'Missed My Bonus By One': Dodge Salesman Says May Was Terrible For Sales. Here's Why
So much for Memorial Day sales.
Memorial Day weekend is usually one of the best times of the year to buy a car, as dealerships are eager to move older inventory to make room for fall's new models. But despite big banners and flashy promos, this year was a flop, according to a car salesperson who had an unexpectedly bad sales month. Are tariffs to blame, or is something else scaring off potential buyers?
Dodge Salesman Vents About Bad Month
In a trending video, Dodge salesman Dalton Stacey (@daltonstaceycars97), who's based in Oklahoma, shared what it's really like to sell cars in this market. Surprise, surprise, it's not pretty.
Stacey explained that despite his employer giving the team an extra day to wrap up deals (instead of the cutoff being on Sunday, when customers might still be wavering on a decision), he made way fewer sales than he expected.
'I had so many people back out on me,' Stacey explained. 'It ain't even funny.'
Because of all of the reneges, Stacey missed his bonus. What really hurts is that he was just one car shy of making the cutoff.
'Today sucked. May sucked. June better come correct,' Stacey said in the caption, clearly frustrated by the situation.
Some people might hear this and think Stacey is making too big a deal about missing a bonus. But most people in the United States live paycheck to paycheck, and if you're relying on that extra income to cover your expenses, not getting it (especially by such a small margin) stings.
Why Did People Back Out?
Stacey doesn't explicitly state why his customers backed out, but we've got some context that'll help put things in perspective. Cars are getting more expensive—are tariffs to blame?
Short answer: yes and no.
In April, the average price of a new car jumped by a rare 2.5% to just under $49,000—a sharp rise for just a month's turnaround,
Kelley Blue Book (KBB) reported
. Even used car pricing increased. KBB described it as 'likely the first, softest wave of a storm.' Why? Tariff-related sticker shock is only a few months or just a few weeks away, depending on the brand.
Right now, dealers are trying to get rid of their pre-tariff inventory. But when tariffs hit, vehicles could have up to a 25-percent markup baked in. (That 2.5 percent doesn't look so bad now.) The other factor affecting affordability is loans. Most people don't have the cash on hand to buy a car outright, so they rely on loans. But a good loan (meaning one with a low interest rate) is getting harder to qualify for.
So even if you cop a deal, the loan may be what screws you over. No wonder so many people were sending Stacey the 'Actually, I need to think about it' texts.
What to Do If You're Thinking About Buying a Car
It depends on your situation, but here's a good place to start:
If you're ready to buy soon:
Shop around now while there's still pre-tariff inventory available, and take advantage of the slow market to negotiate, negotiate, negotiate.
If you're using a car loan:
Shop around for loan rates and consider getting pre-approved through a credit union or your bank.
If you're on the fence:
If your vehicle is running fine, then waiting things out could help you avoid peak tariff prices. But have a backup plan, like a budget, in case your car ends up needing a major repair.
If you're selling or trading in:
You're in a good position here since used inventory is tight. Get multiple quotes and don't forget online retailers like Carvana and CarMax, which may offer you a better price.
Motor1
reached out to Stacey for comment via email and TikTok direct message and to Dodge's parent company, Stellanis, via email. We'll be sure to update this article when we hear back.
Now Trending
Woman Starts Driving. Then Water Starts Pouring Onto Her Mercedes G-Wagon's Dashboard and Touchscreen
Woman Gets Into Her Kia. Then Out of Nowhere, Her Screen Starts Smoking
Get the best news, reviews, columns, and more delivered straight to your inbox, daily.
back
Sign up
For more information, read our
Privacy Policy
and
Terms of Use
.
Share this Story
Facebook
X
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Reddit
WhatsApp
E-Mail
Got a tip for us? Email:
tips@motor1.com
Join the conversation
(
)
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Bloomberg
33 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Musk Looms Over Latest Ergen Fight Threatening EchoStar Debt
Save Welcome to The Brink. I'm Eliza Ronalds-Hannon, a senior reporter in Atlanta, covering EchoStar's missed interest payment after the Federal Communications Commission started a review. We also have updates on Wellness Pet and auto sector distress. Follow this link to subscribe. Send us feedback and tips at debtnews@ Creditors to EchoStar and its pay-TV unit Dish Network huddled over the past eight days as they came to terms with the latest curveball thrown by Charlie Ergen.
