microAmp
Diamond Member
Been reading the garage forum here since it opened up. Found out about Carfax.com and Edmunds.com's Hidden Salesman story from here. I also used Bloomberg calculators to give me a ball park idea of what my payments were going to be, estimating trade-in value of my old truck, buying price, and borrowing interest. Crunching numbers really helped me when I went into the fiance office.
This is what I got for $18,500, 24k miles.
2007 F-150 Super Crew
This is the old truck I had for 10 years.
1999 GMC 1500
See my thread of it here.
They gave me $2k for that GMC. 🙂
Not really required to read below, just sharing information for any future buyers.
This is where using the calculator a lot paid off:
I wanted a 4 year loan, which would put me in the $225 payment range, I knew I had good credit, 800+ on all 3 reporting companies before I bought my house almost 2 years ago, probably close to that number now, I never did check though.
Fiance guy told me a 5 year loan at 5.9% would be $230-240, I forget now. Which didn't sound right at all. When he changed it to a 48 month loan it jumped to $270, now of course that really doesn't make sense. I come to find out, he added a $1,500 extended warranty, while I tried to haggle with that, it didn't happen so I told him to remove it. His happiness became -1. He proceeded to tear off the copy and slowly write the word 'VOID'. 🙂
I had told him my bank, Chase, is running 5.25% and would prefer to go with them instead of 5.9%, he busted out a book and said he couldn't "find that low of a number." He called the loan company and they dropped it to 5.29%, good enough for me.
I asked him if there were anymore padding to that and said no.
So documents were starting to be signed. I kept an eye out for any dollar amounts on the documents. He presented one for some kind of theft protection and I saw $199, inquired about it and figured it he was padding on the price. Told him to remove it, happiness level -2.
Unfortunately for him he already printed out the main document, vehicle price, loan interest, trade-in, and the "theft protection" $199. He had to tear that up, happiness -3, he printed again, messed something up on the 2nd print out, -4, and again..., -5, 4th time was good.
End of story
Thanks ATG and that truck does park in my garage, with 2" or 3" to spare. 😀 Did a test drive with another truck like that to see if it would actually fit.
This is what I got for $18,500, 24k miles.
2007 F-150 Super Crew
This is the old truck I had for 10 years.
1999 GMC 1500
See my thread of it here.
They gave me $2k for that GMC. 🙂
Not really required to read below, just sharing information for any future buyers.
This is where using the calculator a lot paid off:
I wanted a 4 year loan, which would put me in the $225 payment range, I knew I had good credit, 800+ on all 3 reporting companies before I bought my house almost 2 years ago, probably close to that number now, I never did check though.
Fiance guy told me a 5 year loan at 5.9% would be $230-240, I forget now. Which didn't sound right at all. When he changed it to a 48 month loan it jumped to $270, now of course that really doesn't make sense. I come to find out, he added a $1,500 extended warranty, while I tried to haggle with that, it didn't happen so I told him to remove it. His happiness became -1. He proceeded to tear off the copy and slowly write the word 'VOID'. 🙂
I had told him my bank, Chase, is running 5.25% and would prefer to go with them instead of 5.9%, he busted out a book and said he couldn't "find that low of a number." He called the loan company and they dropped it to 5.29%, good enough for me.
I asked him if there were anymore padding to that and said no.
So documents were starting to be signed. I kept an eye out for any dollar amounts on the documents. He presented one for some kind of theft protection and I saw $199, inquired about it and figured it he was padding on the price. Told him to remove it, happiness level -2.
Unfortunately for him he already printed out the main document, vehicle price, loan interest, trade-in, and the "theft protection" $199. He had to tear that up, happiness -3, he printed again, messed something up on the 2nd print out, -4, and again..., -5, 4th time was good.
End of story
Thanks ATG and that truck does park in my garage, with 2" or 3" to spare. 😀 Did a test drive with another truck like that to see if it would actually fit.
