How much of a discount have you got...

pioneer31

when you've bought a car?

I'm interested to hear your stories.

Could you list

i) the type of seller (private, independant or franchised dealer)
ii) the asking price
iii) the price you paid.

I'm curious as to how much discount I could 'negiotiate' with a the dealer on a £11k car.

Hintza

Depends on how much the car is worth. If you don't know within say 10% -20% then you won't have a clue how much you can haggle off the price he is quoting.

pioneer31

Hintza wrote: »

Depends on how much the car is worth. If you don't know within say 10% -20% then you won't have a clue how much you can haggle off the price he is quoting.

The trouble is, if you use Parkers or a similar guide, you get the usual "oh Parkers valuations are ****" guff from the salesman.

I also find that What Car new prices are lower than any showroom I've been to.

Lemonade_Pockets

Can we create a sticky for this....the MILLION dollar question?

To for anyone to give you any meaningful figure you would need to post details of the car.

There is no standard mark up and therefore no standard discount across all marques and certainly not once you start talking about used cars.

For instance that £11k car could be the best deal in the world for £11k i.e Zero discount.
Or it could be the most expensive one in the world with £1500 discount off it.

To put it another way is what you are paying relative to the market rate is the key thing.
So determine what this is and make this you target price and then keep negotiating if you think there is still some haggling to be done.

Megalomaniac

Just bought a Mazda 3 from a Mazda dealer (one of their approved ZZ+ cars). It was originally up for £6975, then reduced to £6475 when we went to view it. We paid £6300 for the car with a years warranty, mats, £20 of petrol (which I doubt since the light came on after driving 60 miles on the motorway), 6 months tax as well. It also had some optional extras which were purchased from new such as rear parking sensor etc... The Whatcar.com price from a dealer was quoted as £6345 so dealers in theory should get down to the Whatcar price based on my experience...

Therefore:

i) Main Dealer
ii) Was £6975, reduced to £6475
iii) Paid £6300

pioneer31

Megalomaniac wrote: »

Just bought a Mazda 3 from a Mazda dealer (one of their approved ZZ+ cars). It was originally up for £6975, then reduced to £6475 when we went to view it. We paid £6300 for the car with a years warranty, mats, £20 of petrol (which I doubt since the light came on after driving 60 miles on the motorway), 6 months tax as well. It also had some optional extras which were purchased from new such as rear parking sensor etc... The Whatcar.com price from a dealer was quoted as £6345 so dealers in theory should get down to the Whatcar price based on my experience...

Therefore:

i) Main Dealer
ii) Was £6975, reduced to £6475
iii) Paid £6300

Thanks megalomaniac. At least someone is able to respond to the main thrust of my question.

Inactive

The amount of discount relates directly to the desirability of any vehicle, market forces rule.


You would get no discount whatsoever on a new Hyundai i10, indeed you would join a long waiting list.

Now if you wanted a new Hyundai Sonata, you would get a minimum of £4320 off it's asking price, probably a lot more.

Idiophreak

pioneer31 wrote: »

when you've bought a car?

I'm interested to hear your stories.

Could you list

i) the type of seller (private, independant or franchised dealer)
ii) the asking price
iii) the price you paid.

I'm curious as to how much discount I could 'negiotiate' with a the dealer on a £11k car.

Our most recent 2:

i) main dealer
ii) £10k down to 9k in "sale"
iii) £8k with matts and the paintwork sorted out (chips, scratches, nothing major)

i) main dealer
ii) 4200 (iirc)
iii) 3600

Whilst I understand what everyone else is saying about it being down to the individual car, yada yada yada...The garage will know the "individual" car as well as anyone...And it's rare to find somewhere that won't build in room for negotiation. That's what salesmen are, afterall - just negotiators.

I read somewhere (can't remember where) that most main-dealer sales folks have something like 15% in their pocket before they need to get higher authorisation for the discount. Sure, they'll huff and puff, go and "speak to the boss" (or "have a fag") etc in the meantime - but it's all just fun and games, them doing their job. It's tiresome, but it's the way of the world.

Sure, trading conditions aren't quite what they once were at the mo and my info's a couple of years out of date - but I wouldn't buy from a dealer and accept less than 10% discount.

Lemonade_Pockets

pioneer31 wrote: »

Thanks megalomaniac. At least someone is able to respond to the main thrust of my question.

The only reason the rest of us haven't is because we no it to be irrelevant.

I could tell you that i just got £1300 of a new mini. I got £6k of a ford kuga last year but it won't help you a jot unless you are buying a new mini or you this was last year and you where buying a ford Kuga.

I stand by my point having worked in the industry for many years so i actually know, rather just summising from past buying experiences. When i used to work in a dealership some of the best deals where on cars that we wanted to get rid of (for a number of reasons not necessarily that they where bad cars) so we priced them as such. You wouldn't of got a penny discount but you wouldn't of found the same car cheaper car anywhere in the country!! Conversely some people used to think they where getting an amazing deal as they had big discounts and it was the same price that parkers or whatcar or anyother magazine said (who incidently are always at least a month out of date by default). However i would know because we constantly used to compare our prices to every similar car on autotrader that they could of driven 15 miles down the road and got it cheaper, even if they paid the advertised price.

So by all means go and negotiate your 10% or whatever figure people come up with but it means nothing unless you no what the market rate is for said car.

scotsblood

I agree with Lemonade Pockets, for the most part its not really possible to compare individual deals.

For instance my latest, an S-Max did come from a main dealer and did come at almost 7k below list but there wasn't a px, the car was available for the dealer to pull from the rdc, the dealer concerned has a massive large car target so has big big bonuses that can be reached by moving metal, and almost as if not more important it was organised via a broker!

Individual deal individual car simple as that! Market forces at work not a magical system or negotiation technique.