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Haggling Heaven: Your feedback on haggling for cars

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  • vikingaero
    vikingaero Posts: 10,920 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    Anon wrote: »
    This may sound a silly question (I know, no such thing on MSE ... read on!), but is there any hard and fast rule when buying a used/nearly new car about how much to start your offer below the asking price at a main dealers? How much profit is built into a car?

    When I went in recently a Vauxhall Zafira was just over £12,000, they offered around £3000 part exchange for mine and the salesman claimed that at that they were about breaking even with a £1 profit or so - I walked away but wondered if this was realistic (were they being honest? £1 on a car sounded as though it was designed to make you feel sorry for them!) or how much to try to negotiate it down from this?

    Many thanks

    Anon

    Sometimes it is realistic. They may sell the car for not much more than they paid Vauxhall. But what they forget to mention is the registration bonus paid by the manufacturer for meeting that month/quarter/six-month/annual target. Sometimes for big dealerships that can be worth a couple of million.
    The man without a signature.
  • plane_boy2000
    plane_boy2000 Posts: 1,482 Forumite
    I bought a very discounted citroen picasso for her indoors a few years back. Local dealers would not touch the price and told me that there was no way a dealer could sell me a brand new one for that price. After ordering I was chatting to the sales manager about the large discount and not being able to get it anywhere else - he told me that he got a massive volume bonus from citroen and that he could afford to sell cars at cost if it meant he would hit his targets and get his big fat bonus cheque. Unfortunatly I guess that may mean that the best deals are to be had from the big dealer chains rather than your small dealer down the road.

    Re the car supermarket in derby - I dont think that they are as cheap as they used to be - my local VW dealer can match them Passats easily, plus no silly admin / valet charges, full service before delivery and some aftercare.
  • flybabe
    flybabe Posts: 22 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture Combo Breaker
    I ordered my brand new Toyota Yaris SR today. After tips from this site, I managed to negotiate £1000.00 off the list price (including a £50.00 Mont Blanc fountain pen thrown in for free and a litre of Sicillian red wine from the bemused salesman).

    I went prepared with the best prices from internet car brokers, a £250.00 off loyality voucher (issued by another Toyota dealer, but honoured by the dealer I purchased from) and a "quite good price mate, but throw this in for free and you've got a deal!" attitude.
  • Poodge
    Poodge Posts: 26 Forumite
    Whilst I agree with a lot of what DealDrivers has written I would say that in my experience pre registered vehicles are not always those vehicles which are hard to shift. I know many dealerships who will order large quantities of vehicles with the intention of shifting them quickly and obtaining volume bonuses. I know of one such dealership that was supplying Ford Rangers with big savings on that had only been pre registered 4 weeks earlier. Yes I would agree that the residual value is affected but this is marginal and really only because you are the second owner of the vehicle. As for being them being superseded shortly after you obtain them, this is happening less and less as manufacturers reduce production on outgoing models when they ramp up the new models. Your main point about shopping around is a good one. And when you think that you have squeesed everything out of the salesman think about how you are going to fund the vehicle. Its often financially beneficial for them to sell you finance for the vehicle, see if its cheaper to take this finance rather than paying cash. They may be able to drop the % or give you a further discount.

    Cheers
  • AndrewRH
    AndrewRH Posts: 50 Forumite
    I bought a used '55 (Dec05) Toyota Verso a couple of weeks back. Aside: great car :-) too bad about the crappy radio :-(

    First point cannot be stressed enough: do your research and leave your emotions at the door.

    I read Which? magazine to find out the best in the category I was considering and then test drove them all fully loaded (wife, kids) - see how it will be in reality in your situation. Take a long route - motorway and side roads. Take at least 30 minutes per car. Ask lots of questions about the car and its capabilities, etc.

    Then leave to think about it. Look on the web for cars with the same specification (check eBay, WhatCar, the dealer's pages, car ads, etc.). Spend £3.50 at Glass.co.uk to see what an appropriate price is. While there, find out how much they say your car is worth, too.

    When I was ready to buy, I set aside plenty of time to negotiate with the dealer. I deliberately went back without my wife and kids -- thus, no time pressure because kids are getting fed-up.

