Buickman: New GM's Incentives Are Nuts. Again. Still. Only More So.
Buickman writes:
Today GM marketing announced another $1,000 rebate on old invoice units. To check eligibility the dealer enters the VIN into a website. A dealer who has properly managed his inventory will not have any units in stock that qualify, and is thereby less competitive and penalized. Dealer trades become difficult at best and the customer is confused when told that the car they want is more than the identical car sitting next to it that they don’t want.
This same old confusing crap from the incompetent Mark LaNeve and his marketing minions is simply more of the confusing, distressed, brand damaging merchandising that drove us into bankruptcy court. As [GM CEO] Fritz [Henderson] makes his moves to trim and improve the executive ranks, he should immediately focus on the bogus and completely clean house at VSSM [Vehicle Sales, Service and Marketing].
More by Robert Farago
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"no_slushbox" No, I know I am smart by blaming CRA. It took 30 years because the efficacy of the law kept being enhanced during various congressional terms, by both Republicans and Democrats. The CRA is responsible for lowering the general standards. The reason being is that the enhancements that occured over the years to make home ownership easier. The lending institution gradings, etc. The banks couldn't readily drop the bar for some borrowers and hold it higher for others, so the same lax standards began to be applied to everyone. How could you possibly ignore the fact that the big credit market problem was the trading of derivatives based on bad loans? Are you just so intellectually influenced by the far left you can't grasp this concept? Fed chairman after Fed chairman allowed the derivate trading to continue because it "spread the risk around". The thinking that as long as the economy was "booming" the risk could be deferred through the derivatives trading market, so this false sense of "money cow" derivatives was allowed to persist (one point where government regulation would have actually been OK). The CRA problem is dead on exactly responsible for your "white suburban affluent neighbor's" failure. CRA caused a general weakening of borrowing standards. After all, banks couldn't "lower the bar" for one group of people, and NOT lower the bar for the others ---- or do you insist these folks should have been discriminated against? Typical liberal left reasoning failure, that infected the right as well, you can single out parts of your society for special treatment, and expect the rules not to slide in that direction: especially when the banks had a "feeling" the big government coffers would step in to save them from oblivion when the house of cards came crashing down (like they did, or did you not remember TARP in your post, either?). Can you really expect the banks to operate idealistically like you claim? I guess your are really as gullible as you seem about CRA and banking in general. I have no racist world view: you do. You expect borrowing to be enhanced if you are a minority, but to not be enhanced if you are not. Whatever. You are the racist idiot you are implying me to be. You are so self righteous and WRONG, you stink of it. Yes, GM and Chrysler were failing before the credit crunch, because of more leftist ideology: UAW. What qualifies as leftist thinking other than the literal worker's paradise UAW achieved? Ever read about this cold war superpower called the soviet union? Probably not, you've been in a little paradise world of your leftist professor's design for evidently pretty much all of your life. I don't like to flame, but in your case I have made a exception. I am sure the moderators here can note that you called me a idiot and racist and a Rush Limbnaugh lemming in your post. You are, instead of me, the racist idiot leftwing wikipedia lemming. Wikipedia has a left bias that is palpable, and you expect me, a free market idealist to even remotely think that a politically charged subject such as CRA and credit crisis will have even a half way reasonable criticism in a left wing free encyclopedia? What do you think I was born stupid???? Whatever.
check out this email from GM, even their own software is incorrect. if you called your customer about the additional incentive, by the time they arrived, it was altered and they couldn't do what you said you could. GM is one fucked up company. "Please be advised that the new Employee Bonus Cash was NOT intended to be compatible with the outboarded APR's. We are now in the process of getting this corrected to make it not compatible with outboarded APR. Please advise that currently VIN Lookup shows that the two are compatible, however they are in fact not. A formal communication is forthcoming, but wanted to pass this along as I've already had a few inquiries."
just told that old invoice is not determined by invoice date. it's 15% of your oldest eligible units. could be you have 2 old Impalas and the newer one qualifies but the older one doesn't. SOMEBODY FIND LANEVE AND THROW HIS ASS OUT THE REN CEN WINDOW ASAP!!! as in today please!!!
i got a new plymouth sapporo for nearly free, sort of. it was back during chrysler's early 80s going out of business sale, so after all the cashbacks, etc. the thing was $7k. Then, I basically totalled my previous car, but since it was just body damage and the running gear was fine and i liked it and wanted to fix it, rather than totalling it and me going through the salvage process, they just gave me $3k and let me keep the car. before i could get around to fixing it, i totalled it again, destroying the engine this time; and amazingly, the insurance company paid me another $3k, and kept the hulk this time. so, for a net outlay of $1k cash, i had me a brand new car. first new car i ever owned, and looks like probably the only one.