Final bid came and passed. Bid entered $9892, Quota Premium $14601 Status:UNSUCCESSFUL.
I was prepared for this result and had already made a few test drives of other makes over the past few weekends. However, I was shocked to learn that some others who had chosen to topup $2500 this final round had also failed to get their COE because the dealer put in a bid of $14093 and didn’t bother to revise it. This doesn’t make any sense, is $508 more important than company image?
A colleague offered a possible explanation for this situation; The dealer might be having difficulty in procuring enough cars to meet current backlog of orders, hence they chose to giveup those older orders with lesser margins and reserve the stock for new orders that were made at the revised prices.
Sounds plausible, but nevertheless, its does not speak well of their attitude in fulfilling orders nor keeping customers. This matter has only strengthened my resolve to boycott dealers who adopt such practices; afterall, who knows when a similar event might happen in future if you ever make a booking with them. No matter how sweet the deal, you can be severely inconvenienced and still not get your car EVEN if you agree to their top-up demands. You would then suffer the opportunity costs of being unable to get a car from another dealer before the prices increase.
If a dealer is so obsessed with profit margins and doesn’t value their customers, then I feel that consumers should only reciprocate likewise and totally avoid such dealers in future.
Hence, its goodbye to Axela, hello Avante.
September 18, 2007 at 4:21 am
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