Help with negotiating with a car dealer

Parent Cafe
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<p>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.</p>

<p>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…</p>

<p>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:</p>

<p>-send a message to the internet department, asking for a quote on the particular model</p>

<p>-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.</p>

<p>-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. </p>

<p>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. </p>

<p>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…</p>

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<p>

Paid cash for that brand new car, Dad II?</p>

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<p>I once worked with a guy who had sold cars in the past, and he gave me this very good advice:</p>

<p>Do your homework, and decide before you go in what you are willing to pay. </p>

<p>Don’t tell them what car you’re looking for. Tell them what price you’re looking for.</p>

<p>Don’t haggle over anything except the bottom line.</p>

<p>Don’t fall in love with a particular car.</p>

<p>Be prepared to walk away, right up until the moment you sign on the dotted line.</p>

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<p>We have bought 2 cars using Costco and we were extremely pleased. We got incredible deals on both cars (a friend in the car business was shocked at what we got our cars for) and it was easy as pie. And the best part? NO negotiating. (I HATE negotiating with car dealers.)</p>

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<p>You have had plenty of VERY good advice. I actually LIKE car buying. I do my shopping in Dec for either the last years model, demo or certified. Currently, I’m looking at buying 4 GMC’s for my husband’s company. </p>

<p>Internet contacts have better pricing than walking in cold. After doing the edmunds.com research, etc., know what you want to spend…all in. Tax, tag, title, fees, etc., and be ready to walk. </p>

<p>Inthebiz…just tried Costco for the first time. I got the same dealer at the better price.</p>

<p>I never pays dealer fees unless they throw in loaners (you won’t get one with a Honda w/o asking), annual maintenance and oil changes. These all are necessary costs to the owner so see if you can factor in the service to offset the fees.</p>

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<p>You have been given great advice. We boyght a new Kia 2 years ago and spent several months in advance doing research on the Net—as to type of car, models, prices, dealers, etc. Nowadays you can go to the mfrs website and get details on list prices of everything, whether various options are single or must be in pakcages, etc (with Hondas there will be packages). And you can use the mfrs’ sites to steer you to local dealers and learn exactly what they have in their inventories, how they are equipped, etc.</p>

<p>I practically lived on the Edmunds site. </p>

<p>You can also go to the forums for the individual models and see what kind of repair histories they have.</p>

<p>The best way to finance is to bring in your own. We used DH’s credit union. We did not allow the dealers to start talking about financing. We found the car through the internet dept. </p>

<p>We also did not trade the old car. We gave it to the high school for the auto mechanic teacher to use. We got a tax break on it & we did not have to go through the ridiculous haggling over a couple hundred dollars, and we did not have to listen to that c…p at the dealer.</p>

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<p>Lots of good advice. Ther are a lot of good car-buying threads here (I pulled up 11 previous threads that I’d posted in just by searching on the word “Edmunds”). As someone mentioned, look at the Edmunds forum, and search for the “prices paid” threads in the car type you are considering. Then also run a “true cost to own” calculation on their site that looks at the cost, depreciation, insurance, repair costs, etc for that car. Very important and often overlooked part of a car purchase decision. Don’t forget to look at incentives available for the cars as well. </p>

<p>I like truecar.com. I found better deals than I could have gotten through the other car buying services (USAA, Costco, AAA, etc). Agree that you sould internet shop. Do not set foot in the dealership until the deal is done and you have a paper trail to support the agreed upon drive-out price. If you belong to a credit union, see if they have a relationship with fleet managers at the dealerships. Dealing with the fleet manager gets you a really good price. Good luck!</p>

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<p>Last time we tried to buy a new car, the dealer indicated he’d accept Xdollars over his invoice. He got out the invoice. I gave a quick look to the invoice, at the bottom I saw- “advertising costs $400.”.
I kne what this meant, but nevertheless, I was first to speak up, and I said- “Now about advertising… we will agree that you may put a dealer’s plate on our car, and we promise to leave it there for as long as we own this car, in exchange for $400.” He said, “What?” I said- Otherwise, we did not want any plate or emblem on the car advertising his dealership on the car. We did not want to advertise for his dealership for free. He responded that a plate was already on the car.
I said Great! That was an easy negotiation, wasn’t it?
Do research, be aware of the dealer buyback, too.</p>

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<p>When we bought our Elantra we had gone to one dealer for a test drive then went to another in a bigger city (thinking we’d get a better price - ha!). The second dealer really annoyed us, so we went to a parking lot and called the first dealer on the phone. Told him up front that if they added a dime to the price we agreed on we would walk. Did all the negotiating on the phone and got a good price. It actually seemed to work well doing it on the phone. No added fees. (the foul mood i was in after the other dealer tried to add $2000 to the sticker price for various bits of nonsense probably helped in the negotiating process - was not in the mood to be messed with)</p>

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<p>I have access to a car buying program through my work and some of the prices are really really good, some not so much. all depends on the make of the car.</p>

<p>That being said, I just bought a car (albeit used) and did all the negotiating myself. I was pretty proud of myself. They said that they don’t do negotiating on price because of the fact that their prices are priced so low. I’ll admit, their asking price was pretty good… but what i did was print out an ad for pretty much the same exact car at a dealership about an hour away and I took it with. That place was asking about 1000 less for the car… It was a different color and I wouldn’t have bought it anyway… didn’t like the color… but the dealership didn’t have to know that. I showed them the ad and they came down $500 on the price of the car and came up $300 on the price of my trade. They tried to get me to finance with them and I told them I already had financing lined up at my credit union at a very good rate. They asked what the rate was and I told them 2.8%… the guy looked at me like i was crazy. He then asked if i would mind signing something to let them run a credit check to see if he could possibly do any better but that he made no promises… I let him do it… They came back with 2.5 percent financing on a used car… which I found pretty good! It comes with free inspections, free oil changes, and free loaner cars for the lifetime of me having the car.</p>

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<p>well done fendergirl.
Prospective buyers sometimes don’t know the loan is a negotiating tool too. A loan arranged by the dealer gets dealer a kickback from lender. Buyers should know what their best deal is first, then offer to let dealer handle loan if he can match or beat the regular lender. He can come down a bit on price if he will get money for arranging the loan.</p>

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<p>I was pretty proud of myself… I never really negotiated the price of a car before… but I figured if I could negotiate the price of a house then a car shouldn’t be too bad.</p>

<p>I wound up at 2.5k under blue book value.</p>

<p>Definitely good advice as far as the loan thing goes. I mean I could have been bluffing about the 2.8 percent financing, which I wasn’t, but it got me 2.5 percent from them. They called around to like 10 different banks that they work with and got that for me… That being said, my credit score is really really good… so that might not work out so well for someone with not so hot credit. Sometimes you gotta take what you can get.</p>