Originally Posted by MrFatbooty
You guys are talking about all of these magic tricks that will help you get the car, and all of them are unnecessary. All that does is draw the process out longer than it has to be. You can get in and out of a car dealership rather quickly.
First thing you do is go in and talk to a sales person. If you get mobbed at the door and don't like the person who greets you, by all means walk past and find someone you think will be easier to deal with. From there, let them know what car you're looking at, and go with them to pick a car out from their inventory. Let them show you the car (assuming they actually know enough about it to show it to you), and then take it for a drive.
After the drive, a good sales person will ask you something along the lines of, "if I can work everything out 100% to your satisfaction, are you ready to take delivery of the car today?" Either that or they will ask you, "what would you like to accomplish today in regards to this car?" If you're there to buy the car, tell them you're there to buy the car. This is assuming of course that they haven't been pestering you a bunch of times up to that point to buy the car. If they do ask you that question, just tell them you want to make sure you like the car first before you try to work out a deal, and then when you decide you do actually want to buy the car you'll talk about numbers.
So, now comes the bargaining. The easiest way to get in and out with a good price is to know what a good price is ahead of time. I get plenty of customers who have no clue what the car costs nor how to negotiate. They ask for some ridiculous number and then when I tell them it can't be done they act as if leaving at that point is going to push me closer to that number. Not at all. It's really quite easy to negotiate a price in a short amount of time. Before you go to the dealership, look online and figure out the invoice price of the car.
When it comes time to talk about price, all you do is make an offer that is below the invoice of the car by whatever amount you feel like ($1500 is a good idea), with the full expectation that the sales person is going to come back with some number which is still above invoice. Also be sure to factor in any rebates (for example, if invoice is $18,000 and there's a $1,000 rebate, invoice is "really" $17,000 and you want to start somewhere below that number).
Once you make an offer, the sales person will sometimes ask you for a deposit. You can either make a deposit or not make a deposit, but it really doesn't matter. You can always get it back and since walking out gives you no more leverage, it's okay to go to that next level of commitment. The sales person will also typically ask you to fill out a credit application at this point. It's okay to fill out the form to save some time, but make it clear to them that you do not want them to actually pull the credit report until after you agree to a price.
After doing all this stuff, they will come back with a counter offer from management.
Thats how far me and my girlfriend got.
We agree on the trade in value of her car, but not the price of the car we want to buy which is a base model rsx. The sales person went to the management and came back with the first offer of 19,200. (not to confuse you... earlier, before we even test drove the car, the sales person said that maybe he could do 17,9XX for us.) Well anyway, we said no, you (sales person) told us 17,9xx. Then he said that he'll go back and talk to management.
The next thing we knew, he brung some dude in. The new dude introduce us as "management" and said that the price is 19,200 is fair. A little argue broke out. (New dude was "rude" and "cocky" . At this moment, we all felt like leaving and we did.
my question is, was this justified? What do you think mr.fatbooty or anybody who have knowledge about this. Thanks.
That was my first time at the dealership buying a new car and the experience was unpleasant. The salesperson was nice but i felt it was inapropriate that he came back with "management without even making a second offer.