Buying a brand new car - price negotiating advice please

cornerstone13

We are hoping to buy a new car very soon and would like advice please. The car we want to buy is £18000 list price and is available on the internet at just over £15000 (at the other end of the country !). We have test driven the car at our local dealership.

Following advice on this site, we plan to print off the internet deal and take it to the dealership to see if they will match it.

Our questions are about financing the car - we are advertising our current car to sell privately for £6500 and will pay the balance from our savings. If we can't sell privately we'd give the current car in part exchange (accepting that we'll probably get less for it)

At what point during the negotiations should we ask for a p/ex price from the dealer. Should we ask for a p/ex price before we say we're interested in buying. Are they obliged to honour that price once given, even if we then start pushing for a discount off list price, or could they reduce it.
At what point should we let them know we don't want their finance (we've heard that's where dealers make money, so they're keen to push finance deals)

We've also read on these forums about people emailing round all the dealerships to see who would offer the best price - can anyone give any advice/opinions/tips on this (eg what to say in the email, whether it works)

Many thanks

daveyjp

You are trying to sell yours for £6,500, a new one can be had for £15,000 - best case cost to change is £8,500.

Go to the dealer and ask him straight about trade in and new car prices - remember you are the one buying, you are not there to do the dealer a favour.

Let him come back to you with a trade in value and a new car cost and a cost to change. If it's close to £8,500 snap his hand off, if it's way above this say you were looking at paying about £8,500 plus your car as a cost to change. Then stay quiet. It may take a while, but stick by your guns and be prepared to walk.

nickmack

cornerstone13 wrote: »

At what point during the negotiations should we ask for a p/ex price from the dealer. Should we ask for a p/ex price before we say we're interested in buying. Are they obliged to honour that price once given, even if we then start pushing for a discount off list price, or could they reduce it.
At what point should we let them know we don't want their finance (we've heard that's where dealers make money, so they're keen to push finance deals)

Depends how the conversation goes with the salesperson. Many ask early whether you have a car to p/x and how you plan to finance the deal.

The whole process is a bit of a charade and involves playing with figures until the customer is convinced they've got a good deal (or not and walk away).

If you get offered a good deal with finance and/or without p/x, and then drop the bomb on them, you may find the finance deal is not quite as favourable and the offer for your trade in is less. Work out the 'cost to change' and don't be dazzled by all the finger bashing your salesperson is doing on their calculator.

They have a bottom line they work to, so you're never going to get lower than this, but if you hit the dealer at the right time of month/year, you can get as close as possible.

If you're asking them to match an internet price, it depends on the marque and dealer. If they can get near, don't expect 0% finance as well, it's usually one or the other. Some deals however are paid for by the manufacturer, so they don't necessarily lose the dealership any money.

Usually deal clinchers apply, such as getting them to throw in metallic paint, tank of petrol, mats, half price gap insurance etc.

Conor_3

LOOK AT FINANCE OFFERS.

Seriously.

They tend to give bigger discounts for finance over cash as they get a whopping commission. The discounts over the "cash price" can end up saving you money even with the interest. Also work out the interest you'd get having the money you'll not have to fork out sat in a savings account.

For example:
Best cash price, £18000.
Best Finance price, £17000, £6500 deposit from the old car, APR 3% (Fords current deal on new cars) over 2 years. Interest will be at most £600 taking the total purchase price overall to £17,100 BUT you'll have £11500 you would have had to draw from your savings still sat in your savings account earning 6% which effectively knocks another £1200-ish off the price, albeit by a somewhat convoluted way.



ZERO PERCENT FINANCE.

If it's available TAKE it with the lowest deposit you have to put on the car. Stick the money you get from the sale of your car into a savings account. That way, that money which you would have spent on the car is sitting in an account hopefully earning at least 6% interest per year which it wouldn't have done which could end up being easily £2000+ over a 3 year term.

DealDrivers_company_representative

It is no good just printing a price off an internet site and waving it a dealer, as terms and sale conditions vary wildly. The dealer will - quite rightly- also want to see that you've had a written quote from that company bearing that price, including all delivery, OTR costs etc, so he can check the quote in detail. For instance, you can't ask him to match a price for a new unregistered car with, say, a price for a car where you won't be allowed to have the logbook for 3-6mths as is the case in many pre-reg' internet offerings.

Many internet car brokers (not us, I hasten to add!) will often not show any associated fees alongside the price , or any costs such as plates, whether the price includes road fund licence, DVLA first reg' fee etc, and what the conditions of sale are (i.e. are you first registered owner - and that has to be shown in writing on a quote, or pre-registered with warranty used up, or import etc.). So be prepared for the dealer to ask these questions, and if you don't know the answers beacuse you haven't got all the detail related to the quote, he'll just send you away again.

It is unfair to expect the dealer to match a brokers price for just 1 car (as the online broker gets large discount by placing orders in bulk at dealers, and your local guy won't be getting the benefit of anything other than your single car order) - he needs to be able to fairly compare the small print and ownership conditions.

We probably get asked to run masses of quotes a day by folk with no intention of buying but want us to do the donkeywork so they can hand the quote we've spent time constructing to another dealer for ordering (I'll never work out why as they're only getting the local dealer to match it or beat by a tiny margin so it would seem pointless ...and just hacks both the broker whose had his time wasted yet again AND their local dealer off at the same time!) ....so thank heavens for the people each day who do use our sevice ..and are decent enough to give us the order too!

Don't just use people like us for doing the work, you do need to do the decent thing and order using our dealers too...else we'll all disappear along with the broker rates, and you'll then be paying more for your cars!

mjr600

My heart bleeds for DealDrivers.

It's your money, if they want to take it from you then they have to provide the best price and the best service.

http://consumerist.com/consumer/how-to/13-step-method-for-buying-a-car-while-controlling-the-sale-and-the-price-296553.php

It's US advice but it's good here too.