, not to mention the robbery of title insurance, acquisition fees, 'doc' fees, and on, and on...

maybe i'm also biased because realtor costs in britain are typically 1-2%.

i will buy my next house direct from a builder, and sell my home myself.

My0gr81

Not to say that realtors don't work hard, they do, and they bring a lot tools, local knowledge and facilitate the transactions process by experience through sheer volume. Very much, like any bipedal mammal could do through rote or muscle memory. Specially considering the example above. If the buyers pay more, but the sellers get less, where does the money go? This is why "most" realtors are held to the same level of esteem as car salespeople.

gengar

No clue why you are so hellbent on picking a fight with me. My original comment that you quoted and indicated you disagreed with in your post #9 only regarded the costs and margin room involved in distribution channels as regards middlemen - nothing more, nothing less. Any number of external factors can happen before and after that distribution channel, all of which could potentially affect pricing to the end consumer - and none of which I made any comment about. All your posts since then have only regarded potential external factors - all of which could coexist with my initial post (IOW, we can both be 100% right about it) - yet you insist on arguing about the external factors, even though that topic was never part of my point. And then you still want to talk about "mature discussion" and "rudeness" and "respect". I mean seriously, you couldn't make this stuff up.

Then why are big box wholesalers (like Costco) or centralized mass fulfillment retailers (like Amazon) successful? Under your logic, manufacturers would raise prices on goods they sell to Costco simply because they know Costco offers lower prices than other retailers. But that's just not how the market works.

Remember, it's not the producer that is saving money when middlemen are cut out of the distribution channel. The producers are selling their products wholesale either way.

Toys4RJill

Costco is not a good example. They are a distributor, just like Walmart is. Amazon is no different than any other distributor. It is just they sell their merch online.