Recommended VW salesman in Sydney

[dopey]

Congrats on the new car, good to hear my recommendation worked out

[mini2]

Went to Barloworld Mascot 2 weeks ago, got greeted by Peter Lee, exchanged a couple of words and got a set of key handed to me for the Golf Wagon.

At that point, I was telling the missus "I am sold, I've never seen a salesperson like this before.."

Drove the tits off the thing for 25 minutes, returned to the dealership and start looking at numbers. As I am not a VW salesperson so I asked him how come the corporate discount is nowhere near as good as it used to be? Peter then made a comment "both Hyundai and Kia provides more discount than VW perhaps you should consider those".

Needless to say, I won't be going back to Barloworld Mascot.

[triode12]

My experiences are at odds with some of the recommendations so far.

I have had bad experiences with Chatswood Classic Cars (I have given more than one chance).

Crap service at Barloworld Mascot. We were actually asked (while waiting for someone to serve us) by a female salesperson if I was serious about buying a car that day otherwise she would prefer to serve someone else (WTF!)

Totally ignored at McGraths and McCarrolls. Waited 1/2 hr each time (twice each). At McCarrolls, the salesperson sailed past us and served a customer who drove in (in his ancient merc) after we had waited for 10mins. Suffice to say I will not be visiting either of them ever again.

Pretty good experience with Barloworld Five Dock. Approached within 5mins each time we were there. But they could not match the price we were asking for. We would have gone with them otherwise.

No experience with Bill Buckle, Southern Classic Cars, Camden VW and the Central Coast VW dealer.

Both our cars have been purchased from Denlo. So far the experience has been good apart from a bad one with one of their business managers which has since been given the sack.

[WhiteJames]

I found Tracey @ Barloworld to be a very pleasant person. Organised GTI & 118TSI test drives with her several times over. She was very accomodating, but did forget to tell me about the corporate discount and didn't come good on final pricing. I wasn't going to go to & fro dealers re pricing. Sale went to local dealer as he was the only one that told me about the corp discount that I was unaware of when first looking at the MK6. Price was better at local dealer as I lived local and would service my vehicle at the dealer every 6 months, in addition to being a repeat customer.

Cheers.
WJ

[Tigger]

Hey guys,

I first went to Brookvale subaru (bill buckle?), (dressed in my daggy sunday home clothes, and unshaven) and stood waiting for a salesman for 20 mins. I then phoned the reception on my mobile while standing in the yard to ask for a salesman to serve me!!!

I was then approached by a man who said "cant help you today, too busy, come back tomorrow"...needless to say I did not go back!

Had that gone well, I would now be driving an XT forester!

On my way home, I stopped in at Barloworld mascot and was immediatley greeted by Peter Lee, who mentioned he was busy, but got me a coffee, and said he would only be a few minutes. He had no hassles with my presentation.
He was indeed only a few minutes, and was a delight to deal with!- gave me keys etc and vehicles to test.
That was my first drive in a Tiguan...I was so impressed with it- It left the subaru for dead, and I am now very happy that the subaru dealership did not serve me that day.

I purchased my Tiguan that day - and love it.

I have since gone back two more times to Peter (dressed in my usual shirt and tie appearance) and purchased two more cars. (GTI mk6 and 118TSI comfortline sportspak Mk6 etc...)

I can not fault either Peter or Russell at barloworld.

[srl]

I work in sales (not automotive, but major capital investments) and I've been taught to ask questions about the customer's needs. Examples might include: What do you drive now? What do you like about it? What don't you like about it? What are the implications of what you don't like (hopefully worded better than that)! What are you hoping the new car might provide you? From there, we can perhaps have a decent conversation about the car and how I plan to use it.

All I got asked was: how much do you want to spend, what's your trade-in and how long are you prepared to wait? If anyone had bothered to ask me, they would have learned that the things most important to me were servicing costs and ease of getting the car fixed. Not one person asked me, and I would have paid a premium for a dealer who offered free pick-up and drop-off. So, I shopped around, got the cheapest price and will simply take the car to the nearest VW dealer.


Cars are the typically the second-most expensive purchase any of us make (after a property), yet the sales guys treat the consumers with a fairly high degree of disdain. I spoke with four dealers - they all got told I wanted a particular trade-in and a particular purchase price. I never shared with the dealers what another dealer quoted me, and simply asked them to give me their best deal. I reckon that's ethical, and it's what I expect of my customers.

I got quoted multiple different prices for exactly the same car and options. I got $2k variations in dealer delivery charges. I was told things which I knew to be factually incorrect about the car. I got told they wouldn't bother giving me a trade-in because the car wouldn't be available for six months. A dealer twice implied I was a liar when I had in fact been completely honest (related to the prices I had been quoted by other dealers as well as vehicle availability).

