[HN Gopher] NC files charges against Nissan dealership employees
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NC files charges against Nissan dealership employees
Author : ourmandave
Score : 28 points
Date : 2023-08-19 16:59 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jalopnik.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jalopnik.com)
| munchler wrote:
| The legal charges don't seem to match the quotes from customers,
| so it's a bit difficult to tell what's actually going on here.
| justin66 wrote:
| [flagged]
| ourmandave wrote:
| Maybe if some of these clowns saw prison time for fraud instead
| of just slapping the dealer with a fine and then it's back to
| business as usual.
|
| See also: To Big to Fail Banks.
| no_wizard wrote:
| It's just a shame that dealership grift has to get this bad until
| the government enforces regulations properly.
|
| I know on a smaller scaler that these things mentioned in the
| article happen all the time. In college I had classmates who
| worked at a dealership and they talked about all kinds of
| shenanigans they pulled.
|
| For instance, it wasn't all that uncommon for a relative
| percentage of the cars sold on the used lot to be from other
| states like Texas where they would buy low integrity vehicles and
| fix them to a minimally viable state before bringing them to
| California. This had something to do with how they could get a
| certificate from TX saying the car was okay for resale without
| conditions applied (IE they didn't have to report the previous /
| original condition) and that was enough leeway to get it past
| state regulators if you didn't do it _to often_
|
| new cars had a bit less of this nonsense going on I recall
| because the manufacturers are more concerned and keep a closer
| eye on this sort of thing, though I've heard that often cars
| would come in from the factory with paint scratches and stuff
| from travel and dealers would just patch over it as quickly and
| cheaply as possible to get it on the lot without car for
| longevity
| LapsangGuzzler wrote:
| > It's just a shame that dealership grift has to get this bad
| until the government enforces regulations properly.
|
| Enforcement costs money, and one of the easiest ways to attack
| the government budget is to argue that enforcement "isn't
| working" because it isn't yielding offenses. A perfect
| enforcement regime with zero offenders starts look like major
| government waste.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| "There's no business like car business I know" :-) In my first
| startup we hired a guy who had been IT at a large chain of
| dealerships in the Bay Area and he was chock full of stories
| like this.
| predictabl3 wrote:
| _> This isn't the first time that Kazran has run into trouble
| with the law, either. Back in 2010, the Federal Election
| Commission filed a complaint against him alleging that he
| illegally reimbursed employees of his Florida dealership for
| close to $70,000 in political donations._
|
| I'll give you two guesses, but you're only going to need one! To
| save you the work, it was for Vic Buchanan's campaign.
| marklubi wrote:
| Nissan of Shelby. Not to be confused with the Shelby brand of
| aftermarket vehicles.
| tennisflyi wrote:
| Overall, it's telling that _you_ have to explicitly walk through
| the contact.
| FredPret wrote:
| Tesla's best innovation: buy direct from manufacturer
| wredue wrote:
| Tesla isn't exactly well known for their treatment of
| customers.
|
| Actually, having a sole entity controlling all sales makes
| getting away with this criminal behaviour easier.
|
| There's less to compare to
|
| There's fewer people that need to be hush hush
|
| You have much easier control over who comes in to the circle.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > Tesla isn't exactly well known for their treatment of
| customers.
|
| That comes after you have bought the vehicle. At least in my
| case, in Norway, buying the car was painless and at no point
| did the sales rep attempt to persuade me to buy anything
| extra or do anything shady.
|
| However, their service organization stinks at some locations
| in both in Norway and in the UK but oddly for different
| reasons.
| bandergirl wrote:
| That makes no sense. Tesla sells at MSRP, what is there to
| compare?
|
| When you walk into a Tesla dealership you know what price to
| expect, but that does not happen at other dealerships.
|
| (I don't own a Tesla)
| jliptzin wrote:
| Can't possibly be worse than what dealerships are already
| doing.
|
| On the other hand, all it takes is one whistleblower employee
| at tesla to blow the cover on the entire operation if they're
| up to no good.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Every manufacturer would love this. Unfortunately dealerships
| are enshrined into law and Tesla had to go and get exceptions
| by law in each state it has dealerships
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| What is stopping the other manufacturers from applying for
| the same exceptions?
| JimtheCoder wrote:
| The pre existing dealers.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Do you mean existing dealers lobby against the exception?
| How would that survive a lawsuit? A state government
| giving one car manufacturer an exception and denying all
| the other ones?
| fbdab103 wrote:
| Car dealerships are a huge revenue generating entity for
| state governments. It is possible doing away with
| dealerships would net out to similar incomes, but short
| term would most likely lead to a net negative for the
| balance sheet.
| ghaff wrote:
| Dealership owners are probably one of the most successful
| "small" local business owners in most places.
|
| Also, a lot of what people dislike about dealerships is
| at least somewhat orthogonal to the fact that they're
| dealerships rather than something owned by the
| manufacturer. Any dealership can institute "no haggle"
| sales, you're going to have to take your car to a local
| authorized place for service/warranty work/etc. in any
| case, and a lot of people need financing.
|
| The last few years of shortages notwithstanding, to the
| degree you can walk into a dealership, point at a car and
| say I want that one (or I've come to pickup the car I've
| ordered), I've got my checkbook--a lot of the hassle
| disappears. Yes, there will be various annoying upsell
| attempts but that mostly involves just saying no a bunch
| of times.
|
| (Yes, there are some incentives that dealerships have
| that a manufacturer-owned entity might not. On the other
| hand, the inverse is probably true as well.)
| fieldcny wrote:
| Car dealers are some of the most powerful local political
| entities in the country, they donate a lot and they are
| everywhere
| D-Coder wrote:
| Apparently it's perfectly legal, if you're not naming
| specific companies.
| paxys wrote:
| The moment a company sells one car online they lose support
| from every one of their dealerships nationwide. It's
| possible for a manufacturer to embrace this model when they
| are starting from zero, not so when they have millions in
| existing sales per year to worry about.
| pakyr wrote:
| As an example[0]:
|
| > HB 637, "Motor Vehicle Dealers, Manufacturers, Importers,
| and Distributors," bans most direct-to-consumer vehicle
| sales if the automaker has ever sold any model through a
| franchise in Florida before (i.e. every major automaker).
| Manufacturers that didn't already have a dealership
| agreement in the state before the law are exempt, which
| includes Tesla and presumably other new EV brands such as
| Lucid, Rivian and Polestar.
|
| [0]https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/politics/2023/06/
| 16/e...
| [deleted]
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| What's the exact fraud happening here? It's implied in the
| article but not explicitly spelled out. Salvage vehicles are
| being rebuilt, and the title is doctored so as to not make it
| appear like it's a salvage title?
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Every dealership employee should be in jail. There's 0 practical
| reason that cars need to be bought through a middleman. Every car
| buying experience I've had over the last 2 decades has been an
| absolute grift, except when buying directly from Rivian. Toyota,
| Kia, Audi, Honda, Ford: they've _all_ tried to scam me.
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2023-08-19 23:02 UTC)