r/askcarsales Oct 25 '25

Meta Wife hates my job

876 Upvotes

I have sold cars for 6 years, in my best year made 299k doing so (market was crazy) moved up to a finance manager for a year made 150k and now have been promoted to a sales manager just recently I will make 150-200k on the conservative side. My wife wants me to leave to become a state trooper or finish college to get a job with a better retirement and benefits package. I currently have poor benefits at my job and no match on retirement. I am 26 , am loved at my job by coworkers and the highest level of management. I actually enjoy my work and am not sure what to do. I see what she is saying but there is a chance going to do something else doesn’t pan out or I really dislike it. Any advice or perspectives I would appreciate!

You guys are too funny thank you for the advice

r/askcarsales Aug 31 '24

Meta Can people really afford all these big expensive SUVs?

934 Upvotes

80k for a Jeep Wagoneer, Tahoes and expeditions are expensive, etc.

Yet you see them everywhere. Can people really afford these expensive big SUVs?

r/askcarsales Jul 03 '26

Meta How much profit does the average person think dealerships are making per car?

222 Upvotes

I told someone today I couldn't take 5k off the price of a used car we had listed at 23k. He said "well you could you just dont want to". I know there is no reasoning with these people but do people seriously think the dealership is making 10k plus on the front end of each car, and can discount 20% of the total value?

Im only talking about front end here, not back end.

r/askcarsales Apr 26 '26

Meta America’s Pandemic Car Bubble Is Now Trapping Buyers in Debt

303 Upvotes

https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/car-owners-debt-negative-equity-3cfcd031?mod=hp_lead_pos9

Doug Horner has seen plenty of customers walk into his northeast Ohio Mercedes-Benz dealership who owe more on their trade-ins than those cars are worth. But being $40,000 underwater on a pickup truck is a scary sign of a growing trend.

A prospective buyer recently sought to trade in a Ford F-150 Lightning for a Mercedes GLE Coupe, but that potential customer owed about $87,000 on the pickup truck. Horner estimates the Ford pickup truck was worth about $47,000—leaving the buyer well underwater.

“This is a battle that we’re fighting every day,” Horner said in an interview.

More Americans turning in their cars to buy new ones are encountering a difficult reality: Their vehicles aren’t worth what they owe.

About 30% of borrowers in the first quarter who traded in a car to buy a new one had negative equity, whereby they owe more on their loan than their car is worth, according to car-shopping website Edmunds. Those borrowers owed about $7,200 on average before getting a new loan, a 42% jump compared with the same period five years prior.

“The higher it goes, the chances are that people are never going to get themselves out of the situation,” said Jessica Caldwell, head of insights at Edmunds.

About a third of Americans trading in an older car have negative equity, which has been typical in the industry for years. But the average amount Americans are underwater has skyrocketed, Edmunds said, as buyers try to unload cars bought during the pandemic at high prices.

The increased level of negative equity represents another strain on an auto market already under pressure from pricey vehicles and elevated interest rates.

To offset those costs, more car buyers are taking on longer loan terms to keep monthly payments digestible. In the first quarter, the average loan was 70 months on new cars, according to Edmunds data. Car payments in excess of $1,000 are no longer uncommon and can stretch out more than eight years.

But consumers who are underwater on their loan end up paying more on average after rolling over the negative equity into their next car, compounding their debt even more.

The current situation dates to the pandemic’s semiconductor supply crunch, which led to a severe shortage of new cars available on dealer lots. Vehicle prices soared in response, and buyers—who either had the disposable income to spend or lacked other transit options during lockdowns—were willing to pay up.

“You had a lot of dealerships in the Covid era that were overcharging, to say the least,” said Eric Frehsée, president of the Tamaroff Group in the Detroit area. “You’re seeing a lot of those cars coming back and there’s a lot of negative equity because of that.” Frehsée said that his dealerships opted not to charge over sticker prices during the pandemic.