    By chance, it was near the latter part of the month (they need to make their monthly sales quota, so better time to negotiate is then).

    I kept the option of finance on the table ("yes, get me all the paperwork; let me read over the terms tonight" etc). Have you ever read terms? I was amazed how slanted they were towards the finance company -- i.e could not pay it off early, except on specific dates, etc. Plus, the APR rate was ridiculous.

    I politely listened to all the sales pitches - extra warranty, price protection, financing, adding options, etc. and asked relevant questions about them. In the end, I even ended up buying an extra warranty (dealer's price was much less than Toyota corporate's price), and reverse parking sensors. Both these gave me some extra room for negotiations (in the end, he didn't discount them, but price of car came down during the rest of the negotiations).

    Then I kept chipping away (small steps is key!). For example, "Can you round down the price of the option from £357 to £300?".

    The dealer then asked about trading in my car - so I listened and he went away to find out how much he could offer me. I knew his offer was too low because I had already done my research. I kept it on the table for a while, but when he came back to it later, I decided it wasn't worth the hassle so I came straight with him and said I would sell it privately. He had no problem with that and it did not affect my negotiation after that point.

    The clincher for me was when I asked "When I bought my previous car, the dealer threw in a full tank of petrol - can you do the same?" And guess what? He did! That's £45 right there!

    We finally arrived at a price of £14019. So, still trying to chip away, I asked "I don't like uneven numbers...can we make it an even £14000?". I knew I'd gotten as low as he would go when he refused that minor change.

    Aside: I was very impressed with this Toyota dealership. Very polite; very professional; very helpful; ...

    Good luck!
  • I bought my 5dr Corolla T3 (with body kit, metallic paint, floor mats, mud guards, door rim thingys) for £10,600 in 2003, with the list pricing being £13,998. I was pretty pleased with that, but now I'm getting a 2nd motor, thinking of a used (55/06) Honda Accord i-CDTi 2.2. I hear Honda dealers are tight on new motors - but is that true of used? Given that the dealer trade-in prices are really low (according to Parkers), surely the mark up is more transparent than a new vehicle mark up? All they've done is given it some spit and polish...I should be able to get a good deal, right? However, what about targets? They can't be using used cars to get their manufacturers bonuses; so is margin their only incentive?
  • Leadtimes on new Accords have been long recently, it's been very hard to get stock of any desirable engines so that situation always reflects in nearly new's attracting slighlty better than normal prices as it's the only stock anyone can get in a reasonable timescale!

    However, Honda are now in 2008 m/yr on Accords and those cars mentioned will be 06 or 07 models with potentially lower spec' so use that as your leverage.

    On any Honda there's never huge margins, even when new...they have a loyal brand following and residuals are kept high as result of that plus reliability...so there's rarely a mega bargain to be had if still under 3yrs old...there's always some nearly new Honda stock on the page on oru own website labelled 'nearly new' (!) if you want to benchmark your lacal deal...
    Official Company Representative
    I am the official company representative of DealDrivers. MSE has given permission for me to post in response to queries about the company, so that I can help solve issues. You can see my name on the companies with permission to post list. I am not allowed to tout for business at all. If you believe I am please report it to forumteam@moneysavingexpert.com This does NOT imply any form of approval of my company or its products by MSE"
  • I've just got a new Clio 1.2 5 door Expression with metallic paint and paintguard (or whatever it's called) from a Renault main dealer for £7977, which I think is a pretty good price. The whatcar target price is somewhere around £9800 !!
  • Are you the second owner on the logbook?!
    Official Company Representative
    I am the official company representative of DealDrivers. MSE has given permission for me to post in response to queries about the company, so that I can help solve issues. You can see my name on the companies with permission to post list. I am not allowed to tout for business at all. If you believe I am please report it to forumteam@moneysavingexpert.com This does NOT imply any form of approval of my company or its products by MSE"
  • Are you the second owner on the logbook?!

    No, its brand spanking new. It's on the way from the factory now, and the car will be registered to me as first owner. :D
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