For anyone who hasn't gone with my brother Steve to buy a car, I highly recommend it. He's a much better salesman than I ever was. He seems to understand the car dealer games and really enjoys playing them right back. Quite honestly, those things are not my strong point. I can teach a child to read, but I certainly can't haggle like Steve can. One of the highlights of my weekend was going car haggling with Steve. I learned some valuable car buying information that I'm going to share with all of you. You never know when you'll need it.
- When a car is on one of those ads for a ridiculous price, it's important to first make sure that it's there. Then can go in, test drive it, and start the haggling process. However, the car dealer will inevitably try to add a markup for something. In my case this weekend, it was a markup of $3,000 for an auto alarm, Auto Armor (or something similar), and lifetime oil changes. Since my brother installs alarms and I used to detail cars at Crown Toyota (years ago), neither the alarm nor the Auto Armor were worth a penny to me. As for the lifetime oil changes, the car dealer was in San Bernardino (and was a Jeep dealer). There's no way that I'm going to San Bernardino for an oil change--even for free. So, the $3,000 markup was pretty much worth nothing to me. While the salesman and finance guys were nice, I'd prefer to keep that money.
- But, guess what? If you want to finance a car through a Jeep dealership in San Bernardino, they won't sell it to you without that markup. Doesn't that seem shady? It does to me. However, we found a loop-hole that was shared by an inside source.
- The loop hole is that if you get them started haggling and then tell them that you want to pay cash for the advertised price, they have to sell you the advertised car at the advertised price (no markup). Otherwise it would be false advertising. The trick here seems to be to get them interested in you AND make sure that they actually have the car in stock. Then switch to cash (come pre-financed and with a check) and buy the car.
- I should point out that besides wasting a tremendous amount of my time, they did give my wife and daughter soda and a free hot dog.
Good luck. If you already knew about this, then you are a step ahead of me. If you are a car dealer or car salesperson, I wish you happiness and prosperity--just not at my expense.
For anyone who hasn't gone with my brother Steve to buy a car, I highly recommend it. He's a much better salesman than I ever was. He seems to understand the car dealer games and really enjoys playing them right back. Quite honestly, those things are not my strong point. I can teach a child to read, but I certainly can't haggle like Steve can. One of the highlights of my weekend was going car haggling with Steve. I learned some valuable car buying information that I'm going to share with all of you. You never know when you'll need it.
6 comments:
Good lesson's for us all. We all knew the great gift of gab and salesmanship Steve has. Remind us again of that the next time we need to buy a new car. So did you get the car? What make and model? So how good is Steve at haggling the price of gas to fill the car so it can go ????? Have a good day. LOve, Aunt Sue and Uncle Frank
No car yet. We ended up determining that a cash deal was best, but it was at 4:30 on Saturday afternoon. I'm picking up a check today and hoping that the car offer is still good today. Technically, the offer runs only on days that the ad runs. I suspect that the ad is over today. We'll see. This particular car is a Jeep Compass.
Tim, Good luck getting the car. We know it will make your dad as well as I am sure Robin, Steve and Brian, feel alot better with your little family safely tucked in a nice new dependable new car. Try to stay cool it is going to be another" HOT" "HOT" "HOT" week ahead. LOve Aunt Sue and Uncle Frank
I just hope it was a very good soda and hotdog.
Marlene
I'll have to ask Robin, but I suspect that there isn't a soda or hot dog good enough to make a car dealer like that tolerable.
Hey Tim, just read about your fun time with the car dealer. You are right when Frankie and Elena went to get a toyota coralla in ad a few 4th of July's ago.The dealer tried the same mark up. But when they told him that they had the 13thousand in cash he almost seemed sad to sell them the car and at the price in the ad,and they had to drive around to a bunch of dealers to find one with the actual car on the lot.They did get it but like I said the saleman didn't seem happy that they were prepared ready to pay cash in hand including tax,lic, and fees. So how did the c-scan go? Well hopefully good ,see you soon love sam
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