Question(s) about negotiating for car at a dealership

[PhoKingGuy]

A lot of dealers now won't honor the truecar price. Hell even some of the dealers that are truecar certified won't honor that price now.

Pretty much every MB dealer in SoCal said they don't use it anymore.

 

[Jeff7]

You have to always show you have the advantage.
For example, you said Subaru dealers are scarce around your neck of the woods.
Just tell them time is on your side. You can wait until another dealer gets one in stock.
Even if you can't wait...at least pretend you can.

One of your cards is already showing, so get creative for a bit.

Based on the recommendations in this thread, I'm playing 51-pickup right now, in the dealership, and they all landed face-up. :\
I did initially go to them in a bit of a rush because I thought my car was worse-off than it really was. I got it nicely patched up, so the rush went away, and they're aware of that fact.

But,
- Financing was already discussed.
- Trade-in value of my current car was already discussed. (They don't want to bother with my car at all, and were only offering scrap value. I was even told that I could salvage whatever components out of it that I felt still had value, they didn't care.)
- I don't even know what else. The last time I bought a car was also the first time. That was in 2000 - the Elantra I've got for sale. The seller rebuilt insurance wrecks. The cars were posted for a price, and that's what you paid or else you got no car. Those prices didn't seem too bad though.
- Seriously, I don't know how to negotiate for things. :\


What manner of thing would be "creative" at this point?
How much farther can the price reasonably be pushed? Is Edmund's price thing right about at the limit?

 

[foghorn67]

Based on the recommendations in this thread, I'm playing 51-pickup right now, in the dealership, and they all landed face-up. :\
I did initially go to them in a bit of a rush because I thought my car was worse-off than it really was. I got it nicely patched up, so the rush went away, and they're aware of that fact.

But,
- Financing was already discussed.
- Trade-in value of my current car was already discussed. (They don't want to bother with my car at all, and were only offering scrap value. I was even told that I could salvage whatever components out of it that I felt still had value, they didn't care.)
- I don't even know what else. The last time I bought a car was also the first time. That was in 2000 - the Elantra I've got for sale. The seller rebuilt insurance wrecks. The cars were posted for a price, and that's what you paid or else you got no car. Those prices didn't seem too bad though.
- Seriously, I don't know how to negotiate for things. :\


What manner of thing would be "creative" at this point?
How much farther can the price reasonably be pushed? Is Edmund's price thing right about at the limit?

hmmm, not sure at this point. I was all set and ready to get the game on and look for a car I wanted...until my car go wrecked. Then I had a couple of weeks to find one.
I'm not the best either, I was ready to try until life threw me a curveball.
Maybe some others can chime in.

 

[SandEagle]

Confessions of a Car Salesman. Mandatory reading.
http://www.edmunds.com/car-buying/confessions-of-a-car-salesman.html

 

[Gillbot]

A lot of dealers now won't honor the truecar price. Hell even some of the dealers that are truecar certified won't honor that price now.

Pretty much every MB dealer in SoCal said they don't use it anymore.

Many dealerships that have high volume won't negotiate much. They know if you walk out the door, another sucker will walk in 10 minutes later. The only thing you can do in that situation is negotiate as much as you can, or find another place to buy.

 

[Jeff7]

Ok, I'm back. And I now have a new, nifty:awe:, and expensive:\ machine.

Confessions of a Car Salesman. Mandatory reading.
http://www.edmunds.com/car-buying/confessions-of-a-car-salesman.html

Related article: Inside the finance office.

Then I'd say, "The first option is the Platinum plan, a five-year loan at 8 percent, which has a seven-year, 70,000-mile extended warranty, which more than doubles the factory warranty. It includes life and disability insurance; it also offers paint protection and undercoating. The payment for that is $480 a month." Then I'd describe the Gold Package which would have a payment of $440, and the Bronze at $420.

Here's the funny thing: half of all customers would pick one of the plans without asking any further questions. That means I just sold three things with a five-minute spiel whereas previously it took half an hour and I wound up sounding like a broken-down vacuum cleaner salesman.

That's almost exactly what I was shown today. Their menu had 4 categories, which were given that same sort of naming scheme: Basic Cheap SOB, Awesome, Super-Awesome, and Epically Superbly Awesome. (Ok, maybe not quite exactly that.)
She didn't really let up on the warranty/insurance sales pitch for awhile, so I let her go on to explain how amazingly awesome everything on the high-tier thing was, but I ended up declining it all. The costs shown were all the low, low, amazingly-low monthly costs. Nevermind that those costs are of course multiplied by the # of months in the payment term. For example, the key replacement insurance ends up being $250. (Yes, the fancy key that this car uses is expensive to replace, since it has the security system's electronics built into it. But in 11 years of owning my Elantra, I still have the original key and the copy I had made right after I bought it.) She kept going on with the personalized tales about how she's always losing keys, and how the extra antiglare coatings are so awesome, and so on.

And there were the other tactics of course: "Oh, I love this car!", or this, from that article:

Here's how Dave did it. He would start by asking the customer a question he knew they would say yes to. So he'd say, "Do you like this car?"
Obviously, they would say yes since they had just agreed to buy it.
"I bet you'll really enjoy taking this car on vacation."
Of course they said, "Yes."
So then he'd ask, "So I'm sure you'll want to buy an extended warranty to protect your investment?"
And they often said, "Yes."

Unfortunately for her, my answers weren't quite the stream of affirmatives that she was likely after. Oh well.


The price I ended up with on the car was about $1000 less than the MSRP for this configuration, right around where Edmunds said it would be. (Plus sales tax, and their nice markups on PENNDOT's fees.) Some of the extras were things that I didn't really need, nor did I request them, but in the interests of selling a car sooner rather than waiting for a perfectly-customized one to come in, they kept the price the same.