I used to love the idea of leasing a car. Interest rates were almost zero. Technological improvements seemed like they had the potential to devalue used cars suddenly, e.g., if self-driving cars actually worked or if electric cars became inexpensive. The lease shifted the risk of devaluation onto the manufacturer. As with most things, my instincts were dead wrong. Instead of used cars being devalued, they’ve spiked to historic high valuations. As part of our move to Florida, I’ve discovered that a leased car is a huge headache if anything changes, e.g., state of residence. We couldn’t just pull the title out of a file folder and go to the nearest “tag and title agency” to get our Florida plates.
Moving our leased Honda required some interaction with people at Honda Financial Services. But now that half of America’s workers have decided to go home to play Xbox, smoke essential marijuana, etc., this turns out to require one-hour waits on hold for every question. It would be the same one-hour wait for anything related to insurance claims, e.g., if you got into a fender-bender.
If it is safe to say that customer service in the U.S. has degraded permanently (a high percentage of the long-term unemployed permanently leave the labor force and companies have learned that they can inflict any amount of pain on consumers by saying “#BecauseCOVID”), maybe it is smart to cut the number of situations in which one is a customer and/or deal only with enterprises that have figured out to do absolutely everything via Web form?
Separately, who is getting a Z06 Corvette? Does one need a flat-plane crank to be happy on trips to the supermarket?
> Separately, who is getting a Z06 Corvette? Does one need a flat-plane crank to be happy on trips to the supermarket?
If I was in the market for a new C8, I would buy the standard model, maybe the 2LT or 3LT, but not the Z06. The new flat-plane crank engine with the highest output of any naturally aspirated engine *ever* are wonderful, but the car is intensely track-focused. The new engine apparently sounds terrific but it is a high-revving engine and the whole car from the tires up (Michelin Pilot Sport 2’s which are going to wear out FAST and they’re not really very good for everyday driving) is track-centered. I’m sure there are still some people who will buy one just for the extra power and bragging rights – that’s the nature of the beast with high-end sports cars.
Be that as it may, I still think the standard car with appropriate options is a better choice for someone who is actually going to drive it, enjoy it, use it a lot of the time on surface streets in the real world. If you’re going to join the SCCA and autocross the thing, by Jove go right ahead and tithe up the money for the Z06.
Overall, I’m very impressed with what Chevy has done across the board with the C8. From low to high end, it’s a landmark car. In my misspent yoof, I had a ’68 Convertible with an L79 327/350 small block and a four-speed. It had the J56 heavy duty power brake option (extremely rare) and I did a lot of updating to the suspension and so forth. That car went, handled and stopped. And it was a piece of spaghetti in terms of the chassis rigidity compared to the C8. You could put the suspension geometry where you wanted it, but as soon as you pushed it into corners, it would change because the entire chassis would flex! You won’t have that problem with a C8 of any kind. I loved the small-block engine in that car. The big blocks were overkill – heavy, lots of metal to cool down, etc. The new C8 Z06 has to have all kinds of modifications including widening the chassis and new ducts and radiators all over the place to keep that new engine cool. It’s a specialized tool.
If someone I know bought a C8 2022 standard model, I think it’s the best choice for them. 🙂 They’ll have a lot of fun and it won’t wear out the tires every 5,000 miles.
In fact, the Z06 is so intensely track-focused and tuned for aggressive driving that if I bought one, I would also attend a professional driving school like Radford. The car is designed to produce power in the upper registers of the engine’s powerband and the chassis is optimized for people who are going to “push it” if they want to get the most of out of it. I wouldn’t buy one as a novice without attending a driving school. [Radford was formerly the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving.]
https://www.radfordracingschool.com/performance-driving/
“If it is safe to say that customer service in the U.S. has degraded permanently ”
The Morning Brew Newsletter covered this today with their review of
“Skimpflation:”To deal with rising costs, companies are “skimping” on services.
