the grill

[Chris Thorp]

On Nov 8, 2006, at 4:07 PM, David Eaton wrote:

> i fail to see your difficulty with this?  if you expect a
> 6-year old car to not require more expensive maintainence
> than a younger car then you need to re-think.  everything
> has a design life, and mechanical components all wear.  the
> longer you own/use a car, the more likely that you will
> experience a failure.
>
> you cover this by upgrading to a newer car, you take a
> warranty, or hope for the best.
I just think that the rep chose a bad tactic for selling new cars.   
Rather than emphasize expensive maintenance, wouldn't emphasizing new  
features, better performance, etc, be a better tactic?  It is really  
the contrast of a negative-centric versus positive-centric approach.

I guess my main beef is that the rep's approach essentially was  
saying that "a new car will cost less than maintenance on your old  
one", which any shade tree mechanic on Audifans knows to be  
offensively false.  Quick scenario: New Audi is $45k. Used 5-year old  
Audi is $15k.  Assuming that the new audi needs no repairs over the  
course of 5 years, you could buy three complete used Audis and swap  
parts between the three before you would have spent $45k.  Now if you  
were replacing only parts, it would stretch even farther.

I hope this wasn't taken the wrong way.  I'm not trying to start a  
war here, I'm just trying to express how miffed I was at the sales  
approach.  But, I guess that comes down to taste.  (I also find the  
political slams ads, which seem to be getting ever more popular, in  
very poor taste and really rather unsportsman-like)

-Chris