“I’m the one that showed him the vehicle.”
A car salesman says he greeted a walk-in customer, showed him the vehicle, took him out on the test drive and worked the numbers. Then he claims management called him into an office to tell him his commission was being cut in half and shared with a colleague the buyer had never met.
Joel (@joelsellscars), a Seattle salesman whose channel mixes cars with his work life, laid out the sequence of events in recent TikTok. He filmed it on a Sunday when he was supposed to be on the floor.
“I should be at the dealership, but I’m not,” he says. “The reason why is I got sent home for telling the customer the truth.”
“I got sent home because I didn’t see that my co-worker created a profile for this customer,” he says, adding that he had asked the buyer whether he had dealt with anyone else at the store and was told no. He built a walk-in profile from the man’s name and phone number, and says nothing else came up.
Joel claims the split was imposed after the deal was done. “They call me into the office and they tell me, hey, this is my co-worker. This is going to be a half deal,” he says. The reason given was that the buyer had been assigned to the colleague by the internet leads team. “Even though he never interacted with my customer at all,” Joel says. “I’m the one that showed him the vehicle. We went on the test drive, everything.” He says managers then told him they “get paid based on percentage of internet leads sold.”
Salesman Makes A Risky Move
Joel went back to the buyer to finish the credit application and, by his own account, told him what had happened with the commission. The buyer sided with him, he says.
“He really liked me. He wanted me to get the sale,” Joel says.
A manager came over to talk to the customer, who Joel says told him he liked the car “but I’m not going to buy it unless it’s under Joel’s name.” What followed ended the sale. “The manager just got up, ripped up the paper, which had the price of the vehicle, his contract terms, everything, just ripped the paper and walked away.”
Joel says this wasn’t the first time a sale of his has been divided in half. “I’ve done deals and then it ends up being half. So they split it with another salesperson,” he says. “They don’t tell me until I look at my paycheck and I see that this sale was a half deal.”
He doesn’t name the dealership in the video.
Who Owns The Customer?
A half deal is dealership parlance for when credit for a sale, and the commission attached, gets divided between two salespeople. Which one owns the customer is settled by the store’s pay plan and by whatever the customer relationship management (CRM) system says.
Salespeople in the comments were split on whether Joel handled the situation correctly.
“You’re supposed to check the CRM before you start. You’re also not supposed to interrupt the customer experience,” wrote thecarsaleslady365. “Work out who is right or wrong after the sale. The customer doesn’t know your pay plan.”
Steven_horner took the same line, writing, “Two sides to every story. If the store had guidelines and a process is in place as far as how leads are handled, and they are following it each time, then it all shakes out in the end.”
What Washington State Actually Requires
Commission is wages in Washington state, which makes it subject to regulation. The state’s Department of Labor and Industries (L&I) says employees “must be paid for all work performed at the rate agreed upon with their employer,” and that the rate “can be an hourly wage, salary, flat rate, piece rate, commission” or a combination of those. The agreed rate in a dealership is the written pay plan, and whatever that document says about internet leads will usually decide a dispute like this one.
Every payday, an employer in Washington also has to hand over an itemized statement that includes “rate or rates of pay, gross wages and all deductions.” Where an employer pays less than a contract obliges, state law treats it seriously: doing so “wilfully and with intent to deprive the employee of any part of his or her wages” is unlawful, and the worker can sue for “twice the amount of the wages unlawfully rebated or withheld,” plus costs and attorney’s fees.
“Should be able to report your half deals to someone in the state,” wrote chrisg.hifi. Underpaid workers in Washington can indeed file a workplace rights complaint with L&I.
Others said they had been through similar frustrations. “Had three deals taken from under me after I finished the whole sale, then days later it turns around and gets turned to someone else,” wrote silent_.r6. Zjf864 suggested, “Document, document, document.”
Joel says he’s now looking for somewhere else to sell cars. “I love cars. I love people. I just want to find somewhere that’s honest, that treats me fair.”
Motor1 reached out to Joel via TikTok direct message for comment. We’ll be sure to update this if he responds.
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