Without personally seeing the exact original transaction transpire, it's a little tough say whether the original poster was too pushy or the dealer was too greedy.
I will preface by saying that while I'll certainly be the first to agree that dealers are best served to let some people walk, I also believe those people tend to be rare exceptions.
I think the dealer/customer relationship is overly romanticized here in the vast amount of cases. Yes, I'm sure there are many good dealers and some truly noble dealers, especially smaller ag communities, etc. I suspect most the dealers participating to this forum are likely better than average simply because your here (possibly interest in people, tractors, and helping others). As such, I'm sure comments made in this thread touch close to home for many, but realize there are many dealers out there also doing a lot of disservice to your occupation. No doubt any dealer who has been around can easily point to multiple examples of customers who they lost money on or whose aggrevation far exceeded the value of the deal. At the same time, I'm sure there were plenty of sales at near list, poor trade allowance, etc. I'm sure these are rationalized as simple necesities of the business, or needed to offset the losers, or whatever (absolutely no disrespect intended - I would fully expect any easy money to be swept up quickly if I was a shareholder).
With rare exception, dealers/owner's operate according to the same rules of business and everyone else. The owner/company/shareholders come first and employees/customers come in down on the list. I would be shocked if dealers were sitting aside profits in the good years to sustain employees and quality service for their customers in bad years. Yeah, I'm sure some dealers have a bad year or two and sure, nobody would every want to layoff staff and close up, but I'm sure there are few dealers who would really and truly lose real money for very many years before reducing staff or closing a location. Any dealer that's been around for many years is there because they are making money (maybe not much, but enough).
I suspect for dealers near urban sprawl catering to both big ag farmers and yuppies wanting sub-compacts and zero turning mowers, the interaction may quite different between the two groups. Dealers may want to comment here, but I would suspect the "yuppies" are viewed with more disdain; just trying to squeeze the dealers, less likely to be long term customer, and guilt free targets to extract whatever can be gained. Ok, I know it's not that black and white and to survive good dealers had to adapt, cater, and tap into what I'm calling the yuppie market, but my point is that the above view probably was true even for those "good dealer" when first confronted with the new customers demographics before they decided how to leverage.
I truly want and believe that the dealer should make a "fair and reasonable" amount of money on a tractor sale, but not much more. Hopefully if nothing else, we can all agree on this. While it's not as much fun for the dealers owning a business operating on thin margins, I'm certain that over the long haul it keeps your operation efficient and yourself in business. Despite anyone's best intentions, commanding premiums over time is often the result of too little competion and ultimately makes the company fat. Then when that new dealer moves in your in for a world of hurt and often companies will fail if they can't adjust fast enough - happens every day. I have little simpathy for complaints from dealers about loosing money on trade-in, sales, service, etc. because I know it is all already factored into the total equation and is only there because it is necessary for another part of the business to make money (shaver/razor blade analogy); it's ALL converted down to P&L at some point. To be fair I have heard dealers here make statements along this line (e.g. not complaining, but stating that they loose money in one areas, but make money in another - I respect that).
To the owner and the customer, despite what they may say, deep down it's a business transaction first and foremost. If is a "reasonably fair" transaction for both parties, then there is often a secondary personal (buddy-pal) relationship between the salesman and customer whether real or fainted by either parties with the belief it will serve mutual benefit in the future. I know there are exceptions, but I'm confident that it holds true more often than not.
Moral of the story which I think we all already know: People naturally span the gambit from suckers easily parted with their money to terrible customers who are net cost losers for the dealer. Dealers inherently try to optimize their total operations to avoid the trouble makers, although their business models factor in some still getting through. There are business reasons behind virtually ever good deed and are certaintly factored into the total operating model for the dealership and monitored over time (can't let your staff good deed yourself out of business now can you!) . Dealers are not bad people even though one will feel taken more often than not by them. You are just as likely to be taken at your local mall, although the feeling of overpaying 5% on a $100 item does register with most people like a $10k+ purchase.
