Help with negotiating with a car dealer

musicprnt
Wed, 30 Nov 2011 19:37:03 +0000

I agree with others, most of those ‘administrative fees’ and such are a way for the dealer to jack up the effective price of the car without doing anything (unlike, for example, the fees for getting the registration and plates for you). Dealers have all kinds of tricks, and it is important to get them to spell out the entire cost of buying a car, spelling out all the ‘fees’ before figuring out, who is better.

The car buying services do okay, though I would be leery about getting a price from them and then finding ‘administrative’ fees added on at the end, that used to happen (not sure now) by the dealer…

Research is really important, there are a ton of car buying services out there that can help you figure out what is going on, what the cost is and so forth. After doing the research you can do one of two things:

-send a message to the internet department, asking for a quote on the particular model

-Or figure out what price you want to pay, based on invoice costs and research, and say “I am willing to pay this cost, X, total with all fees and such, I have a check to pay for it already” and see what they say. They may counteroffer or tell you its impossible, and if they say its impossible, tell them “then I’ll keep trying until i find the right price”…odds are 50-50 unless your price was absolutely ridiculous that you may get them to agree, or at least near what you offered.

-Beware of the special financing offers, the .9% and so forth, it is attractive, obviously (or 0%), but usually when you do those they jack the price up for the car and are usually unwilling IMO to negotiate when you take their financing, it could be a better deal to get outside financing and buy it with that in hand.The ads if you notice say “dealer contribution may effect price” and believe me it does, when it comes to rebates and such.

If you are going to take advantage of incentive financing, go in there knowing what you want to pay and negotiate and don’t mention the financing, have them lock into the total cost including fees before mentioning financing. There could be a loan origination fee, but if you leave the financing to the end you will end up paying less then if you mention it earlier, believe me.

Unfortunately, despite all the hype about how dealers are more customer friendly and such, how it is all now so much better, it isn’t really, dealers have a lot of tricks they can use and the best weapon is go in knowledgeable and have as much of the price worked out before setting foot in there…