Am I supposed to take a day off work to see a car?
How can you be closed on a Saturday, or only open until 12:00?
Just like all the shops close over lunch...
Customers, heh? They just get in the way...
My point was that car dealerships should only open on weekends. What's the point of being open on a Monday afternoon?
Not all close on Saturday afternoon.
Alpina Chur are open - and the salesman said he loved Saturday afternoons - not only because he didn't have to go shopping with his wife - but he reckoned he did most of his business then.
Guess when I bought my car
I pretty much never go shopping on Saturdays, too many people.
And what's the problem with taking time off from work?
Tom
total madness, business must be so good they don't have to open.
We have a restaurant in our village that closes for lunch, they also close for the whole of the summer for there summer holiday, god know how they keep going.
25chf for a bit of gnocchi & cheese sauce, per chance? :-)
We had friends over from the UK for Easter & because of the beautiful weather, we decided to go to a nice spot for lunch on Lake Zurich on Easter Sunday. 2 of the 3 places we liked the look of & rang to book with were closed.
My friend's comment, in a voice heavy with disbelief, said:
"On a weekend like this? Are they soft in the head or something?"
thought the same when we started looking for a car on Saturdays! but found some good dealers do open on Saturday and sometimes even Sunday.. Try ROC, that's where we spent most of our last Saturdays
A) YES
B) to see a car needs less than two hours, so what
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As owner of a car-dealership you for your personel on Monday only pay normal salaries, but on weekends, if you FIND personel, TWICE the salary
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Had you provided them some personel (cooks, waiters) they of course would have opened
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Threads like this make me think of a quote from Stanley Kubrick, who left the US to live out his life in Europe. He famously said that compared to the States, it was "a place where it's much more difficult to buy something than to sell something".
Sorry Wolli, but only a Swiss person would really fail to see how this not a customer-friendly approach...
So what? So everything...
2 hrs to see the car, take it for a drive + time off to get there - 0.5 days holiday. Let's extend that concept a little, what about taking time off to buy a pair trousers too and shutting all the high-street shops as well...?
You (imagine you are a seller) want me to part with e.g. 20,000-40,000 CHF over two hours?
You also want me to come at a time which is convenient to you?
I have to take holiday time to come and see you?
Here's an alternative: why don't you make it easy for me to spend my money with you. Welcome me at a time that suits me better (e.g. on a Saturday), be nice to me, don't put yourself first.
Fine. Pay them on commission and give them half the working week off, i.e. close most days, open in the evenings and weekends - when people have time off anyway...
I'm dyin' here.
Well Mr Castro helped us choose our current car and believe me we were dissapointed when we finally found something we liked and they told us yeah you have to make an appointment for next week....but we live in Basel...yeah well we can not help you know...And the worse thing is that the car was right there and it was not even difficult to drive it out of the car park (it was unblocked) silly salesmen!
message too short
Wolli: "Not inconvenient at all. Dying on a weekend? Keep a ice-filled coffin at home just in case for your loved ones to store you until Monday morning. Or in case of terminal illness, hire a hitman to take care of you during office hours. The workers must be protected!"
when we where looking for a new car we went along to a local car show, all the dealers where there setup in a sports hall and tents outside, subaru where there with all there cars and we spent a lot of time looking over the various models, could we get a salesman to give us the time of day?? not a chance, at an event intended for them to sell they just couldn't be bothered. needless to say we looked and bought elsewhere with a dealer who could be bothered.
just last month we went to another similar event, and again not 1 salesman would speak to us, all far to interested in eating and drinking with there mates, if I owned the dealership I'd be pretty pissed off that I was laying on weekend work, food, drink and (crap) entertainment yet my sales staff couldn't be arsed to do there jobs.
I once called a dealer before and made an appointment for a "not-too-cheap" used car. When I came, the car was littered with cigarette butts and smelled like a bar before the smoking ban.
"You advertised the car as a non-smoking one"
"It is. I think the mechanic borrowed it over the weekend"
Car dealers here are on top of the bad service list. While normal retail is poor have the many car dealers I have visited been some of the worst experiences.
But instead of naming and shaming can I also give some positive example: My dad had an issue with his Merc when he visited me last time. We drove on a Saturday to the dealership in Schlieren. While their repair shop was not supposed to be open ( the ZH Merc dealers seem to take turns on weekends who is "on duty" for emergencies) did the sales staff call up their guys who came and fixed the issue immediately. Apparently did just some connectors get lose and they guys did not even want to be paid to fix it. So that's a shop that spends at least a bit of their fat margins on good service.
On a positive note - taking a leaf from your book Trev - I stupidly put petrol in my diesel (filled a nearly bone dry tank ) and then drove it for about 10 km by the time it conked out at around 18:00 hrs... while waiting for pick-up, I went through the receipts and worked out what had happened.
Car was packed with all our holiday stuff, as the next morning (Friday) we were planning on driving to Rotterdam to take an overnight ferry to the UK.
Needless to say we missed the ferry, however, the garage (Land Rover, Emil Frey, Basel) fixed the problem by lunch time the next day (just as I was leaving the car hire place) so we were delayed by only 24 hrs and the holiday was able to continue. Luckily no engine damage, tank & pipes needed to be washed out, filter changed and good to go (with a full tank of diesel - clearly I was not to be trusted). All for 700 CHF (of which 150 was for the diesel).
As a bonus, the nice lady at Avis didn't charge me for the car hire either, even though I'd driven out of the car park before receiving the call...
Hah hah, I thought it was really strange that this was specifically mentioned by our relocation person (something along the lines that if you are going to buy a car do it now before you start your job or be prepared to take a day off to do it. Saturdays close at noon and its hard to get good service before noon.) At the time I thought it was a strange random thing to mention... I guess it was good advice grounded in previous experience.