It appears that you have a good view of the dealer side of the car buying/selling process, but still don't understand (i) efficient markets, and (ii) professionalism and courtesy. if you read any publication or article on buying a car -- articles and conventional wisdom from the buyers point of view -- you'll quickly see that the key to getting a fair deal is knowing the price that folks are paying for comparable cars in your geographic area, and the dealer invoice cost for the car. All the other crap you're spewing about payroll, employee benefits is quite irrelevant to the car buying process. All dealers have overhead and payroll costs. All dealers must pay a cost for the car. They compete for the same business. Price, professionalism and service are huge factors in any business where the item being bought and sold is fungible Set aside everything I've said here. It seems that your view of things is that the buyer should waltz into the dealership with no information, no idea of what is a good price, and hope the salesman finds it in his good heart to cut the buyer a good deal. If you've negotiated anything of value or importance, you know that the only way to be successful is to gather facts, like dealer cost data and prevailing market conditions. Alternatively, you think people should walk into a dealership, attempt to negotiate, but throw out numbers with no basis in fact. So I offer 26K on the camry that is listing at32K, but have no salient argument to pursuade the dealer that my offer is fair. It's just my random ass thought about what he should let me pay. then the dealer comes back with another random ass number, say 31K, and we negotiate back and forth, possibly settling at a number that I have no idea whether is fair or reasonable. There's a term of art for what you're advocating -- bending over and taking it in the arse. I can't fathom how youre still missing the point: people can negotiate based on fact and do so directly, but be polite and courteous at the same time. Frankly, to do so is efficient, clear and saves everyone a lot of time and effort. Where it fails is when a party is taking liberties with the facts or acts like an A-hole, both of which occurred at Sterling McCall Toyota. Finally, I have purchased hree cars in my adult life. 2001 Audi, 400 above dealer cost. 2004 Pilot, $350 above dealer cost. 2007 Lexus, $950 above dealer cost. Each time the dealership was courteous, direct and appreciative of the approach. If you've chosen some random ass fashion to buy cars in your life, it's your own money you're wasting. Try again.
funny thing is, invoice isn't even the dealers real cost. they can get the vehicles for thousands less. even if a dealer is selling the vehicle at the internet invoice, their still making money. btw - the overhead is bull****. employee payroll? what payroll when most of your employees salaries are based on commission? your fighting a losing battle yancy. give up. i don't think anyone here is stupid enough to believe your bs pitch.
Correct, the dealer does have more room than invoice depending on how quickly he sells the car. Good point. This is why RD really has no idea how much any dealer ever made selling him a car. He only knows the difference between invoice and what he paid. Incorrect regarding overhead. Sales is only a portion of the employees at a dealership. You have you GM, your sales managers, you F&I people, your porters, your service staff, your comptroller, your cashier, your internet and IT team. You have to maintain a multi million dollar facility including utilities and taxes. Did you know that it costs the average dealer around $200.00 in advertising for each up that walks onto the lot? The cost is around $300.00 in smaller cities. I really don't understand what you mean by "pitch". I'm not pitching anything. I just really don't think from RD's story that anything happened which warranted him created a thread calling SM an ahole dealership. Riley, you may have thought the man was rude. I can guarantee you that it was because you suggested, as you claim in your first post, that you needed to sit down with him and "let's see if we can reach an agreement on how much profit (dollars over their cost) the dealership should make on this." Every sales seminar and negotiating class from Carnegie to Ziglar to Karrass says that this is a major warning sign and don't waste your time with a customer like this. Can you imagine what would happen if you walked into any other place of business and said "let's figure out how much profit you should make on this?" The business owner would say "I already know how much profit I should make on this, and I have priced the item accordingly. Pay that amount or piss off." Now on the other hand, if you made a counter offer, that is reasonable negotiating. No one has a problem with that. The key difference, and what set me off about this, is that you wanted to determine how much profit the dealer should make, instead of determining what amount you would pay for the car. Two different things. You will never know how much the dealer is making on the car. You would have recieved a much different reaction from the Sales Manager if you had told him "I like the car, I am willing to pay XXX for it". Negotiations would begin and the two of you would try to find a price at which he would sell and you would buy. If the Sales manager were say something specifically insulting or offensive, that would be a good reason to start a thread like this, but I think it is completely understandable for him to be put off by your initial suggestion.
We've bought 2 Toyota 4-Runners in the last 3 years from Joe Myers Toyota. On the first one, we saw my '01 4Runner on the internet for $16,800 and they tried to sell us it for the dealership lot price of $18000. My dad didn't like that too much and the dealership finally agreed to our price but not after my dad had to talk to their sales manager and hand us a paper of their costs on the car, while saying "sir, this is what we paid for this, do you think the price of $16800 is fair?". We're like, yes. Yes we do, lol. Only issue on that one, the sales guy himself was really nice. The second time (just a month ago), we traded in our old cars for a '06 4Runner. The sales guy took care of us this time, dad did negotiations again. Sales manager surprisingly agreed to our price without much hassle since we had bought my car from them. The warranty department gave us a bit of a run around though on the limited-powertrain warrant versus the full coverage. Dad got pretty pissed about that because our sales guy got through talking about how great our limited powertrain warranty was. We ended up getting the full warranty but not without my dad giving them a piece of his mind. Overall, I don't think any dealership is easy easy. Joe Myers seems to be fairly respectable though, but bring your negotiating skills.
just a general question, and excuse my ignorance, but when did the business of negotiating in the car-buying industry come up in the first place? why isn't it standard practice to buy at a set price, like you would cat food at wal-mart? when did it become a harwin wholesale place?
Dealer costs also includes floor planning, GM, F&I and etc. you'll see more an more consolidation of dealerships going into the future because the smaller guys are gonna find it harder to compete instead of just cashing out right now when they can, which is something that might be worse for the market in the long term. Add in the fact that the price of entry of car dealership is really high, I shudder to think what the industry will be like in 30 years.
I like the Carmax business model a lot, but then a lot of people dis-likes them because they feel they can get better deals elsewhere after "negotiation". You also have brands like Saturn that don't negotiate (or has that changed?) for new vehicles. Don't know where it starts but it'll be harder for it to change as long as the saviers shoppers keep a better deal. Also it's a much bigger deal to sell a 20K+ car then some cat food.
I'm a consumer lawyer. This sort of thing happens at tons of dealerships throughout the whole country. We call them MacArthur contracts or yo-yo deals because after you have already bought the car, they yo-yo you back in and force you into a worse deal. There is a race to the bottom going on right now among car dealers.
kinda off topic. i traded in a vehicle a few months ago. i just received a registration notice for the vehicle i sold to the dealership. is this normal? i filled out the vtr form (change of ownership) and mailed it to txdot in austin. do dealerships wait until the vehicle is sold prior to transferring ownership? i thought it was something they did immediately?
