...And dealers wonder why they're so hated!

Characterizing blatant lies as simply "negotiating" is exactly what I was criticizing dealers for in my original post. Frankly, I don't find it any more honorable or justifiable when an individual does it.

Yeah, and the inverse is true as well: many people these days are upside-down on their trade and the dealer has to pad the deal to manage the payoff their last stupid purchase. The average purchaser just simply does not care enough to do something about it. They want the old car gone, the want the keys to the new car they're salivating over and they want a monthly payment they can afford. You tailor your sales methods to your largest audience.

There are also the trades that the dealer just flat does not want (too old, too beat up or whatever). Maybe the dealer is trying to get that out of the way so they don't get sucker-punched at the end of the transaction with a car that is upside-down, leased and/or damaged (I know a woman who traded in a car that was all three of those--she got gang-banged on that transaction).

The fact is: the dealer has to make money. That's what they're in business to do. The trade may or may not factor into what the person can afford and the flip of the trade could play into that. You are correct that in most cases, the buyer gets screwed. That's what they allow to happen. Want a fair deal? Throw all the variables on the table, run the numbers a couple of ways and decide whether you want it doggy, cowgirl or missionary. If none of those options appeal to you, get up and walk. Easy-peasy.

It's a tactic. Not one I'd use, but we all have different standards. If you expect every party in every negotiation to be 100% honest, then you're going to be disappointed.

For me it comes back to the bottom line, the seller wanted the $17K more than he wanted the truck. The buyer wanted the truck more than he wanted the $17K. In some ways the dance you go through to get there is irrelevant, as long as both parties are happy with the bottom line, the deal happens. If they're not then it doesn't.

I doubt the seller was 'happy'....

Then he didn't have to make the deal. He could have walked away and tried for a better deal. He chose to take the "bird in the hand", nobody was standing there with a gun to his head.

You are all over the map on this one? No real need for a recap of what other stupid people do, you are obviously intelligent enough to avoid most of that anyway. I respond to your post that incorrectly states that it's a good idea to muck up a deal by bring the trade to the table first. You then respond that you indeed are well versed in the process, know that most buyers get screwed ( a significant percentage by following your initial "advice" BTW) and then once again advice to show up, throw yourself to the wolves, and take a look at how bad the wounds are. Sorry, but you really don't make a hell of a lot of sense?

It's pretty simple.
1) Educate yourself as to what you should pay for the new vehicle.
It takes a few minutes on places like Edmunds to do so.
2) Get several real world offers to purchase your vehicle.
3) shop for financing from local banks, credit union, etc...
4) Tell the dealer what works for you, and if you don't want to play with jerk-offs on the floor, do your deal with the internet sales manager
5) Got what you needed? Great. didn't work out? There is another one down the road, keep moving.

You are obviously smart enough to not walk in and say, "I would like to be fucked" as you are recommend other do. All the other noise about beat up trades, letting the dealer run all kinds of scenarios, upside-down, lease returns etc.... has nothing to do with it.

You walk in like Forest Fuckin' Gump and say, "I like yer' shiny car, and I gots a trade" you get what you deserve, Recommending it as a business practice is a little fucking weird.

I love negotiating. I don't limit it to vehicles; my wife is always getting embarrassed by my bargaining in places where people don't usually bargain in this country

But you can do it, and do it effectively, without being directly dishonest, I think. Call it bad karma or whatever, but I am the person who has to look at myself in the mirror in the morning, and there's a definite ethical line I don't cross even when dealing with a car dealer, much less a private seller.

I'm just speaking generally -- every situation is different and in the end it comes down to specifics and what works. I've had people try and play games when I've been selling a vehicle, and I just say no thanks and move on; it's not something I find interesting to be involved in.

I don't doubt it. I merely pointed out, I doubt he was 'happy'. Desparate to sell maybe, happy with what he got for his truck ? Doubtful.

No wolves involved until you sign the contract. The contract ain't that hard to read and nobody says you have to sign it. I was originally responding to this:

The salesman is simply collecting details. He writes an offer based on what your situation is, you review the offer, you negotiate the details, then you either buy or you walk.

Hanging up on the salesman (Barry--above) who is just collecting details about the transaction (same as the buyer is doing) is the equivalent of slamming the door in your own face. I was simply trying to educate--cite examples of why a salesman might be asking those kinds of questions at the beginning of a negotiation. There is no up-front pricing so asking "the price" is irrelevant until you sit down and start running ALL of the numbers and formulating an offer.

D H is right. Sometimes trading in a car lowers the price by knocking the sales tax down enough to justify trading rather than selling yourself. A good trade can lower the overall cost in a high sales tax place like Maryland. So I would at least let the guy run the numbers and tell me where he is at with the whole deal.

As long as you have a good idea what the invoice cost, dealer holdback, incentives, taxes, etc. are you should have a pretty good idea whether the guy is yanking your chain when he comes up with a price. So I at least let them do that much. That is their job after all. You have to start the negotiation some place.

