Texas Chevy dealer still lists a 2023 Bolt in inventory – and wants $13K over MSRP

I reached out to a Texas Chevy dealer about a 2023 Bolt EUV LT Redline they list in their inventory, and despite talking to two different reps and probably an AI, I couldn’t get the answer to one simple question: why is their price more than $13,000 above sticker?

SKIP THE STORY: find 2027 Chevy Bolt deals near you (trusted affiliate link)

Look, guys – I was in the car business a long time. Long enough, in fact, to have developed a bit of a soft spot for salespeople and their problems, and that affection will often take the form of Hanlon’s Razor. If you’re not familiar with Hanlon’s Razor, it’s a generalistic sort of idea that boils down to, “never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence.” To that end, I’ll often defend the salesperson as a fellow human, and I like to think that in my own dealings with people from the other side of the desk, I was an open book, and anytime someone got loud it was because they either didn’t understand– or didn’t want to understand the math.

Even so, I found myself frustrated in my attempts to understand whether or not the 2023 Chevy Bolt EUV LT Redline, serial number 1G1FY6S05P4155254 and stock number CGTZ66 shown on the site a) actually existed, and b) why a car that was now four model years and a full generation old with a sticker price of $32,275 was being advertised with a “final price” of $45,620.

We ‘finna see

My first attempt to get information about the Bolt was met by [salesperson 1] on Thursday evening, 29JAN26. [salesperson 1] informed me that said vehicle’s final price of $45,620 would include tax, title, and licensing fees, and politely asked if I’d like him to check with his manager, “to see if any special offers of no money down programs are available?”

I responded, verbatim, with, “Can you give me a breakdown of that? I’m out of state so I think I have to pay sales tax here.”

SALESPERSON 1: Got it, I’ll have my manager put together the exact out-the-door number for you, including doc, title, and licensing fees-no hidden charges. We open at 9AM so I’ll make sure you get the full breakdown as soon as possible. Would you like me to text or call you with the details once I have them?

ME: Text.

SALESPERSON 1: Perfect, I’ll text you the full breakdown as soon as my manager sends it over after we open at 9AM. Let me know if you have any questions in the meantime!

After that, [salesperson 1] ghosted me. I never got a call, an email, or the promised text with the complete breakdown of pricing, doc fees, etc., and I was no closer to becoming the new owner of a new old Chevy Bolt EUV.

Attempt number two

The following day, 30JAN, I tried again, and got another series of texts from a different salesperson, who we’ll call [salesperson 2] to protect the innocent.

SALESPERSON 2: Hi Jo! This is [salesperson 2] here with Clay Cooley Chevrolet in Irving, ready to assist you with your search for a new vehicle! How can I help you best today?

ME: Hi, [salesperson 2]. Can you help me understand the difference between the final price and MSRP?

SALESPERSON 2: The MSRP is the original price for the vehicle as is priced. Final price is the number we’ve lowered the vehicle to so we can earn your business.

ME: Final number is $12K higher than MSRP, though? Am I reading this wrong?

SALESPERSON 2: Im not sure what you see. [sic] Can you send me a screen shot of what you are looking at?

::I send the screen shot::

ME: MSRP is $32,275. From the window sticker. Obviously tax and title and fees are extra. $13,345 is a lot of tax, though. I was trying to do the math.

SALESPERSON 2: Oh! I see the car now. I’m actually not sure. I don’t believe that car has even arrived yet. Are you only interested in getting a Bolt EUV? They have replaced those models with the Equinox EV.

ME: It won’t fit in my garage. Old house. 1916. Trust me. Been through this. That’s why I’m hunting down the last Bolt redline on earth.

SALESPERSON 2: Ah I understand. That may be why the value has gone up so much.

ME: OK, so there is some markup on it? Can you tell me what that is?

That was the last I heard from [salesperson 2] for the rest of the day. As I was typing this story, I received another text, trying to switch me off the Bolt EUV and onto a Trax.

SALESPERSON 2: The car has gone up in value because of how scarce they are and still high demand. Are you only interested in getting an EV or would you consider a new Trax? Very good gas mileage and low cost while being same size as the EUV.

ME: There are plenty of Trax here locally. Only one of those. What was the breakdown of the final price number?

Over an hour later and still no response from either [salesperson 1] or [salesperson 2], no breakdown of price, no one has even asked where I’m located to offer to calculate an out-the-door number for me. At this point, no matter how serious I might have been about buying the new Bolt, I’m frustrated enough to say that I wouldn’t pursue this one.

What happened?

If I was the sales manager here, I’d be asking for a post-mortem on every deal. Not just the deals that went through, but the deals that didn’t happen. Understanding why you lost a deal, in most cases, is more important than understanding why you were able to make a deal.

In this case, I’m guessing the sales managers at Clay Cooley Chevrolet are a little more laissez-faire in their approach than I was/am. Neither of the salespeople (or, let’s face it, AI chatbots) I dealt with asked me why I was interested in that car, neither of them asked me how I planned on taking delivery, despite telling them I was from out of state. They asked zero qualifying questions, spent no time building rapport, and neither of them were able or willing to give me the price breakdown that the first one had offered, and that I had asked for from the second.

If either salesperson had brought this deal up to a desk I was flying, and I asked, “What’s the story?” they wouldn’t have had a story to tell.

My guess is that this car either doesn’t exist as anything more than a phantom order or build that never got removed from inventory, or that something happened to the vehicle somewhere along the way (maybe it was in an accident during a test drive or got hung up on a recall notice), and isn’t currently available for sale. In any case, I wasn’t told.

As such, it’s time to roll out Hanlon’s Razor. These are two salespeople – or, let’s be generous and say it’s one chatbot and one salesperson – who didn’t follow the sales process. They didn’t greet me properly, they didn’t build rapport through the discovery phase, they didn’t ask any qualifying questions, they didn’t deliver on any sort of presentation, and they certainly didn’t close the deal.

To me, that’s a training issue, and nothing a few days with a professional like Larry Feldman couldn’t fix. That said, I have a new appreciation for just how frustrating shopping for a new EV as an anonymous everyman can be, and “get” the appeal of Tesla’s D2C sales model more than I did, before.

If you have the option, then, I strongly recommend my process: I only buy cars from people I’ve known for about twenty years.

What’s your process? Do you have a super-special way you buy new cars, or do you avoid the whole thing altogether? Click the link below to see if you have better luck shopping for a 2027 Chevy Bolt (with better range, faster charging, and V2X capability) than I did for a ’23.

• find 2027 Chevy Bolt deals near you (trusted affiliate link)

Original content from Electrek.

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