How Do You Bargain With Car Dealers?

OK, I'm sure we've all heard the old saying "Nobody pays sticker price." But I did, for the first new car I ever owned - a 1970 Plymouth Duster. I fell in love with it at first sight, and, in my defense, I was much younger.

Anyway, what do others use as bargaining techniques? Shopping around and playing one dealer against the other is one thing that comes to mind. Any other ideas?

I just bought a 2006 Buick Lucerene and used Edmunds.com and several others to determine what dealers invoice was. I ended up paying 1000 under invoice.

Here is another I used

www.carbuyingtips.com...

In order to determine the invoice first you have to obtain a list of all included equipment and options/dealer incentives on the car then go to Edmunds.com and follow the step by step instructions to get the actual dealers invoice. If the incentives are not listed Edmunds has them.

Once you have the dealer invoice then you can go from dealer to dealer and offer them what you think would be a fair price.(make sure you show them the print out of what invoice should be so they know you are not kidding and prove you did your homework

Some dealers will say after all is said and done well we have to add 2,000 dealer mark-up don't believe it even that price can be negotiated.

The bottom line here is the Internet is your best advice you can get but do not use just one site, compare several even they vary. I just happened to like Edmunds but it was recommended to me..

Also if you are planing on trading in a car make sure you use Kellybluebook.com to determine the value of your trade in and what suggested dealer retail for the car would be on a local dealer lot.
More then likely you will have a dealer low ball the price and offer you only wholesale insisting he has to use it since they do not keep the cars on their lot, when in fact at times they do.

(Suggestion here) You might consider selling the car yourself that is what I did,. The dealer lowballed me and I told him that was down right insulting he offered only 6000k yet on a dealers lot they were going for 12000 to 14500 depending on condition and mileage of course. When we first started to look my wife put up a picture with the original invoice of the Aurora on the company board and even before we were finished making the final deal we had several buyers lined up. We ended up selling it for 10,000 simply because we wanted to get rid of the car, but I think if we held out we might have been able to get more, yet in the end it was better to take it so we did not loose the buyer. Note the dealers going price and the price we sold it for was below the going dealers suggested rate and done intentionally.

Financing is a whole new issue, but I did not finance mine so never looked it up, but I understand that you are better off using your own bank versus GMAC, Ford or whatever company dealers use.

Finally some websites say they will even find a dealer for you, but I knew were I wanted to end up buying so I did not pit one dealer against the other. I just made my offer and the dealer took it because I knew the service manager from the Oldsmobile dealer I had done business with for over 25 years who had gone out of business when GM Stopped making Olds .

Hope that helps.

[edit on 12/12/2006 by shots]

The biggest secret in the car business is Dealer Cash, and there is no website that reports on this.

Dealer Cash is basically a "rebate" from the manufacturer to the Dealer. It could be as low as $500 and as high as $5,000.

So if you are buying "under invoice" I can guarantee you Dealer Cash is involved.

Oh but it is on the internet. Had you checked Edmunds.com you would have found it.

Dealer Holdback

jsobecky-

Looks like others here have offered you some good advice. One thing to keep in mind is that sales people are trained in their art (and they advance their skills everyday) giving them an advantage over you if you like it or not.

You can go into the dealership with printouts from Edmunds or BlueBook etc but the dealer will tell you something... i.e. "yes well that model is in high demand in this region of the country and this is what they are going for" (as they hand you their own printout).

A couple of tricks for ya...

1) When researching the car you're interested in pay attention to scheduled maintenance too. Maybe the car you like has 52k miles on it and it needs a new timing belt at 60k... those can be expensive. Work that into the negotiations. *hint- wait till a deal has been all but reached and then spring it on them. Chance are you will make an offer and they will make you a counter offer. This process will repeat itself several times. Save a couple surprises for the salesman for the end*

2) *MOST IMPORTANTLY* If you took a class in negotations trust me they would teach you this. When you go to shop/negotiate have a price in your head that you absolutely WILL NOT go above no matter what the circumstances are. Trust me this is the best advice anyone can give you! Remember they have something you want (THE CAR) and they are well practiced in getting you to make an impulsive decision. This price that you choose BEFORE you go into the dealership is your final foolproof safety net.

Thanks for all the tips and advice. I'm still in the "thinking about it" stage. President's Day sales will be here shortly - supposedly there are deals to be had during then.

My sister wanted a nice car once that was priced pretty high for a used vehicle. My brother-in-law did a little research and then went to the dealership and offerred the salesman $8,000 dollars cash for it. The salesman laughed at him. The next day he called the salesman and said the offer of 8 grand was still there. The salesman hung up on him. The next day he sent him a fax offering the eight thousand...on and on for days on end he kept making the same offer.

It took three weeks but he paid eight thousand and drove off in the car.

Maybe the salesman really needed the sale in the end. Maybe it was because the car had been on the lot that long and hadn't sold. Who knows.

Just something I thought i'd toss into the mix....

One that I found out the hard way is: Never tell them you have a trade in until you seal the deal on the car you're looking at otherwise your losing money. Seal your deal then tell them you have a trade in.

I wear a short skirt. Doesn't hurt to have perfect credit too.

I do research 1st,one thing to remember as you walk onto car lot they size you up,I always wore old clothes and come with a firm price in your head don't be afraid to get up and walk off saying"I guess I'll go to I would say a dealer down street" and tell them your neighbor bought a comparable car at the price in your range,and keep in mind when they leave you alone in the sales office they have a microphone in their so when they leave they listen to the pros and cons,never say"I really want this car" they will use it against you

That always makes me smile when women flirt with me to get a better price! And ya know what? It works

I actually sell cars for a Chevrolet-Buick dealer and have been for many years. Truth is, all of the suggestions above are terrific. If I can add a few things, make sure you do not tell a sales person about your intention to trade your vehicle until the very end. This will eliminate the old ‘over-allowance’ trick where you are shown a certain figure on your vehicle and are actually being given a lesser amount.

In an over-allowance situation all that is done is to take the difference between what is actually given, let’s say $5,000 and what is “shown” like $8,000 and rolling the balance to either the top-line selling price or the back-end (after market items or extended warranties typically constitute ‘back-end’) of the deal.

You see, the 3k is actually spread out in other areas of the deal to give the illusion that you are getting what you want for your trade in. If you pop the trade on them at the end, there is no way to manipulate the figures because they have already been presented.

Now, before everyone boos and hisses because I sell cars, let me just say for the record; there isn’t a lot of profit now in this business. Because of the market being down and sites like Edmunds.com aiding in educating the consumer, a typical commission on a car deal is about $200. Now, if you factor in the fact that the average car salesman sells 2-3 cars a week you can see that it’s not incredibly lucrative. Now that being said; used vehicles are a completely different animal. There is typically about a $3000 mark up between sticker and what has been invested in the car (including safety inspection, detail, and any repair orders that have been associated with the unit). Keep that in mind when shopping for used vehicles.

The reason that dealerships usually hit a trade with a wholesale figure is because the dealer buys a lot of his inventory from an auction. I assure you that a dealer will not put more money in a trade-in then what a particular vehicle is fetching at auction. They wouldn’t be in business very long.