Tips on dealing with car salesmen

pingu

well when i spoke to him on thursday gave him all the details he offered £6000 without looking(could be more he said) but yesterday when he brought the print out it said £5500 part ex and my car is is an excellent conditon with low milage

i am going to phone him in a bit and offer him £3000 plus the car see what he says!

mcfisco

Saturday afternoon is often a good time to get a good deal as they want to get their figures for the week in.
A mate of mine always goes in knowing exactly how much he is going to pay but goes in sounding a bit gullible.
He’ll constantly ask how much a week it is going to cost him & he’ll keep trying to get the windscreen price down to what he’ll pay & asking about extended warranties etc. – the salesman will often fall for this & allow the price to drop thinking he’ll make it all back on the APR & extras.
After the deal is all drafted out, he’ll tell them he’s paying cash & doesn’t now want the extras.

Kitster

This is an absolutley great thread...so much of the advice rings true to me in my recent battles with honda dealerships. I too am trying to buy a honda jazz but get the dealerships to match the drivethedeal.com price for a new 07 plate. I have emailed about 4 or 5 dealerships with the price and made it quite simple...if they can beat the price then they get my custom. No one has agreed to match the deal flatly...mainly had phone calls from dealerships asking me to come and and talk about the car i want so we could 'come to some sort of deal' - they seem to not be comfortable dealing in writing or over the phone...am I the only who feels more comfortable dealing with these people from a distance than in person?

In the last few days a number of things that you have posted here have happened to me in dealerships. I got asked 'how much do you want to pay per month?' with ref to a finance deal when i clearly stated i wanted to buy outright and had the cash. Even when I pointed out that on any of their finance or hire purchase options I would be paying 2 grand more than buying outright they just pretend to play dumb and kept saying that car depreciation means it is not economical to buy outright. I have also been told that the model I wanted to buy comes with features like vehicle stability and traction control..which having read up i realise dosen't. I really do have a very low opinion of them. All my dealership visits have at some point involved the salesmen walking to the back room to 'discuss' with his manager, or 'check something on his computer' (even though we were sat a desk with a internet-ready computer in front of us both.


I have to go to 2 dealerships to go to this thursday to try and sort out a deal as they put it. Am gonna follow the advice on this thread of just walking if they don't outright beat the internet price i show them. Am a bit nervous in case of the time warp effect. Keep trying to run the scenario through in my head. Technically I shouldn't be in the showroom for more than 5 mins..just show them my deal...they match/beat it or i walk out, right? I have half a mind to print out this thread and take it with me to play "car salesman bingo" and cross off every trick used listed here..then show the salesman what i have done. If only there were female car sales people then maybe I could flirt a bit.


Can I give you a word of advuice PINGU, haggle and work on the price of the car as hard as you can and then bring up part ex which you know should get you about £5500 to £6000 for. If they know about it to start with they will falsely keep the pruice of the new car up and try and get you to think they are giving you a really good price on your car when they still have a large margin to cut the price down with.

I also think mcfisco - you came up with one of the smartest points when dealing with dealers...beating them at their own game by playing dumb. Act as think as you (realsiticly) can...start talking about finance deals, wanting extras and servicing at the highest tiers, wanting to buy extended warranties, possibly even wanting a second car for your partner if this they get you a good deal on this one. Just keep asking for a lower car price if you are paying for all these extras. Try and get them to write a breakdown of costs so you can actually see the raw car price (which should be discounted heavily from list price by now) - watch them drool at the prospect of achieving all their bonus targets. Then hit them with the killer punch - phone back and say thx for the breakdown but you now only want the car with no extras (knowing you have the lowest price of the car in your breakdown). If they try and refuse just walk away saying you would take the car today at that price if they would do it.

Wish me luck with my dealership encounters on thurday..will keep all posted on this thread.

By the way has anyone ever met a car salesman who actually wore themselves out with their own persistence on you..it seems like they are relentless.

Dumyat

I've had problems as a woman....I have wandered round many car lots with no attention from the salesmen, and then returned with my husband and they are out like linford christie.
I've been asked what colour of car I'm looking for!
When my husband said the car was for me...."we have a nice runaround here" why would I be replacing a mazda 6 with a runaround?
Another said why dont I bring back my husband for a test drive....I said why would my husband want to drive my car? and left.

I hate all the cat and mouse games...all the smarm....

agree with the timing. we had a good deal in the last week of nov...who buys a car before christmas. the showrooms are dead then...
and another good deal on a rainy saturday just before closing.

and I always have the thought that its only a car....and unless you are buying a high spec sports car there will be plenty others..

DKLS

Some very good points made above, Just remember however nice & charming the salesperson is, they are not your friend, they will say almost anything for you to sign up.
They have usually been well trained, and know their patter well, and will try and wear you down, but do your research, know what you want to pay and stand your ground and make them earn their commission. I know of one salesman, who trained in NLP to help boost his sales. Underhand or what?
My own bug bear is asking the price, You ask they say £40 a week, I say No How much does the car cost? and round and round you go.

ADM

I’m thinking of spending about £12k on a Mercedes C Class.
How much should I expect to get the price down by when haggling with the sales man?

saintjanet

Just returned to this thread to add my third,i think ,posting and say i can remember a time when EVERYTHING had a price that was similar if not the same,one did not need to haggle much,of course they still robbed you but you did not need to negotiate it for so long.:D i really must be getting old!!

albionrovers

Another one for the mix.