The only time it didn't work that way for me was the Jeep dealer where we bought a new Cherokee. They were blowing them out and the salesman's initial offer was "$50 over our invoice plus delivery and we make our money on the holdback". Our trade deal came after that offer. That one was so easy it almost wasn't fun. Almost.

If this happened to me as a seller, I'd be thrilled I had three people looking to buy it. I'd have held my initial price since I obviously under priced it to begin with.

I was told long ago
The best deal is when the Seller and the Buyer shake hands and both leave pissed.

I went to my local Stealership to look at a Super Tenere, not even fully assembled, $14,900.. so I told him that i'll just wait until march and see then. next day another dealership had a add on CL saying all remaing inventory on blowout prices. so I called. No S10's, I told him where I priced one and that he was stuck on list +. he chuckled and said "when I get ready let him know, and he'll buy it from that dealer and give me a heck of a deal"


needless to say , i'm not going to hold my breath on a blowout deal



as for trade in on our cars, I work at a auto parts store, and have several mechanic friens who I can borrow tools and what ever, when we get a new one, the old one is so ragged out no one would want it. last was a 1996 chry. minivan with 180k on the clock, traded it in 2008. dealer said I just had to be able to drive into the lot

/\ That made my brain hurt. /\

So close, yet so far.

I went to a Toyota dealer one night to look at a used Toyota Sienna. Then went next door to a Dodge dealer. Decided to go back and buy the Sienna, and in the 30 minutes I was gone they fired the rep I talked to.

Manufacturing employment increased in the U.S. Last year for the first time since 1998.

Sorry, I call bullshit. The price of their car, is the price of their car, regardless of if I owe $1, $1000, or $10,000 on my car. Not buying that for a second. My guess is their price is a moving target, which is also bullshit.

Barry

If you have decided to trade your car in, then the real test of the deal is the spread between the two numbers, not the price of the new car alone. I bought a car a few years ago, phoned a bunch of dealers to get prices, and hands down the best deal was from the dealer who wouldn't budge off of MSRP -- but came WAY up on the trade in value. My theory was that they wanted to be able to say to walk in customers "Sorry, these always sell for MSRP," but really I didn't care because it beat the other offers by an even $2000.

And from talking with salespeople (hell, you are usually stuck there for a couple hours, so I use the time to ask questions about how the business works), a really large percentage of buyers are upside down on their loans. Obviously buying a new car is the wrong decision in most of those cases, but the reality is that the dealer needs to know about that in order to structure a deal that can be financed.

I guess what I'm really saying is that I haven't seen a lot of gain in playing coy and not telling them about the whole situation. I need to see both numbers (new car price and trade in value) to know if it is a good deal or not; just knowing the new price doesn't tell me anything. If you aren't trading in, then of course things are simple and you just need the out-the-door price.

I know I'm spoiled, but my last few encounters with dealers have been positive. Maybe it's NH.
I bought my moto (used) from a small family-run dealer. What I paid was peanuts compared to most of their stock (BMW) but, 3+ years after the sales guy still says "hello" to me by name every time I'm in there.

A few years ago at the Saab dealer, I researched and came up with a borderline low-ball figure for the used Saab 9000 I wanted, figuring that we'd go up a little. Gave the sales guy the number, and he said "OK", and that was that. Bought a 9-5 from them a few years later, not quite as good on the money part, but no BS either.

Another Saab and another dealer (new/used but not the Saab dealer), when we bought the car, they disclosed they had replaced the alternator. I was fine with that, but a month after we got the car the alternator died, and it ended up getting towed to an indie repair shop. We called the sales guy, asked if the alternator was warrantied, he checked and said it was, and the dealer ran a free replacement, that they had to order in, to the shop that had the car. They could have easily told me to go suck eggs, as the car, was not warrantied but didn't.

OTH many years ago, my wife was looking to buy a new car, we spent a very frustrating day going to various dealers on an "Auto Row" in So Cal. We were looking at an Izuzu something-or-another, I think, not very familiar with them, wife asks sales guy what he can tell us about the car, his response? "The wheels go around":huh. Got out of there as fast as possible.
At every stop, when the sales guy greeted us, I'd say "She wants to buy a car, I'm only along for the ride" and they would only talk to me.
Last place we went, it was a sales woman, did the usual, and poof!, I no longer existed. The lady had direct, accurate, no bs answers to every question, and sold a car that night.

That is the industry view - that a controlling, often coercive influence strategy is the most efficient approach.

The industrial sales view is that asking a question like "What do you owe" before establishing the needs of the buyer and why he may or may not trade in a vehicle on a new purchase is not of value to the buyer: it is of value to the seller.

When I meet a salesperson who doesn't even have a phone extension or email address, it's proof that the dealership is still practicing these outmoded methods. We buy one or two vehicles a year at work and now I just find a dealer who will make the deal by email only, or we buy private sale. It's not worth the time to deal with them.