Used Car - main dealer says no price flexibility

funkycoldribena

Herzlos wrote: »

If it's a car you want at a price you are happy with, are you really willing to walk away over a £200 discount or some free mats?

Yep.
If you're the salesman are you really willing to let someone walk over £200 or some free mats?

burlington6

If the car is the right price I don't blame the salesman for letting the customer walk.

motorguy

Herzlos wrote: »

Exactly; my local dealer told me that the vast majority of his customers have already decided to buy the car before turning up, they just arrive and pay, because they've done the browsing already. But if he didn't have them priced competitively to begin with these buyers would be going to whoever was above him in autotrader.

Totally it

I have a friend whos a Dealer Principal over several sites and he says exactly that. He says if people have went to the trouble of searching, finding your car, checking the price and turning up, then there is little need to negotiate as the customer has already concluded your car is the best / cheapest on the market anyway.

gilbert_and_sullivan

Car sales bods are usually pretty canny.

If it quacks and waddles its a duck syndrome works both ways, customers vary from proper and wish we had more like them, to complete time wasters, and a whole myriad of types in between.

Salesman senses he's wasting his time or gets other bad vibes, he isn't go to muck about bandying words with someone who feels like a time waster, much as sales people get often justified criticism here, customers who browse endlessly but never get their wallets out are not as desirable as they might think they are.

How many here moan about lack of free and easy test drives, when all some of them are doing is borrowing the car to try it out but have already decided to buy elsewhere (especially new) via the net.

Sometimes customers get justified short shrift.

motorguy

funkycoldribena wrote: »

Yep.
If you're the salesman are you really willing to let someone walk over £200 or some free mats?

Yes.

There has to come a cut off point where the deal isnt worth doing.

£200 plus a set of "free mats" that come from the stores department who will cross charge you could amount to half your net profit.

If the car is priced correctly in the marketplace, why do that?

Or do you just keep giving money away?

motorguy

gilbert_and_sullivan wrote: »

Car sales bods are usually pretty canny.

If it quacks and waddles its a duck syndrome works both ways, customers vary from proper and wish we had more like them, to complete time wasters, and a whole myriad of types in between.

Salesman senses he's wasting his time or gets other bad vibes, he isn't go to muck about bandying words with someone who feels like a time waster, much as sales people get often justified criticism here, customers who browse endlessly but never get their wallets out are not as desirable as they might think they are.

How many here moan about lack of free and easy test drives, when all some of them are doing is borrowing the car to try it out but have already decided to buy elsewhere (especially new) via the net.

Sometimes customers get justified short shrift.

True

though thats not what i think has happened with the O/P.

I think the seller has priced their car at the keenest possible price and cant / isnt going to move on that.

Midget_Karen

Thanks everyone. Itis Evans Halshaw, and he did say that they don’t negotiate because of theprices being on the web (but I didn’t fully get what he meant by that).

It’s ok to say to shop around on the web for comparisonprices, but if all those prices are marked up the same because all of thedealers are expecting to negotiate, then you could be paying too much. As it’s the first car that I’ve bought in along time, it’s hard to know the market. The main thing is that I didn’t want to overpay just because I don’t havethe knowledge to even realise that I should have been able to negotiate more!

Now my understanding is a bit better I’ll ask for a fewextras (mats etc) and go with that J

fivetide

Don't pay their £99 fee though. They'll try to tell you they must HPI check the car when in reality, if they didn't have good title on it, they shouldn't be selling it to you in the first place.

That bit can be knocked off although they'll tell you otherwise.

You best bet is to find one cheaper but if you do, chances are you'll buy that instead!

Just ask him what he can do to get you to buy the car right then and there. Make him work for the deal rather than trying to haggle you!

Bantex_2

Quite a lot of the bigger dealers do not haggle any more. Part of the reason being that a large proportion of retail buyers feel very uncomfortable with it and would prefer to just compare ticket prices and either buy or not.

IamNotAllowedToUseMyName

Bantex wrote: »

Quite a lot of the bigger dealers do not haggle any more. Part of the reason being that a large proportion of retail buyers feel very uncomfortable with it and would prefer to just compare ticket prices and either buy or not.

However, some big dealers do. I got about 10% of my Merc screen price.