Skimpflation is everywhere
If you’ve noticed the drive-thru taking longer than usual lately, you aren’t alone. Other examples include:
Disney disabling its tram at Disneyland
Domino’s taking longer to deliver pizzas
Airlines leaving customers on hold for longer than usual
In many cases, the skimping isn’t deliberate — some businesses are facing a perfect storm of challenges right now, including:
Thanks for sharing this great coinage! I think “skimpflation” is a valuable addition to our vocabulary! “Bidenflation” for the big surge that happens to coincide with his administration (though, as with Jimmy Carter, the seeds were sown during previous administrations (notably by Lyndon Johnson in the case of Carter)) and “skimpflation” for our day-to-day experience.
So, the Xbox slackers are to blame–retroactively now–for yet another American problem: awful customer service? I love it! Why blame the omnipotent job creators and MBA’s for “streamlining” and “right sizing” everything, including wages, setting up customer last, share holder first, adversarial business cultures and practices, when you can lay blame at the worn out cogs in the free market machine? I wonder how many of these retroactive, clairvoyant saboteurs were laid off by the brilliant job creators during the pandemic? …played right into their hands!
And, you’re not alone. Friend recently bought the vehicle they were leasing since it’s an awful time to buy new. The experience of circular calls and long wait times mirrored your own. The process was overly complex, the banks and the leasing company had different terminologies and expectations, and even the employees couldn’t keep up with their own changing systems, for which customer services’ documented procedures and call scripts were no longer up to date with what the customer was seeing on the web.
We have record number of help wanted signs posted at small shops and large retailers than I can ever remember seeing during my lifetime, but yet Uncle Sam is reporting high unemployment and mailing record number of checks.
Many of the help wanted signs are offering at a min. $15 an hour, plus benefits, for jobs with virtually no skill or work experience. Why would an Xbox’er want to work when s/z/he can sit home and get paid?
I wonder, have you heard of RCAP, LIHEAP, Section-8, SSDI, et. al.? I was shocked to find out how easy it is to apply and get approved for RCAP.
Before Covidfear and Covidlockdown, I knew some tenants on those programs and they were working while getting some of those benefits. Now, I see a whole lot more tenants on those programs and they have not worked for over a year, but yet they are living far more comfortably now than they used to — without going to work. They will walk into a cannabis, XBox, fast food store to spend their money, those same stores have help wanted signs posted. Could it be they don’t know how to read help wanted sign?
So, blame this mess on the MBA’s all you want, but remember it is Uncle Same and Uncle Sam’s own hired MBA’s, working for Uncle Same are the ones driving those policies and the money printing machineries.
Businesses treated employees like crap for decades. They went one step too far, employers thought they held all the cards and could behave with impunity. Well that illusion is gone forever. People just wanted to work without being hassled excessively then go home smoke their pot and play their video games. Make work miserable with masks and potentially lethal mandatory medical treatments and they will stop working, and just do the pot and games. Funny thing is the upper middle class is most effected by the lower class laying flat. Guessing we will see more people taking up sharecropping before we see them returning to working in the service economy. Best get used to cooking your own food and mowing your own lawn. Bonus points if you can mow your lawn while in a zoom meeting.
SenorP: Of course you are right that it isn’t reasonable to expect people to work at a lower-than-market-clearing wage. I’m an Econ 101 True Believer. People follow incentives rationally. So if people are working less than before it is because alternatives to work have become more attractive, e.g., due to bigger government payments or onerous working conditions (actual COVID-19 risk, masks, vaccine requirements, Plexi barriers, etc.). If employers offered a fair price in light of the more onerous conditions combined with the enhanced spending power of not working, workers would come back. But it is tough for Honda to pay that fair price. They are charging us only $400/month to lease our magnificent Odyssey. Pretty soon $400 could be the price of a Diet Coke. Can they afford a staff of $100/hour workers?
