[spicy]

One of the salesmen at Greater Boston Motorsports informed me of the common ownership, so I called around and asked about affiliations.

You don't think that's good business practice? That's like having all the same brand of car dealers in your area having different names and explaining on their website that they're privately owned and spouting off the "nobody beats our AMAZING prices" bullshit only to discover that they're all owned by a single person who is determining the price -- essentially monopolizing the market. My problem is that, not only is the vast majority of the Boston-Area Suzuki dealerships under common ownership, but that it's being publicly concealed. Nowhere on any of their sites does it mention common ownership. In fact, the sites go out of their way to inform you that they are privately, family owned and operated, ranging from 27-35 years.

If you went around to all the local Ducati dealerships and they all quoted you 60k for a 1098, but told you that they usually all sell for 75k but they're cutting you the deal of a lifetime, you'd think that was the going rate of them. If you went to 3 that were all owned by the same company and they quoted you 60k, and then you went to a fourth, independent dealer and they quoted you the actual 15k, where would you make your purchase from?

I'm just saying that my experiences with 3 of the local Suzuki dealers (GBM and 2 of it's affiliates) were unpleasant and that I am going out of my way to avoid them. I don't know if it's related to them all being under common ownership, or I just was unlucky and had the 3 shittiest salesmen at each dealership, but that is somewhat inconsequential.

Monopolizing the market and claiming that you're independent denies the consumer his/her right to the benefits of competition. If you have no options, the only way you can get the item you want is to pay what the seller asks, whether or not it's unreasonable. He/she doesn't care if you shop around, all the stores you'd be shopping at are his/hers anyways...