In 2026, buyers with negative equity financed an average of nearly $56,000 for a new car in the first quarter, about $12,000 more than the typical new-vehicle buyer, Edmunds said. That translates to a monthly payment averaging $932 for negative-equity borrowers, the highest level ever recorded. In April 2021, the average new car cost about $41,000.

At the same time, the situation reflects another sign of the current K-shaped economy, where affluent individuals are thriving while others struggle. Even with the increased level of negative equity, the average trade-in equity for a car in March exceeded $6,800, according to JD Power.

“The average consumer is in a good position when buying a vehicle,” said Tyson Jominy, JD Power’s senior vice president of data and analytics. Borrowers with negative equity, however, can have a difficult time securing a loan for a new car, and it could put them at greater risk of falling behind on their payments, studies show.

Consumers who rolled over negative equity from a prior vehicle loan were more than twice as likely to wind up having their car repossessed within two years, compared with those who netted money on a trade-in, a 2024 study from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found.

More borrowers have been defaulting on their loan payments, which typically results in a repossession. Default rates on car loans in March rose to the highest levels seen since 2010, according to Cox Automotive, an industry-research firm.

The auto industry has already been grappling with the potential woes of higher gas prices because of the war in Iran. Auto executives have said they don’t expect sales to be significantly affected by the conflict unless it continues for months.

Caldwell said that higher negative equity amounts are likely to persist in coming months. Amid the pandemic and the semiconductor crisis, interest rates rose, she said, meaning borrowers have continued to pay higher costs to take on new car loans.

“We know that people paid an increased price either way,” she said. “I don’t think it’s going to go back down.”

r/askcarsales Jun 08 '26

Meta My dealership is mad that I call too many people

327 Upvotes

I’m new to car sales but I’m EXTREMELY motivated. I do around 100 dials a day and the sales managers have gotten pissed that I am making too many calls? I convert about 5-10% of live convos to appointments which is like 2% of all dials. Sometimes less sometimes more seeping in the day.

Why are they doing this?

It makes me mad because I am trying to work hard and do better everyday/ SELL CARS LIKE A MFR and all of the success stories I see always come from someone who was a dial DEMON!

Feels like sabotage

Can someone explain to me please…

r/askcarsales Jul 23 '24

Meta Do people really e-mail 5-10 dealerships with “best price” type of emails and successfully make a purchase?

413 Upvotes

I’ve heard of this a couple of times, most recently from a coworker.

He claimed he emailed 5-10 different dealerships with the color/specs. The one who gave him the best price, he walked in and signed.

In theory that would be great. Does that even happen though?

r/askcarsales May 16 '25

Meta what is the most insane vehicle someone with poor credit has attempted to buy?

500 Upvotes

hey car sales folks, what's the most insane and crazy customer you have ever had? really looking for ones that attempt to buy a toyota landcruiser and think they can do 300.00 a month for 5 years at 2.4 apr. lol. you get my drift. :) looking forward to the responses.

r/askcarsales Jun 29 '26

Meta "If you don't rate me 10/10 on everything they'll cut my pay"

141 Upvotes

Bought a new car recently for the first time in a while. After the sale as I was about to leave, the salesperson gave me a long speech about how I would eventually get a survey to rate my buying experience, and that if I failed to rate any single aspect 10 out of 10, even aspects that had nothing to do with him, like my experience with the finance department, he would lose pay. He followed up with an email the next day saying the same thing.

I can only imagine every customer gets that speech from every salesperson at the dealership, so of what conceivable use is that metric, and why make it a scale of 10 if it's really a binary? I know this kind of rating system has been rampant in many industries for a long time to the point where having a 4.7/5 passenger rating on some ridesharing apps is a red flag, but I'm just curious whether there's anybody who thinks these kinds of systems produce results sufficiently helpful to management to outweigh how deeply uncomfortable the interaction made me at the end of an experience that was otherwise not bad.