Philg, George,
We live in a consumer driven society. Everything in America is about getting people to buy things they don’t really need or won’t use. Heck, you can’t even buy a new Xbox or Playstation now if you wanted one! Isn’t it possible that the pandemic has changed peoples priorities and lifestyle, and are less inclined to work the crappy, dead end jobs? Folks may be choosing to spend less, change their living situation, and get out of the rat race. People are quitting jobs at a record pace, which doesn’t align with your speculation that “windfall” unemployment benefits are pulling folks out of working, since you’re not eligible for unemployment if you quit.
George – Not sure where you get the idea there are record numbers of checks going out, it’s down almost 7x from a year ago.
“The number of people continuing to receive unemployment aid has also fallen sharply, mostly as two emergency jobless aid programs have ended. In the week ending Sept. 25, the latest data available, 3.6 million people received some sort of jobless aid, down sharply from 4.2 million in the previous week. A year ago, nearly 25 million people were receiving benefits.”
This article, nor the department of labor data supports that even remotely:
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/14/unemployment-claims-lowest-level-515984
https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf
@Senorpablo,
“While over $46 billion in rental relief was allocated by the federal government, just $3 billion has made it out.” [1]
So there is still $43 billion to go for a country with a population of less than 334 million [2] and only 44.1 million are renters [3]. Take the $3 billion that has been handed out so far — for renters only — and tell me how much rent money was distributed to the 44.1 million renters.
I know home renters have been on Section-8 and other variations of aids all heir life and I know home renters having their rent paid in full via RCAP for full 10 months in a raw but yet I know no-single-home-owner with a mortgage payment getting any free money.
It pays to be poor, sorry, I mean lazy.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/03/why-tenants-are-still-struggling-despite-46-billion-dollars-in-rental-relief.html
[2] https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/
[3] https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/renters-vs-homeowners-statistics
@Senorpablo That is the secret that is killing the MBA types plan and putting an end to American conveniences and nonsenses alike. If you don’t buy crap you don’t need much to survive. People figured it out, they ain’t going back to work for jerks in jerk off jobs. They’ll work some, barter some. Put in a days labor on a farm for some fresh food. Good for a week no cash required and healthier for it. The future is the past. All things relying on semi smart low wage employees grinding through grabble will collapse. And that is a lot of stuff. The Amish will survive and those that become Amish like in their lifestyles will survive. Media shaming of people who won’t work at wages that don’t add up has already begun expect to see a lot more of it.
Yes, customer service and the unavailability of goods have really given a ‘third world’ feel to being a consumer.
State government websites and other facilities have been no better or worse throughout the Pandemic and have not gotten any better. You can’t get a direct number to anything or anyone and the lines regularly drop the calls. The “new model” of customer service seems to be designed to place the customer so far away that they have no options but to sit back and wait. Some businesses are better, and a few health care facilities are better – if you have a direct phone number. In most cases you still have to leave a message and wait for a call back.
That’s surprising to me because so many people are supposedly working more efficiently and more happily though virtualization and Zoom, etc., etc. What should happen is that customer service of this kind would improve, but that’s not what has happened. I think what occurred is that the people on the other ends of the conversation have found lots of new excuses not to do their jobs, no matter how well they are being compensated and protected from COVID.
BTW this is almost certainly true with Facebook, because if you’ve ever been censored on FB for a post their algorithms didn’t like, you cannot protest their decision because of COVID. They don’t have the resources. Facebook is a very rich company and they don’t have anyone working in Class V cleanroom somewhere who connect via Zoom and answer your pleas.
The only exceptions to this that I’ve found are certain businesses where people actually care about whether or not their customers remain happy. The rest of the big ones suck, and the government websites here in MA suck beyond belief. If you finally manage to get connected to someone, they don’t speak English except as a third language.
I believe this is intentional. As we transition to a Socialist Dependency Economy, the most important thing is to establish a new normal for COMsumer Complaints. Which is basically: we’ll contact you, whenever. Get in line.