TechCrunch
37 minutes ago
- TechCrunch
Superblocks CEO: How to find a unicorn idea by studying AI system prompts
Brad Menezes, CEO of enterprise vibe coding startup Superblocks, believes the next crop of billion-dollar startup ideas are hiding in almost plain sight: the system prompts used by existing unicorn AI startups. System prompts are the lengthy prompts — over 5,000-6,000 words — that AI startups use to instruct the foundational models from companies like OpenAI or Anthropic on how to generate their application-level AI products. They are, in Menezes view, like a master class in prompt engineering. 'Every single company has a completely different system prompt for the same [foundational] model,' he told TechCrunch. 'They're trying to get the model to do exactly what's required for a specific domain, specific tasks.' System prompts aren't exactly hidden. Customers can ask many AI tools to share theirs. But they aren't always publicly available. So as part of his own startup's new product announcement of an enterprise coding AI agent named Clark, Superblocks offered to share a file of 19 system prompts from some of the most popular AI coding products like Windsurf, Manus, Cursor, Lovable and Bolt. Menezes's tweet went viral, viewed by almost 2 million including big names in the Valley like Sam Blond, formerly of Founders Fund and Brex, and Aaron Levie, a Superblocks investor. Superblocks announced last week that it raised a $23 million Series A, bringing its total to $60 million for its vibe coding tools geared to non-developers at enterprises. So we asked Menezes to walk us through how to study other's system prompts to glean insights. Techcrunch event Save $200+ on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Save $200+ on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Boston, MA | REGISTER NOW 'I'd say the biggest learning for us building Clark and reading through the system prompts is that the system prompt itself is maybe 20% of the secret sauce,' Menezes explained. This prompt gives the LLM the baseline of what to do. The other 80% is 'prompt enrichment' he said, which is the infrastructure a startup builds around the calls to the LLM. That part includes instructions it attaches to a user's prompt, and actions taken when returning the response, such as checking for accuracy. He said there are three parts of system prompts to study: role prompting, contextual prompting, and tool use. The first thing to notice is that, while system prompts are written in natural language, they are exceptionally specific. 'You basically have to speak as if you would to a human co-worker,' Menezes said. 'And the instructions have to be perfect.' Role prompting helps the LLMs be consistent, giving both purpose and personality. For instance, Devin's begins with, 'You are Devin, a software engineer using a real computer operating system. You are a real code-wiz: few programmers are as talented as you at understanding codebases, writing functional and clean code, and iterating on your changes until they are correct.' Contextual prompting gives the models the context to consider before acting. It should provide guardrails that can, for instance, reduce costs and ensure clarity on tasks. Cursor's instructs, 'Only call tools when needed, and never mention tool names to the user — just describe what you're doing. … don't show code unless asked. … Read relevant file content before editing and fix clear errors, but don't guess or loop fixes more than three times.' Tool use enables agentic tasks because it instructs the models how to go beyond just generating text. Replit's, for instance, is long and describes editing and searching code, installing languages, setting up and querying PostgreSQL databases, executing shell commands and more. Studying others' system prompts helped Menezes see what other vibe coders emphasized. Tools like Loveable, V0, and Bolt 'focus on fast iteration,' he said, whereas 'Manus, Devin, OpenAI Codex, and Replit' help users create full-stack applications but 'the output is still raw code.' Menezes saw an opportunity to let non-programmers write apps, if his startup could handle more, such as security and access to enterprise data sources like Salesforce. While he's not yet running the multi-billion startup of his dreams, Superblock has landed some notable companies as customers, it said, including Instacart and Paypaya Global. Menezes is also dogfooding the product internally. His software engineers are not allowed to write internal tools; they can only build the product. So his business folks have built agents for all their needs, like one that uses CRM data to identify leads, one that tracks support metrics, another that balance the assignments of the human sales engineers. 'This is basically a way for us to build the tools and not buy the tools,' he sais.
Washington Post
44 minutes ago
- Washington Post
Attorneys in NCAA antitrust case to share $475M in fees, with potential to reach $725M
The attorneys who shepherded the blockbuster antitrust lawsuit to fruition for hundreds of thousands of college athletes will share in just over $475 million in fees, and the figure could rise to more than $725 million over the next 10 years. The request for plaintiff legal fees in the House vs. NCAA case, outlined in a December court filing and approved Friday night , struck experts in class-action litigation as reasonable.