Salesmen can make the payment interest rate seem a good one by quoting the MONTHLY rate, as opposed to the yearly rate. Simply multiply the monthly rate x 12 and you get a picture of just how much he's trying to rip you apart.

chergar

Also probably common sense but thought i'd mention it anyway

If you are looking for finance for the car DO NOT tell the salesman how much you can afford per month/week as they will make up figures to get you to pay that - then pretend they are doing you a 'great' deal for a couple of pounds more per week/month.

Kitster

Hooray...successfully used the tips here to buy a 07 plate Honda Jazz 1.4SE CVT for £11300 with mats, full tank and 12 months Road tax thrown in. Thats over a grand off list price which I believe is a next to impossible discount to get on hondas (especially new jazzs). Just some notes on my experience.

As you know from my previous posts I spent about a month looking around test driving, getting to know about 6 or 7 honda dealerships near me, letting them all brag about why they were the best to buy and sevrice from. Once I khas seen enough of them and trst driven them 2 or 3 times (including a solo test drive just em and my wife - make sure you do this as you can really get to test out the drive of the vehicle without feeling nervous or hesitant with a dealer sitting next to you - insist on it after one test drive with the dealer..just say 'id like my wife to drive it'). Then I hunted about over 30 or forty websites to find the best deal..No doubt the most popular sites were giving the lowest prices (drivethedeal, autoebid etc). First of all I used the shortcut to that price and wrote a very well worded generic email that I sent to 10 dealerships with the link included to show how cheap i could get the car..simply stating I was ready to buy today and if anyone could offer me more incentive than drivethedeal. I found responses to emails were cagey..like in my earlier post..dealers seem to want to get you into the showroom before telling you outright what they will do. A couple of dealers told me they could match the price over the phone. One emailed back saying they could not come close. Invariably everyone who can't match the price will bore you with the same 'we pride ourselves on customer service' spiel (in my book customer service means giving the customer the best price!) The cheekiest dealer of the lot phoned back from my email and said 'i'm not going to offer you anything yet, i want you to get all your offers in the next few days then I will ring you and hopefully we can put our boxing gloves on and we can thrash out a deal'...at the end of the day his proce did not come close. My best breakthrough came when one of the dealers phoned and said he would match..I went down and the car he was offering was a pre-reg..i told him drivethedeal were offering a 1st reg brand new and not a pre-reg so technically he was not matching like for like and thus i wanted a further £300 pounds off the drivethedeal price to take his vehicle....audacious i know..I was sweating at this point - had I been too bold... well...yes I had. He went away to 'talk to his manager'..and came back saying there is no chance of knocking anything close to that much off the internet price and the best he could do was £100 of off the drivethedeal price. Now this was a price I was willing to pay..but as per lots of advice on forums I did what any moneysaving expert (or novice) has been told to do...'no thanks, I will take my business elswhere if you cannot accomodate my offer'. I walked away as slowly as I could remembering forum posts by members talking of how at the last second the dealer comes running out of the showroom to stop you driving away and says he will do the deal....but no..they let me walk out of there (I never believed a car dealer would actually elt you do this so easily..i guess my ofer must reall having been ludicrously low).

So where were we..oh yes..i now had my ammunition ..a firm price friom an authorised Honda dealer that was a full £100 less than drivethedeal. I was exhausted and had used most of the day in that endeavour so went to sleep ready to launch a full on attack the next day.

Next morning I set about phoning as manyn honda dealerships as i could saying what i had been offered. They all wanted to do their maths and then phone me back..some said they would match it identically, but Chiswick said if i was buying today they would throw in mats and a full tank. I sped the 20 miles to the dealership....only to be told the one storm silver model I wanted in the showroom had just been sold as i was driving there..(it hurt even more as i saw my dream vehicle in the showroom with the sold tag being put in the display!). The salesmen being what he was apologised profusely especially as i had driven all the way to put a deposit on the car..he suggested I look at the identical model in a slightly different silver which actually looked pretty decent (although not my first choice colour).. I said no firmly stating that I had just had a wasted trip and now had to return back to my first dealership before 5pm to get the car i wanted...he asked if there is any way i was willing to do a deal for that car and i was walking away from him and said in an almost throwaway fashion ..'only if you knock another £100 pounds off'.... and he said okay!...pending his manager agreed...which he did about 5 mins later (claiming he would not normally do that price but felt bad I had driven all that way and my first choice colour had been sold...sounds like bull i know!) Anyway...so that how i got my deal.

And straight after we shook hands I went into ice cold mode to make sure all we agreed upon was confirmed in the contract..i even asked to borrow his pen and a piece of paper to write down my own checklist of mats, fuel, 12 months tax, check reg number, check final figure. And as he printed off the contract and showed it to me i took it off him and started ticking off things in my checklist to make sure everything we had shook on was included..which it was..credit to Honda for that. Incidentally..to avoid any of the rubbish about financing the car I straight away said ' just before we proceed I am buying this car outright.. I DO NOT WISH TO DISCUSS ANY FINANCE OPTIONS OR HIRE PURCHASE DEALS YOU MAY HAVE TO OFFER.' ... this seemed to mute the salesman for a few seconds and he simply let me sign and told me the car would be ready after the weekend , I have left a £500 deposit.

I would say it is worth every second hunting arounf overall..aside from the actual saving financially..nothing compares to that buzz you get knowing you have negotiated a really good deal for yourself. Good luck to all and thanks again for everyones advice! Kit