SACRAMENTO, CA – Are you one of those customers who likes to test drive cars again and again with no intention to buy? A car dealer in Sacramento might have found a way to stop your guilty pleasure.
“Once they pre-qualify, we want them to give us the same amount of gas that they left with,” said Alex Mehmood, vice-president of Sacramento Auto Sales Center.
Requirements and restrictions in the land of the free? That doesn’t sound good. It’s the gas prices, stupid!
“We have to pay for all the gas,’ explained Mehmood. ‘And you know, when you have 70 – 80 different cars it gets really expensive.”
Cry me a gas station! This is going on in California, but the trend could spread all across the board.
“That’s actually ridiculous,’ observed Arnie Talisman, owner of Don Jacobson Automobiles in Houston. ‘Because how else would a customer know if they want to purchase that car without test driving it? So, it would be very unreasonable for a car dealer to ask a customer to reimburse them for gas on a test drive”.
Charging for this, charging for that. Next thing you know they’re gonna charge you for trying on new clothes or even for clapping when a movie is over. The good old days when companies offered you incentives to buy are long gone. Now they expect you to open your wallet even before you dare ask for a fair price.