I finally bought from a guy who was straight with me and simply quoted me a sharp changeover price with a vehicle available pretty quickly. To be honest, the joy of buying the car is eliminated by the behaviour of many of the sales folks. I suspect they get treated like s**t by a lot of customers who try to be too smart, and take a pre-emptive approach by showing disdain for the punters, but all I really wanted was to be treated with the respect one would expect when you are spending in excess of $50k.

Do I have a recommendation? Yeah, shop around, be honest and find somebody who treats you with respect. The sales manager at Central Coast VW was very straight with me, but couldn't match the price I was quoted elsewhere.

Oh, and if you're buying a BMW, speak with Paul at Trivett Parramatta. He ticked all the boxes for me, but unfortunately I didn't want to stretch my budget to the Beemer. He's solid-gold.

If anyone from VW is reading, you might want to think about getting some of your sales people trained in client-centred sales approaches. And maybe test them on their product knowledge. It's pretty woeful.

[guest12345]

From reading on here, i do have a little sympathy for car salesman... don't shoot me yet.

But so many people have so many different versions of their "ideal" type of salesman. Some people look for the friendly approach, some people look for the business approach, some people like truthful answers from salesman etc etc the list goes on.

I think some people are being a bit harsh with salesman, even myself. I have hated some dealers, but others loved going to those dealers.

It is not an excuse for salesman to say they don't have time come back another day, but i can guarantee that those occasions occured on a weekend? and people just did a walk in. If you are going to go to a dealer on a weekend, i definitely recommend you to book in, especially at a busy dealership, if more people book in to look at cars dealers would naturally have more people on the day to serve customers, i definitely don't expect on a busy saturday to just walk in and expect a salesman to dedicate an hour to a customer, sometimes even myself i question whether they judge whether a person can afford a car or not, i think it is part of their job in a way. They have to serve as many customers as possible. By calling in and booking, they know your name already, they know you are interested, they won't judge you, well less anyway.

There are some really bad salesman out there but i think most just try to do their job.

The most important thing is your luck, i mentioned a few weeks back on this thread that i'm a mystery shopper, therefore i have actually experienced alot of the salesman you guys have mentioned, and some who were classed as "bad" were actually good, and some classed as "good" were actually bad. Not calling you guys a liar, but i think it is all down to luck.

Back to the type of salesman people expect. it is so different for different people, when i think about a salesman, i expect them to know alot about the car, can explain the differences between their own brand, and rival's car as well, bias towards their own car is to be expected but they need to know at the the simple things, like ncap safety level, fuel efficiency, type of material etc. Those are simple things salesman need to know, and quite frankly alot of them don't know the details of their cars, but to some who have researched the car don't ask those questions, and if the salesman let you hoon around the car (test drive) customers seem to be happy that way, but in reality how good of a salesman are they?

In terms of negotiations, this is a tough one, they have their tricks on how to get the best price, but for example for VW, now all vw have to sell at the same price. Especially the busier dealers, lets say a golf $30k, it depends on the dealer's location, the number of staff, rent etc etc. At a place which is cheaper rent, they can probably be able to offer it to you for 28k, but at a place where rent is higher, more staff, they probably can't do it for under 30k. I think some salesman have been told that, and when people go up and try to negotiate, they should explain it better, instead of just calling people liars. At the end of the day, the more popular the car, the less negotiation a person can have, especially busy area, they don't have to deal with you, you might feel like you weren't treated right, but that is just business.

anyways there are alot of differences and i can go all night, but those are just some of my views.

[Thal]

My experiences:

Test drives at Five Dock - excellent. Proivded keys to two different models within 2 mins of walking in - rang ahead though - would advise this. Provided excellent quote with minimal haggling however couldn't provide all car availability info - something about problems with stock controllers. After chasing the salesman for over a week gave up and tried VW Mascot.

VW Mascot met the VW Five Dock quote, and within 30 mins had located a car with my requested specs, provided how many km's were on it (have been burnt before when presented with a 'new' car with 250km's on it - dealer then tried to force the sale), and advised they could have it ready in 4 days. Signed the contract - all over the phone.

Don't fully understand why the car manufacturers don't force dealers to get their act together. I nearly walked away from a Tiguan and bought a forester because the VW Five Dock dealership was either too busy, lasy or inefficient to provide basic stock availability information. A sister dealership took only 30 minutes to get me the required info and got the sale on the spot.

Anyway, pick up next Friday.

[jeeteeay]

Mario Basso from VW Chatswood (Chatswood Classic Cars)... he's the best called 3 different dealers...they can't even match what chatswoods offer to me.

[triode12]

Mario Basso from VW Chatswood (Chatswood Classic Cars)... he's the best called 3 different dealers...they can't even match what chatswoods offer to me.

Had a totally different experience with Mario. Wasted a whole day negotiating with him and Lawrence. Suffice to say, we won't be going back to CCC ever.