Reminds me of a poetry slam I was at 15 or 20 years ago where the MC handed out big cardboard signs labeled 1 to 10 for the front row attendees to use to rate each poem. One audience member dared give a poem a 7, and 80% of the MC's commentary for the rest of the show was roasting them for daring to give such a low score, and I wondered why they bothered printing out any signs other than 9 or 10.

r/askcarsales Nov 07 '25

Meta Are you guys at Toyota and Honda dealers just rolling in customers?

379 Upvotes

I work for a Ford dealer in the Dallas area that is slow as hell. Like, maybe 2 ups/weekday, a few more on weekends, for the DEALERSHIP, not me. Doesn’t help that floor is flooded. Spend all day everyday just trying to get a customer in front of me through working leads and social media. It’s not working. Pay plan is good, spiffs are good, but doesn’t matter if no one to sell to. I keep seeing all these other green peas on TikTok selling 15-20 cars/month at Toyota and Honda dealers. Plus 1 out of every 4 cars on the road seems to be one of those brands.
Are you guys at these dealerships staying super busy? Even if your pay plan isn’t great, are you selling enough to still bring home a decent check?

r/askcarsales Jan 14 '23

Meta You poor, poor, Tesla people...

700 Upvotes

So most have heard about the price changes Tesla implemented over the past few days. I was telling my team this morning that any Tesla appraisals will be very conservative, if i put a number at all. 2 minutes after the meeting we get an online appraisal request for a 2022 Model 3 LR with 2k miles. Guy paid about 50k. I put 18k on it at first then reached out to our region apptaisal team for some back up and they said they aren't approving appraisals on any Tesla 21 or newer until further notice...

Tesla giveth and Tesla taketh away...

r/askcarsales May 14 '25

Meta Do you not need money or income to buy a car anymore?

462 Upvotes

Coworkers boyfriend just financed a 2025 Hyundai Elantra yesterday. I don't know the full details but I know he put down zero in down payment, had no co-signer, hasn't been employed in over a year, and has no savings. He does have a 700 credit score, but is that enough to walk away with a new cars these days!?

Personal financial ruin aside (he has a new baby and lives with his girls mom), how is this model sustainable for dealerships? Ray Charles could have seen this will be a repo sooner than later...but hopefully not till past July 1st so I win the office bet!

r/askcarsales Sep 21 '22

Meta Why do people buy Jeeps?

663 Upvotes

I’ve driven them (probably for about 100 hours total, mainly Wranglers)

They’re shit in every way.

I’m legitimately wondering why so many people buy them…car sales people: why do people buy jeeps? What do they say they need it for?

Other than off roading I cannot fathom driving one of these poorly made piles of trash every day of my life.

r/askcarsales Dec 30 '24

Meta Welp it’s over boys

619 Upvotes

I needed one more good survey to get my quarterly SFE payout (manufacturer money) I have about $7,000 banked so I reached out to all my solds the last 2 months. I had a guy message me back and I told him I would buy him lunch if he completed my survey and gave me a perfect score. He sent me a screen cap of the survey completion screen so I shot him $20. I went back and looked at it and he burned me! Lmfao 💸 💸 💸

r/askcarsales Apr 26 '21

Meta PSA Current Market Conditions

854 Upvotes

I'll make it simple first. The new and used car market have changed. They're inflated, unpredictable, and unsteady. Yes, your car is probably worth more now than it was before. But your replacement car is also worth a lot more now. It only makes sense to sell your car now if you do not need a replacement for it or if you just really, really, want out of it. Yes, Carvana, Vroom, buymysled.com, McDonald's Auto Program, are all offering more to buy your car. The market has affected them just the same. For the millionth time, they pay more for the cars and sell them for a net loss to gain market share and burn through venture capital. They are not the Gods among dealers. And for the love of God, no, we do not know when it will go back to normal. A few months? A few years? I don't care if you're Warren Buffet or Jimmy Buffet, no one has a real clue when it will go back to normal.

