Whats up with the GM rebates?

[todayusay]

I may be wrong (which occurs often) yet I think the Yukons had a $2500 rebate in June (and maybe the first part of July). The last few weeks of July and now in August the rebate is $1000 or possibly 12% off...

granted GM can do whatever they want, but this just seems odd as they are decreasing the rebates on the current yr model instead of increasing them....also, this is my first experience with the "dealer selects which vehicles get the higher rebates..." which means a dealer can have two identical vehicles (same build dates and all) and one will be cheaper than the other b/c the dealer allocated a higher rebate for one of them...

anybody have any insight on the rebates? every vehicle I've bought (including the '13 Tahoe) has had the rebates across the board....and to be honest, the $1k rebate on a $60k vehicle that was $50k two years ago is almost insulting.

Almost at the point of just buying something else if the wife wasn't dead set on a Tahoe/yukon

 

[yates ™]

Usually they rebate the one that has been deemed longest on the lot but likely the dealer can decide which one would get the quickest sale with a rebate, i.e. they would likely throw a rebate on a Tahoe LTZ instead of a Tahoe fleet vehicle regardless of length on the lot.

 

[seadoons]

I bought a new suburban a few weeks ago and the one I happened to pick had a "red tag rebate" or something like that for $3500. They probably had 50 suburbans on the lot and this particular rebate, which was not advertised, only applied to five of them. That was in addition to the $1K rebate that is currently advertised. So those two rebates, plus the dealer discount that we negotiated back and forth on.

 

[todayusay]

That is what I'm running into and have been told, several of the ones we're looking at have been on the lots for a while, but since the dealers can literally pick and choose which units get the (additional) rebates, it really doesn't make much sense to buy one without the added $$$...

 

[yates ™]

That is what I'm running into and have been told, several of the ones we're looking at have been on the lots for a while, but since the dealers can literally pick and choose which units get the (additional) rebates, it really doesn't make much sense to buy one without the added $$$...

I bought my truck with around $12k in rebates and have been happy with it, only thing is I couldn't pick options so ended up with a color that wouldn't have been my first choice.

 

[seadoons]

exactly. There were two identical suburbans on the lot but the rebate of $3500 only applied to one of them. It was interesting.

 

[yates ™]

exactly. There were two identical suburbans on the lot but the rebate of $3500 only applied to one of them. It was interesting.

It is basically whichever one they feel like they need get off the lot more, usually the one that sits the longest would be my guess.

 

[seadoons]

Yeah whats funny is my sales guy actually told me what you said - typically they are applied to vehicles that have been on the lot the longest or are slow to move. He said this one hadn't been there very long - its just random.

 

[yates ™]

Yeah whats funny is my sales guy actually told me what you said - typically they are applied to vehicles that have been on the lot the longest or are slow to move. He said this one hadn't been there very long - its just random.

I thought there was something to where GM selected them but that sounds kinda hard for GM to do so I assume they could careless as long as the sales are made.

 

[todayusay]

one of the dealers I spoke to said they had a single $3500 rebate they could allocate to a Yukon of their choosing...all the others on the lot had a $1k rebate. and it was VIN specific, so once the dealer choose the "one", the rebate couldn't be allocated to another vehicle. seems like it would hurt sales though...then again I guess I'm giving too much credit for the average buyer