No Fixed Abode: The Dealership's Greatest Hits

Last week, I told you the tale of my friend Rodney’s grandmother who got taken to the cleaners recently by a Cleveland-area Buick dealer. That story’s not quite finished — apparently there have been a few conversations and trips back and forth to dealer, and at one point the “lost paperwork” excuse came into play — so I’ll update all of you once everything shudders to a final halt.

As can be expected from the always-contrarian B&B, not all of you were on the side of the elderly lady in the case. One particularly interesting comment went something like this: “It’s ironic that Jack and Rodney are complaining about the dealer making money off Grandma while at the same time smirking to themselves knowing how often they did that back in the day.”

Well, I cannot say that I ever charged anyone over sticker price for any new car, ever. Not even during the week that the first Ford Expeditions started arriving at dealerships and customers were doing everything but using lethal force to get their hands on one.

That doesn’t mean that I didn’t see some people get “grossed” in the most hardcore method imaginable. So, without further ado, here are a few tales of outrageous dealer-profit fortune, including one in which your humble author played the villain.

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  • Jeanbaptiste At home with Level 2. I've used the supercharger network a few times on a single roadtrip without issue. Planned charging around food and if anything it usually charges before we're done eating. I typically do not even look for charging when out and about. With a 90% charge every night (~250 miles), there's never a need to seek out a charger during normal driving.
  • Redapple2 I think it s a nice looking car.
  • Kwik_Shift I'm glad that my wife's 2021 has the proven and reliable 2.5L 4 cyl. Great mpg, good power and no issues at 45,000 miles. Personally, the new 1.5 3 cyl turbo with VC is not yet proven. With that complexity, it may be costly to repair.
  • Redapple2 Good riddance to bad rubbish. Flawed from day 1.
  • Art Vandelay Mostly at home. Mine only does level 2 charging but very rarely do I actually use the 240v outlet…typically only if I'm home for a bit and heading back out. The office I go to a couple of times a week has 4 chargers…2 normal level 2 and 2 Tesla Destination chargers. After using them both I typically use the Tesla ones with an adapter cable. The standard chargers are in pretty bad shape with frayed cables (1 is currently broken). Other than that there is one at a library on the way home I can hit if I need a splash and go to get to the house which I have a couple of times. 20 minutes is enough there. I did solar on the house but I haven’t installed a battery yet so I don’t think much of that goes to the car since the majority of its home charging is at night (it does run the F150’s battery tender so I guess it technically charges a vehicle battery).it is something I put way less thought into than I thought I would prior to the purchase. You just need to match the vehicle to your use case. As there is much talk of golf carts on here, my club car charges 100 percent at home when it isn’t hauling logs about the yard.