Auto Estrogen

There’s value in education. When you know better, you do better they say and that goes for car buying as well. So I was just sitting here thinking how challenging things were for me 3 years ago when I was trying to find a car. I didn’t know what kind of car I wanted to drive and what kind of car I needed. I didn’t know where to go or what to do because I really didn’t know anything about buying a car. Now I know so much more about car buying and I have such a better understanding of the process. I planned on purchasing used — hey, that’s something I knew, but outside of that if I knew then what I know now . . .

- I could have saved myself two months of frustration. Looking for a car should be a fun experience and can be when you don’t have an immediate need.

- I would have planned and prepared a lot better by looking around and visiting dealerships before I really needed them.

- I would have had a better understanding of what I wanted and needed in a car (for example, I’d be driving a four door instead of a two door, only a recent discovery that I’m a four-door kind of gal).

- I would have explored more options because I would have had the time to do so.

Dealerships we’ve talked to love the idea of marketing more effectively to women, eg. as we see it “becoming more woman friendly”. Some even believe in these programs (yes, I’m quoting).

In a nutshell, dealerships know how important women consumers are to their bottom line and they do want your business, most of them anyway. They just don’t want to invest to get it.

Dealerships think it’s perfectly okay to work with someone, a consultant, broker or entity of sorts to generate leads — ummm. You see where I’m going? In many instances the broker is then paid off the said. In other words, when you buy they get paid.

Just for the record Car-Buy-Her is not a brokering company. We don’t recommend women to dealerships and then get paid off the sale. As a matter of fact, we’re not recommending dealerships unless they go through our evaluation program, a fee-based program in which we learn something about that dealership, how they operate and work with their customers, women in particular. There are just too many horror stories from women about purchasing cars to do things any other way.

In my opinion, dealers should welcome the opportunity for evaluation, to get trained and to learn how to do things better. An opportunity that allows them to see if they come even close to meeting the standards of our Woman-Friendly criteria.

Are auto dealers resistant to becoming women friendly or are they just resistent to anything that doesn’t line up with their male-defined traditional notion of what does and does not work when it comes to women in their dealership?