[60041]

I may be unusual in that I have never considered buying anything other than Volvo for the last 25 years / 7 cars and have found a dealership we trust implicitly, so I don’t have a great deal of recent experience in visiting dealers.
However, a colleague at work fancied a new German car and had narrowed her choice to 2 models; a VW Passat estate or an Audi A4 estate, and she asked me to come along and help her get a good deal.
The first call was at the VW showroom and it was obvious that the salesman could not care a sh*t; on being told what she wanted, he vaquely gestured across the showroom and disappeared. My friend found a car she liked; colour, spec, etc and went to look for the salesman, who dumped a couple of leaflets on the table then muttered something about ringing him when she had made up her mind. He never offered a test drive, bothered to look at her trade in or offered any assistance or advice.
A £30,000 plus cash buyer walked out.

The next call was the Audi dealership. I was delighted to find that everybody: receptionist, salesmen and most of their customers were bright orange - there’s nothing like reinforcing stereotypes.
The salesman was ok, the coffee was reasonable and he did put in a bit of effort, but it was obvious that he thought that the cars he was selling were so desirable that they would sell themselves, so he did not make any real attempt to negotiate a decent price. He did not offer a test drive, but took the two of us for a run around the block in a similar car to the one that my friend fancied.
The attitude seemed to be; “it doesn’t matter what the car is like, it’s an Audi so you want it and all your friends will be impressed”.
She did eventually buy the A4, but the negotiations were short and white one sided; the salesman got the deal he wanted.