Halfway Nowhere

thedailywhat: Fresh Prince Intro of the Day: The Fresh Prince...

Mon, 21 May 2012 10:08:02 -0500

Fresh Prince Intro of the Day: The Fresh Prince himself recently visited the BBC’s The Graham Norton Show, where he rapped his legendary intro – but now without a major assist from the all-British audience.

[vvv]

Car Buying Sucks

Mon, 07 May 2012 23:02:00 -0500

Last week, my lovely fiancee experienced a bit of bad luck. The 2001 Honda Civic she’s been cruising in for the past 9+ years fell on some hard times. The decision she was faced with: Pay $1,700 to put the pep back in the step of her old friend or move along and put the old car out to pasture. Given the KBB estimate for a car in her car’s condition if it were to be repaired, we would have expected to get around $3,000, so we were blown away by Carmax’s offer to buy it from her for $2,500. Needless to say, we accepted that offer on the spot, and we started the accelerated process of looking for a car.

Given her fantastic experience with her Honda Civic, there was no question in her mind what her next car would be: A “Honda Certified” 2010+ Civic. Easy, right?

Yes … until it’s time to work with a car dealer.

As we tried to navigate through the ridicularity of buying a new car, one experience was particularly representative of our overall experience, and I couldn’t help but share it:

I purchased a 2010 Honda Accord from a certain Houston-area dealer that you’ll likely be able to pinpoint with the context clues in my story and some simple Google-fu. My goal in writing this post is not to call out this specific dealer directly but to use them as an example of why people absolutely loathe the process of buying a car. From my experience, every dealership has its own way of eking out profit where they can, and this example is just one I found particularly noteworthy.

Let’s call the dealership, “XYZ Honda.” XYZ Honda is in the Houston area along with a half dozen other Honda dealerships. XYZ Honda probably saw the success of the Carmax “No Haggle” pricing and thought, “We can do better than that!” XYZ Honda opted to go with a “Best Offer Over” pricing structure.

If you’re not familiar with the “Best Offer Over” pricing structure, you’re not alone … The salesperson who met us at our car when we visited the lot had a tough time either understanding it or explaining it. In either case, it wasn’t communicated well to us. As I’ve come to understand it after speaking with XYZ Honda’s Pre-Owned Sales Director, the “Best Offer Above” price factors in what the dealer paid for the car on trade-in along with the costs incurred in preparing the vehicle for sale, including the inspection to have the car “Certified.”

Let’s look at a “theoretical” example to break this down: You’re looking at a Certified 2010 Honda Civic EX with about 35,000 miles on it. The “Best Offer Over” price is shown to be $17,808. For simplicity’s sake, let’s use Kelley Blue Book to value the car when it came to the dealer … If it were in “Excellent” condition (the top 3% of cars) the owner would theoretically get $15,060 in value from the deal. I’m not sure if any dealer has ever paid the KBB list price of an “Excellent” trade-in in the history of car sales, but for the sake of argument, let’s say they do.

If a car is in “Excellent” condition, it probably doesn’t need much work to get into salable condition, right? If there are mechanical or visible imperfections, the car wouldn’t be in “Excellent” condition. To prepare that “Excellent” vehicle for sale as a Certified Pre-Owned automobile, it goes through a detailed check to verify that it’s in like-new condition, and because the dealer paid for an “Excellent”-rated car (and those ratings are not handed out like candy), nothing needed to be done to fix it. If the car was in “Very Good” or “Good” condition, they might spend the difference in trade-in value to essentially bring what they’re “in” the car to about the same level. The certification check requires work, and there’s a warranty that comes with certification, so those costs are going to be factored into the minimum price the dealer will take for the car.

In our “theoretical” example, after everything is said and done, if you walked into the dealership with a check for $17,808 and handled TT&L yourself, you’d have a car, right?

Well, not exactly.

The $2,748 difference between the “Excellent” trade-in value and the $17,808 “Best Offer Over” price apparently does not include any dealer profit.

Why would someone say they’d will accept your “Best Offer Over” a price that doesn’t provide any profit? The cost of initiating the warranty and running the fine-toothed comb through the car was apparently exactly $2,748, and they didn’t include any profit margin … I understand the desire to be transparent in how much the dealer is making, but I don’t understand how they aren’t already making a profit at the “Best Offer Over” price.

I think if you’re going to have a “Best Offer Over” price, you should probably be willing to accept that price and still make money on it. If that means the prices of all of your pre-owned vehicles on the lot have to increase by $x or y%, so be it … If you choose not to accept an offer at the base price you list, you’re ruining your customer’s experience with what seems like a gimmicky structure that provides transparency only to a certain point. After that point, “Do not pay any attention to the man behind the curtain.”

