They are very unlikely to gain new customers because they lower their prices a few bucks an hour or per part.

People who hate dealers, hate dealers and that won't change. They will continue going to the independants and dealers will make less because they've lowered prices and have not cut any expenses.

 

Economics, namely the various elasticities (price, income, etc) say that they probably wouldn't mainly because of the skill/equipment involved.

 

Or, in most instances around here, the dealer will hire a consultant to come in and tell them why they are losing money, and the consultant will tell them to cut the benefits to the employees, slash their inventories of parts, and make certain that every tech is only paid the billable hours, and for the service manager to not pad the labor to the techs for non-book type jobs.

 

Sad, but true. My last dealership I worked for was a large group of dealerships(6+) and they hired a consultant to find out why the company as a whole is losing money, yet they pay an employee who holds a position that does just that

 

it proves my point that the large dealers have raped people for years and it sucks cause even though they are hemorrhaging money, they stay afloat due to large amount of cash reserves, yet the good small dealers go under from their actions.