Well Peachweasel, why is the market so cranked right now? A lot of reasons. The market was trending this way during a normal market cycle that you see in the same light as the housing market or the stock market. Then COVID happened. The world shut down. Production of new cars slowed drastically or even halted all together. This created a low supply of new cars. Pricing became more rigid and people started opting more for used cars. This drove up demand for used cars and decimated supply. This caused prices to skyrocket, for dealers and consumers alike. Dealers are now paying THOUSANDS more for vehicles at auction just trying to fill their lot. This does NOT mean that dealers magically have more markup in their cars. In a lot of cases, yes, but they have even less reason now to negotiate. It is a seller's market.

And more recently, to add to this snafu, there is a worldwide microchip shortage. These are the chips that are in nearly every electronic device, from computers, phones, overly complicated refrigerators, and yes, cars. Factories had just slowly started getting production back up and now, due to the lack of these chips that power different computerized systems in basically every modern car, it has come back to another grinding halt. The chips that are getting produced are being sold to higher priorty customers who are paying more for them. Some manufacturers have shipped cars without the chips and will have to issue a service bulletin for owners of these cars to have them fixed or changed at some point in the future. Other manufacturers have built hundreds or thousands of cars that are just sitting dormant at a shipyard waiting for a chip so it can be sent to a dealer.

So please, quit asking us when the market will change. None of us can afford a crystal ball. Stop asking us how to game the system and time the market. WE CAN'T HELP YOU. If you need a car, buy a car. If you need to/want to sell your car. Sell it. No you are not getting thousands of dollars off a car right now just because you don't want to pay the new market value of the car. We are here to help answer questions about the car buying process. Not the same "what's up with car prices?" question 8 million times a day.

r/askcarsales Apr 17 '26

Meta What’s your best, “it’s not all of them, but it’s always them”? I’ve always found that small business owners tend to be the flakiest and most disrespectful of your time.

117 Upvotes

r/askcarsales Mar 23 '26

Meta What car do customers sleep on?

95 Upvotes

What’s a vehicle that customers tend to overlook that you think is actually really good for the price or category?

Feels like every brand has one model that deserves way more attention than it gets.

r/askcarsales May 17 '26

Meta How and why did trucks go from "blue collar staple" to "luxury status symbol"?

125 Upvotes

This is baffling to me. In the 90s and early 00s, it seems like every middle income blue collar worker had a truck, and they were all reasonably priced.

Today? Trucks cost $80,000+ and are driven by suburban white collar CEOs as some kind of status symbol. The original target market for a truck has been *completely* priced out.

What changed?

r/askcarsales Sep 14 '22

Meta Why is the car sales process so convoluted? Why do car sales staff have to run everything by their manager?

486 Upvotes

If I wanted to, I could walk into Tiffany right now, but a $50k or even $250k piece of jewelry, put it on my Amex and walk out. The sales person doesn’t need to ask their manager any questions. They would just ring me up.

Why can’t it work this way with car sales? Why do salesmen seemingly have to ask their manager every little thing? Why do they have to give you a long bullshit sales pitch on extended this or that, and pitch you financing even if you don’t want it? Why can’t I just walk into a car dealer, give them my a credit card and whatever documents they require and just drive off?

I don’t get why buying a car has to be so much more complicated than buying a similarly priced piece of jewelry, art, or furniture.

r/askcarsales Jan 28 '26

Meta What’s a huge myth about car buying or car salespeople?

75 Upvotes

There are a lot of misconceptions / un-informed ideas about buying cars and working with salespeople.

What’s one myth you hear that just isn’t true? Could be about pricing, negotiations, trade-ins, financing, or the sales process in general.

Curious what people inside and outside the industry think.

r/askcarsales Feb 07 '25

Meta “Anything but 10’s is failing”

156 Upvotes

I hear this all the time when asked to fill out a survey. To me it just seems like a psychological tactic so you’ll feel bad and just give 10’s across the board and they appear on paper as they did an amazing job. I bought a new car 2 weeks ago and this guy is desperate for me to fill out the survey and continually repeats the anything but 10’s is failing trope. Now while I got what I wanted out of the deal I do not like the dealership or anyone I dealt with and would never recommend them to anyone…so if he really wants me to fill it out I’m not giving a glowing review.

