Buying used car from main dealer - haggling?

ballyblack

the price should be a lot cheaper with no trade in. You can compare and haggle better especially on a Ford Repmobile

DKLS

Ford are usually keen to discount, you would be mad to pay list at a Ford Dealers, others may vary, when I enquired about a TT for the mrs, the sales guy said that he has no problem shifting them at list so no discounts.

BeenThroughItAll

firsttimebuyer2013 wrote: »

It's also 30miles away so a bit of a trek

Seriously? 30 miles is too far? Blimey. I do that mileage every day before half seven.

firsttimebuyer2013

I didn't say it was too far. I said it was a bit of a trek. Especially as I have no car.

firsttimebuyer2013

So I took one for a test drive. It was lovely but up for £15k and they best they could do was 2% off that. I walked away as at that price it's not for me. But is this going to be standard? A couple of hundred quid off a £15k car? :undecided

burlington6

Thought you said the majority of the ones you've seen were around the £16K mark though?

If so, why aren't you happy with one at a grand less?

firsttimebuyer2013

It was the older style less efficient engine for a start, so higher running costs, higher tax band. Plus I'm out for the best possible deal to save me money. If it's up for £15k then I expect there to be some room for movement. My lack of experience is unsure what this room might be though.

bowlhead99

Bottom line is it can vary greatly.

£200-£500 might be all the profit that they have in it, depending what deal they gave to the previous owner who traded it in, how much they'll give to the sales guy as commission, etc. And much as they'd like to get the old stock off their forecourt, if they're main dealers they would also prefer to be spending their time putting people into something new with a big markup and not wanting to sit around haggling with you. There are lots of factors as mentioned by others (end of the month / end of the quarter sales targets will be one, but unfortunately several weeks away).

So, 2% off (£300 on £15000?) is not a lot but they probably have little incentive to give you more off than that as a first offer if they feel that customers like you are ten a penny and if you don't have it, someone else will.

You mentioned there is one you saw online 30 miles away for 13.5k recently reduced from 16k. So why not use the advert for that and others of similar spec as an example to your dealer (who was trying to make you pay £14.7k for his 15k screen price) of what mileage and age and spec is available for only 13.5k screen price. He will then presumably say his is better in which case you can decide whether to try to push him down to the 14-14.5k level (or below) or just disagree that his is better and just go and pay 13.5k for a spec you want, even if you take a train or taxi or lift from a friend to see the one that's 30 miles away. £1.5k buys a lot of trainfare, taxi fare, favours from friends.

One thing to note about "recently reduced from..." is that this month a new registration came out. So as we are now a few days into '65', everything looks older. A fortnight ago, the cars with, say, '14' plates were just "a year old - it's a 14 and brand new cars are 15s". Now as from last week, someone could buy a 65 or a 15 or a 64 and they would all be clearly newer than the '14.

When there are three sets of registrations available newer than yours, at 6-month intervals, people will be thinking your car is basically 2 years old, even though the maths doesn't quite hold up. So, if you're looking at an old car and thinking it might be 18 or 19 years old, you don't care much. But a new one flipping from 1 to 2 years is quite a big deal for depreciation (cars depreciate on age even if the mileage doesn't move).

firsttimebuyer2013

Thanks for that bowlhead.

Is that really all the profit they might have in it? I genuinely don't have a clue as this is all new to me.

I saw the £13.5k one. It was mispriced. Thought it was cheap. And it's sold now anyway. Yeah they were talking about golden tickets and what not. I assumed it was down to the new reg and trying to get rid of the 14 plates and 64's before they start getting the 15 plates used in.

I really wanted the newer more efficient engine but the price seems to be £1-1.5k more. :undecided

bowlhead99

Sometimes they will have more profit in it of course - you can look at Parkers or Glass's guide to try to see differences between tradein and dealer selling prices for a particular type/age of car. But sometimes for example they will really overpay for a trade-in from Joe Bloggs because they really wanted Joe to be willing to buy a brand new 65 plate last week without much of a discount. And then they will want to recoup that spend, even if it was effectively a 'marketing spend' to get Joe to buy brand new. So depending on how the salesmen are motivated / remunerated it might be difficult to knock the price down by loads. But certainly, treat their first 'lowest we can go is £200 off' as not really the lowest they can go.

It can be different sometimes with prestige marques or particularly desirable cars in uncommon spec. Some of those dealers may take the view that everything is on the internet these days, and you know the exact spec in advance, so if you show up for a test drive knowing the price that is being asked, you will probably be willing to pay it or pay very close to it. However if you are just going to buy a two year old Focus and you can see 1000 of them within a 50 mile radius on autotrader, no customer is going to think that full sticker price means full sticker price.

Basically, look at all the prices, work out the most you would pay for the spec you want (you already identified that the better engine is costing £1.5k extra as the 'going rate' but do you really think it is worth that much to you now and at resale) ; then offer a low amount and be willing to walk away. With hundreds to choose from, you will easily find someone with stock to shift who takes your offer.