You don’t have to do anything to encourage people not to do their jobs as long as you give them a plausible excuse they can hide behind. Well, that’s what we’ve done.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1991-11-06-1991310039-story.html
If I could translate Elizabeth Warren’s epithet into the post-COVID future, especially where taxpayers are concerned dealing with government bureaucracy via the web, voicemail or chat, here it is:
“You didn’t build that, so fuck off and wait.”
I want to get new Z06, but not sure how to go about it. Go to dealer and try to reserve?
I would talk to https://www.criswellcorvette.com/mike-furman and place an order (deposit is refundable). He will have as good a chance as any of the big dealers of getting you a car. Then perhaps hedge with a local dealer (Mike Furman’s business model is selling cars at sticker whereas only a handful of local dealers will do this). Corvette allocations are based to some extent on how many Corvettes have previously been sold by a given dealer. Therefore you can’t pick a Chevy dealer at random, but instead have to find one that regularly sells at least some Corvettes. Join https://www.corvetteforum.com/ and ask for some ideas in your part of the country.
Thanks for this info!
I’m in Seattle, so there are dealers that sell Corvettes in reasonable numbers, but for sure I don’t want to pay more than MSRP.
If you buy from Mike Furman, he can arrange a “courtesy delivery” with a Chevy dealer not too far from your house. So you won’t have to have it shipped from Kentucky (factory) to Maryland to Washington State.
I’m not sure that too many people will actually receive Z06s prior to President Harris outlawing gasoline.
Just love the juxtaposition here of buying a new Corvette with folks refusing to work for paltry wages and collecting “free” money.
As far as customer service goes, I’m from the camp that believes in the saying, “that you never waste a crisis”. And many larger businesses are demonstrating this by gleefully cutting services under the cover of not being able to fill jobs.
Yeah, business in America was already setup like this anyway. It’s always interesting when dealing with large corporations to observes the disparity in service between customer service/accounts payable and accounts receivable. When it comes to collecting or taking money, American companies seem to be able to make that painless and expedited. But, when you need something from them, not so much.
Jim: a new Corvette is a bargain! The average new car cost to an American right now is over $45,000. That’s for some sort of mediocre SUV, presumably. The C8 Corvette costs just over $60,000 and is a truly great car. If you’re a taxpayer, I guess you could say that you already paid for a big part of the Corvette via our government’s bailout of GM in 2009. So you might as well pay the remaining $60k and get a great car.
That does seem like a deal for a Corvette. My brother owned one briefly. I can say with absolute certainty that it was one of the most uncomfortable cars to ride in. I read somewhere that all Chevys are built on truck frames. And I gotta believe it’s true.
The real goldmine these days seems to be in used cars. They are in huge demand. I have a 1997 Chevy 1500 Silverado Pick Up truck that I bought new for $16,000.00. Now 24 years later, they’re in demand selling for 12,000.00 all the way up to $28,000.00! The Kelly Blue Book doesn’t list them for that much, but put an ad in Car Trader and you’ll see multiple offers.
https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a34825083/c8-corvette-suspension-deep-dive-analysis-video/ describes the C8’s suspension. If you want something with more photos and less video, https://www.autoblog.com/2020/11/19/chevrolet-corvette-suspension-deep-dive/
https://www.corvetteforum.com/articles/5-suspension-features-we-love-on-the-new-c8-corvette/ says “For the first time since its introduction in 1953, Chevrolet offers a coil spring suspension system in a Corvette model. Predecessors of the C8 Corvette ran on transverse composite leaf springs, and this setup was scrapped along with a host of other mechanical components when the Golden Bow Tie brand decided to switch to the outgoing mid-engine layout. The new car runs coil spring on all four corners, and the ride and handling dynamics of the C8 Corvette are truly exceptional.”
New mid-engine Corvette is a huge bargain in sports car segment.