Driving for Dollars: Salesmen think buyers lie

Think car salesmen and dealers are dishonest? Funny -- that's exactly what they think about you!

The National Automobile Dealers Association recently held its annual convention in Las Vegas and -- not surprisingly -- the mood among the salespeople was not cheerful.

Dismal prospects for the Detroit-based manufacturers dominated the convention talk, although the folks at Toyota franchises were trying hard to not be boastful about their sales gains. There was, as you might expect, general worry about the direction of the economy, interest rates and gasoline prices.

There also was grumbling about the public perception that car dealers are inherently unscrupulous and -- something you probably would not expect -- that some salespeople say the No. 1 problem in their industry: dishonest customers.

"Buyers are liars," says one salesperson from a South Florida Ford dealership who attended the convention.

Huh?

From a salesperson's perspective, buyers lie about the condition of their trade-ins, their credit worthiness, what they're willing to pay, how much they can afford in monthly payments.

If you accept this assertion as true, there's a real chicken-vs.-egg question here:

Do car buyers attempt to deceive as a countermeasure to the efforts by salespeople to bamboozle the buyer?

Nonetheless, it's hard to argue that a consumer is lying to a dealer when he says he can afford only payments of $300 a month, when, if he skipped lunches and canceled the cable TV, he could actually pay $350. A lot of people could afford $1,000 a month payments if they planned to live in the car.

The adversarial nature of the car buying process isn't likely to change, and it's gotten more intense as consumers arm themselves with more cost information. So take the statement that "buyers are liars'' as further proof that in some cases, no matter how nice they seem, the salesperson is not your best bud.