As you probably surmised, the example above is not exactly “theoretical.” To XYZ Honda’s credit, the salespeople we’ve talked to have all tried to explain the pricing similarly. The problem they all seem to run into is that the pricing structure doesn’t make sense to a buyer.

Maybe we should just buy a horse.

I want for someone who’s extremely active in social media to win the Mega Millions jackpot...

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 16:23:22 -0500

I want for someone who’s extremely active in social media to win the Mega Millions jackpot tonight … It would be crazy to see the posts go from, “Hey guys, wish me luck,” to “Here’s a picture of my ticket for the big drawing tonight,” to “Uh oh, I’ve got the first few num… Holy … Oh my … @#*$@*T@$@)@(#RJOF#(@ … I WON!”

After he or she receives the unbelievably large sum of money, the winner would then need to document how he or she spends it. It would be wild to see what kind of people came out of the woodwork for money, whether the winner would somehow blow it all in a few years, and what toys would be purchased with the hundreds of millions of dollars in prize money.

I haven’t officially met this guy, but I remember seeing...

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 18:52:58 -0600

I haven’t officially met this guy, but I remember seeing him play this song, and I was blown away. From what I understand, he has cancer and just went into a coma as a result of treatments. I don’t normally ask people to share stuff, but the more people thinking about him, the better, so please share away.

"We at the corner of “Give It To ‘Em” and “They Don’t Want It"

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 08:46:52 -0600

“We at the corner of “Give It To ‘Em” and “They Don’t Want It””

- Andre 3000, “Play the Guitar”

Fuller's Vintage Guitars

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:53:18 -0600

Fuller's Vintage Guitars:

musicologyee:

Here’s an awesome brick & mortar store in Houston. Thanks Kevin for turning me on to them. They will ship to you and Jeremy is a great guy!

Photo

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:28:51 -0600

A PSA for all the turkeys out there.

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 11:40:56 -0600

A PSA for all the turkeys out there.

Two Tumblr shirts at the top of the Haleakala volcano on Maui at...

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 16:01:48 -0500

Two Tumblr shirts at the top of the Haleakala volcano on Maui at sunrise.

Shameless attempt to get reblogs from Tumblr staff? Yes. Also, the wind was freezing cold, so much pain was endured to get this shot.

Slow Clap

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 14:44:00 -0500

I’m asking AT&T to do something about the awful cell coverage at my house (in the middle of a “strong signal area”) and the response I get is, “Please call someone else, this technical support channel does not provide technical support.” Naturally that’s not the best support experience, so I clicked on the “Help AT&T improve our service to you!” survey at the bottom of the page. That led me to:

Maintenance In Progress

AT&T is continually working to improve our internet site for our customers. As part of this ongoing effort, we are currently doing maintenance. We apologize for this inconvenience and ask that you please try back again later.

Slow clap, AT&T. You’ve earned it.

If Mark Antony had Google+ …

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 17:05:00 -0500

If Mark Antony had Google+ …

mary808: good LORD. This is sick.

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 15:51:43 -0500

mary808:

good LORD.

This is sick.

topherchris: Listen to her. That’s dorky. I can’t...

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 13:57:09 -0500

topherchris:

Listen to her. That’s dorky.

I can’t argue that, but what I can do is hold my head up high as I don the title of “Observant Dork.”

Anybody want to go to Europe just to see this guy perform?

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 10:08:42 -0500

Anybody want to go to Europe just to see this guy perform?

yttm: The Video Time Machine iPhone app is on the rise in the...

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 13:10:29 -0500

yttm:

The Video Time Machine iPhone app is on the rise in the app store! As we type this we’re now a featured app, #6 in Entertainment, and #70 overall in all apps! First and foremost we would like to extend a mighty thank you, Second we need your help to push us into the top 5!

Everyone likes wasting time on their iPhones, and this is a great tool in that pursuit.

This is going to be a lot of fun.

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 09:11:38 -0500

This is going to be a lot of fun.

"It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and make us unique...."

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 14:03:44 -0500

“It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and make us unique. It’s not easy, but if you accept your misfortune and handle it right, your perceived failure can become a catalyst for profound reinvention.”

- Conan O’Brien

26.2 brutally sunny and surprisingly hilly miles after starting...

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 17:06:17 -0500

26.2 brutally sunny and surprisingly hilly miles after starting a little run through the streets of San Diego.

staff: Whoa! Yesterday we jumped past 250M pageviews a...

Tue, 17 May 2011 13:59:18 -0500

staff:

Whoa! Yesterday we jumped past 250M pageviews a day.

Orange is US traffic.

Excellent!

The NCAA Championship was not all smiles.

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 11:52:00 -0500

The NCAA Championship was not all smiles.