It's better for the dealer, but not the customer. How the heck are you going to do any price comparisons via the web?
I think the dealers want it this way so pricing can vary a lot and mainly so it forces you to physically go to a dealer. They figure they have a better chance of making a sale if they get you on the lot. Kinda like car salesmen do.
Another thing that annoys me as I discovered here in the last few weeks, the Mahindra dealers up this way that actually have a webpage, or even an e-mail address don't reply when you fill out the form requesting a price quote. I have e-mailed practically every dealer in Pa and even some in Ohio and out of all of that two, exactly two replied with price quotes (one of them gave me the price quotes I posted here in the Mahindra Prices post). There was one other that did reply, but he wanted to know where I lived. He said he is building his business on customer service and basically didn't want customers that are too far away. I replied that I am 2 hours drive away and if he was indeed focused on customer service I would rather drive 2 hours and support his business than deal with a local dead beat. He never replied back.
I replied back to the Mahindra dealer that gave me reasonable quotes with a few questions (attempting to learn some things that aren't obvious from the Mahindra website, like what happened with the 00 and 20 series tractors before I found out here). He did reply back that he would look into it and get back to me, but he never did. That tells me he didn't know and never replying back just put the icing on the cake.
The dealer that quoted me the crazy high prices told me the 30 series is the replacement for the 20 series, which is obviously not correct. So another that apparently doesn't know his own product.
I sure as heck hope this doesn't reflect on the service that can be expected from Mahindra dealers.
I've learned far more here on the site than from any of the dealers.
In all fairness I also requested quotes from New Holland and Kubota dealers and got zero replies from them.
So far I haven't been impressed with any tractor dealer.
When I actually went and sat on a 5530 it was at a local dealer that doesn't have a website or listed e-mail address and the day I was there they were closed. The tractors are sitting out front, so I just helped myself and climbed on a few.
I'm still 6 months or so away from purchasing (have to get the truck paid off first) but starting my comparison shopping and hounding the heck out of everyone here
to learn more
before committing $25,000-$30,000 for a piece of equipment.
I fully intend to take a day off work in the near future and just drive around and hit all the dealers to see how it goes.