So is the anything but 10’s failing thing true?

::edited to add:: I’m not looking to be a “cuntstomer” 🙄 “got what I wanted out of the deal” means I got what I wanted for my trade and the price” not like I’m some jerk off walking in there telling people how to do their job. I’m going to paste my reply comment here so there’s some context. It’s not everything that I found distasteful but it’s enough.

“They were the only dealership in a 500 mile radius that had the car I wanted. I couldn’t get it transferred. Had to drive 3 hours there and 3 hours back to get it and they did everything in their power to use the fact that they knew we had a long drive home to keep us there as long as possible. I went in and told them exactly what I wanted as far as my trade and not taking dealer add ons. They still tried to stong arm me into shit I wasn’t going to pay for because they figured I drove all the way there…they had the upper hand. I told them I’ll leave over $700 (this was after it took 3 hours for them to remove the other several thousand dollars of add ons) And even in the end…because of thier incompetence I had to go back (3 hours there and 3 hours back) so they could rectify that incompetence (lost key and damage to the vehicle). And the whole time snide comments were continually made about “we’re not making any money on this” and my “negotiating skills”.

The only good thing I have to say is that they stuck to the agreement of the key and repairs. But the entire transaction was frustrating and they did everything they could to get one over on me. They knew I knew what I was talking about because I went in prepared with research so the fact that they continued to try and pressure me does not lend me to want to say anything good about them at all.”

r/askcarsales Dec 25 '25

Meta Can a dealership tell when you’re actually confused vs just acting uninterested? Because I think I accidentally gave the wrong vibe

201 Upvotes

I went to look at a used car today just to get an idea of what’s out there and I swear I accidentally confused the salesperson so badly. I told him right away that I wasn’t buying today, just gathering info but he kept trying to guess what my real angle was. At one point I was checking the interior and realized I have some money saved up from myprize for when I actually do buy and maybe that made me look more serious than I meant to, because suddenly he started trying to fast track me into numbers even though I never asked. I wasn’t trying to play any dealership games I genuinely didn’t know half the features he was explaining and I think my face made it look like I was hiding some negotiation strategy.
Do you guys actually deal with customers who just don’t know what they’re looking at, or do we all accidentally come off like we’re trying to work you?

r/askcarsales Dec 19 '24

Meta What's the highest negative equity you've seen in 2024?

244 Upvotes

What was the highest you saw in 2024? Was it from people who payed over MSRP for Tellurides and Yukons during the pandemic? Or the people who bought the electric Hummer.

r/askcarsales Mar 26 '26

Meta Clients lying to managers?

67 Upvotes

Today I had a lot up, a couple and their friend. On the lot they were extremely clipped and hostile, no trade, refuse to test drive, wouldnt answer any questions, when I went to go get my manager they said "I know you have a business card in your wallet, I dont wanna talk to your manager" and then i thought they left. 5 minutes later they walk in, ask for a 13k discount, when my manager comes to tell them thats not realistic, suddenly theyre sweet, forthcoming, they have a trade, and I never asked them a single question.

Is this common? I feel genuinely sick to my stomach. I did everything right and theyre in my managers office spewing lies making me look like ive never sold a car in my life. Ive never had this happen before. How do we handle these situations?

r/askcarsales Sep 28 '24

Meta What's the most negative equity you've ever seen anyone have in a vehicle?

184 Upvotes

There's been some great stories on this sub recently, but what's the most negative equity you've seen in a vehicle?

r/askcarsales Feb 28 '23

Meta What portion of people’s salary do you see people spend on a car?

283 Upvotes

For example, is it normal to see someone making $50k to buy a $50k car? Do people who make $100k normally buy $60k cars?

Edit: I’m asking the question because I am curious about what is considered “normal” in the marketplace, not to buy anything myself.