This! Everybody want's to get rich off of somebody else and not have to do any work for it... This is the world we live in now, and sadly it will never get better. Our children and their children will have less and less.
We live in a country where very little product is actually made here anymore, most money is made on a "service". Eventually, it will all catch up that we really produce nothing of value. Sales tactics are just another "service". :huh
The service department is generally the supreme master of this crap. If the customer doesn't know any better, you can always screw 'em, and they leave happy, not knowing you just butt raped them. vThey wouldnt even think twice about throwing the manufacturer under the bus. what do they care, it's not their pockets getting dinged if a customer thinks they bought a lemon...not in the short term at least. So long as the customer "gives them a five rating."
I read this setting at my desk at the car dealership I work for. No I'm not in sales and totally get what you all are saying.
this ^^^^^ While back rang a dealer I'm unfamiliar with about a car. Lot of BS, radar is pinging hard. I ask the idiot about the price of the car I saw online. He says "uh, well, are you trading a vehicle"? I said "possibly". He says "what do you owe on it"? Long pause... I say "that is immaterial to the original question I asked you, what is the price of the car YOU are selling"? He says "No, it actually can affect the price of the car you want to buy"... Me... "click". Idiot... I fucking HATE car dealers.
Not true, watch the first episode of America revealed on pbs, production is at an all time high in this country I don't like dealing with dealers either, and have walked out of quite a few. I don't think you get screwed if you take the time to educate yourself before you go to one. It still pisses me off to see all the dealer add ons or the huge charge for a "rare" vehicle that you see all the time.
And you felt good about paying the advertised price on a used vehicle. Score another one for a dealer. I almost like new car shopping. It's the one time I get to be a dick to someone and not make my wife mad at me.
Unless it blows up a piece at a time, which is what my 2000 BMW 323Ci did. You can spend a lot of money making $900 decisions.
There's nothing WRONG with the dealer marking up a couple points on the financing. Nobody is forcing you to finance the bike at the dealership. I don't condone his little lying trick though. Most dealerships make most of their profit on the financing. An old girlfriend of mine was the finance manager at a large Lexus dealership in Texas and she always hated CASH sales because that meant she nor the dealership made any money of the sale of the car. Whenever I buy at a dealership I go in and negotiate the price with the salesman; never letting them know how I'll be paying. Once I negotiate the price they want to send you over to the Finance Manager, but you just say "No, please write up a buying agreement", that way you have the negotiated price in writing that the dealer is legal held to uphold. Take that down to your bank or credit union and get a ridiculously low interest rate. Come back the next day to the dealer with your check and drive out knowing they didn't screw you too badly.
See, this is one of the few posts on this thread I disagree with. If you're trading in the car, you're already accepting that you're going to take less on the car than you'd get selling it yourself--wholesale bluebook vs. retail bluebook. The difference is part of their total margin on the deal. If you're trading a car with a lot of equity or a popular model, he may be able to cut you a better deal. If he's able to make a little on the trade-in, he can accept a bit less on the car you're buying. It DOES make a difference in how the numbers run.
My experience has been that the dealer can write the same loan with my credit union as I can, and for the same interest rate. Why go through two stops when the end result is the same? My credit union puts their loan rates on their webpage, so it's not exactly a big mystery if an offered interest rate is any good or not.
Right - there is enough information available that if you do your homework you should be able to make the call whether it's an ok deal or walk away.
As long as you both come to terms and are happy who cares what the price is? Dealers are not the only ones that use tactics to improve there bottom line. The last two vehicles our family bought were used from private owners and we used a stragity to get the seller to lower the price. My youngest wanted A truck that blue booked at $23,000 and the seller was asking $21,000 . My oldest son and his wife looked at the truck and came to a deal at $19,500 if they could finance it at the bank. The next day they calld the seller and said bank would only loan $16.500 ( they never called the bank). I went and drove the truck and offered $15,000 was turned down instantly. My youngest son who wanted the truck in the first place bought it 2 days later for $17,000 after the seller had been soffened up on his view of what the truck was worth. Both the seller and my son were happy with the deal in the end. The seller called a couple weeks later and gave my son the aftermarket Diesel programer he realised he had about a 350 dollar item.
Wow, you must be super-proud of the lessons you and your son applied here. Please have the truck's seller join this site and read your comment and let's determine how "happy" he was with your "stragity".
Great way to screw yourself. A new vehicle is worth as much as you are willing to pay for it. If you do your own due diligence, you should be willing to pay a couple of hundred bucks over the dealer's cost. (assuming you have taken the time to educate yourself on topics such as holdbacks, floorplan return, rebates and incentives, etc...) If, and when, you decide to trade your vehicle in, it should never be used against you, as a tool to cloud the deal. your car is worth whatever somebody is willing to pay YOU for it. It doesn't matter if that's CarMax, the pimply faced kid down the block, or the dealer you're buying the replacement from. Once you educate yourself as to what your car is worth, you then decide if you benefit by trading it to the dealer. The trade is introduced into the dealer AFTER you have agreed that you will be paying X amount for the new car. Until then, you control the situation, and concentrate on spending as little time and effort as possible getting the deal that you will accept. Your logic of coming out with a better deal, since you have a desirable car, or that they are going to part with a new car for less, because of a trade in, is flawed. I have yet to hear from anybody on the inside of the business who ever said that you are better off clouding the deal with a trade. Ever wonder why the first thing out of the sales lizard's pie hole is, "what are you trading". Pretty simple, the money in new car sales is in financing deals, and flipping trades. At best the, trade should be shopped at two or three buyers, including a CarMax type dealership, a local used car dealer and a new car dealer. You are correct that it DOES make a difference in how the numbers are run. The difference is that most buyers are going to fuck themselves using your logic.
Bottom line, the seller had a choice and decided that he wanted the $17K more than he wanted the truck. His choice, he could have held out for more. It's called negotiating. It's how the world goes around. Everyone has their own tactics and their own values. Some people hate negotiating, value their time highly and happily pay retail to avoid the whole process. That's their choice. Other people will spend hours of their life searching the web to safe a buck, that's their choice. In the end each party has to want what the other party has in their hand more than what they already have in their own hand.
I get that I can insulate myself from some of the BS of I do my homework and learn how the games are played. But why should I have to? I guess what made me start this thread is my amazement that everybody who sells any sort of vehicle likes to play it this way. I worked in motorcycle sales twice in my 20s, both times for 3-4 months while I was looking for better work. Every night I went home feeling like crap, unable to wash off the stink. At the time, I just assumed that I was just working for worst-case, bottom-feeder dealers. Nope, three decades later, both of them are among the top 50 dealerships nationwide. What I've realized recently is that they aren't the exception, they're the norm; EVERY dealer -- new, used, car, bike, whatever -- is a bottom feeder. Aren't even a few of these dealer franchises owned by a decent guy who values his self-respect? ...I guess they are, from time to time, but none of those guys stays in business very long.