Advice on Haggling down % interest rate with Merc dealer. What's a good rate?

Aubrey_Thicket

Hi all

My son has seen a couple of specific Mercedes Benz Cars that he wants to buy. Both cars are at MB Main dealers at opposite ends of the country and are pretty much identical. Both are around the £20K mark. We want to put down £14K Deposit and finance the other £6K. So, not being very good at haggling I asked a mate of mine (who used to be a car salesman) for some tips. He gave me one tip which I used at the first dealer (up North) and amazingly the dealer seemed to accept our initial bargaining. I certainly accepted a much harder stance from the sales manager. So, my mate told me this...

"This particular dealer in question won't accept any cash whatsoever. So tell him you are a little put out by this no cash rule because you wanted to use some cash to pay for the car and the rest in bank transfer. Therefore, tell him that if you do a deal to buy the car at its window price you expect an excellent % rate for the £6K you intend to finance". On saying exactly this to the sales manager to my amazement he accepted this and said "Yeah. That's a problem for a lot of people. We can certainly do something to help there". So, at this stage I'm pretty pleased with myself. Then on to my second stage... My mate told me "Tell him you've owned Mercs before (Which I have) and you know there's a Mercedes Invitation Buyers Event coming up soon". So, I told the dealer this and he says "Yes, it starts in 2 days time". So, at this point I think I have the sales manager where I want him. The dealer then says to me "Look. If you want the car and commit to buying it today we can work some figures out here and now on the interest rate and shake on a deal now. Realistically what interest rate are you looking at?". Here's where I think I may have made a mistake... I told him "around 8 percent". He shook his head and said "OK, let's sort a deal now", which leads me to think that I shot myself in the foot saying 8%. Since then the dealer has rang me twice but I have missed both calls. So, I am after some advice here...

Tomorrow I intend to travel from Manchester to London to see the second of the cars (because the Merc Dealer is only Southern based). I am going expecting to do a deal there and then and pay a deposit to secure the car if the deal is right. My questions to you guys are:

What advice can you guys give me?
Should we ask for 8% interest rate for the Hp?
Is 8% a good interest rate for a Merc Dealer?
Should we tell him we are willing to buy the car now?
Should we tell him how far we have travelled?

Any help and advice would be greatly accepted.

Thank you in advance all.

davidwood681

How much will all this travelling and time cost you?

missile

Your mate sounds like Arthur Daily. Why on earth would you want to pay in cash? Honest dealers will not accept notes.

agrinnall

Why would you pay 8% to anybody? Do you have a very poor credit history? If not then I'd expect your bank to be able to offer you a loan at well below that rate.

wgl2014

If I'm reading that correctly your approach is to offer the full asking price so long as they allow you to finance a relatively small chunk of the price at a crap interest rate?

Just borrow the money as a personal loan.

Car_54

Don’t buy a car from the other end of the country. What will you do if there’s a problem?

Kingsd316

Car_54 wrote: »

Don’t buy a car from the other end of the country. What will you do if there’s a problem?

Buying from a Mercedes Benz dealer will give a 12 month warranty which you will be able to take to any main dealer should a problem arise

Car_54

Kingsd316 wrote: »

Buying from a Mercedes Benz dealer will give a 12 month warranty which you will be able to take to any main dealer should a problem arise

But will a local dealer resolve a non-warranty (i.e. consumer rights) issue?

E.g. if the son wants to reject the car from the London dealer for any reason, will the Manchester dealer accept the car and refund his money?

In my experience MB customer service on an approved use car was excellent, but I only ever used the selling dealer.

Aubrey_Thicket

Hi all.

Thanks for your advice.

Answers to a few questions.

Son has no good credit history so loan is very expensive.

We wanted to put a few Grand cash down simply because that’s what he had saved up.

Mercy dealer told us “If any MB dealer offers you a warranty EVEN IF ITS NOT THE MANUFACTURERS WARRANTY that warranty still must be honoured by all other MB dealers.

AdrianC

Aubrey_Thicket wrote: »

Son has no good credit history so loan is very expensive.

Then surely he'd be better off buying a cheaper car than a £20k Merc...?!?

DrEskimo

AdrianC wrote: »

Then surely he'd be better off buying a cheaper car than a £20k Merc...?!?

Exactly....if you have £14k, then look for cars at £14k. Don't needlessly borrow additional money at sub-prime rates. It's not as if £14k can't buy you a nice car....

Otherwise...just wait till he's saved £6k more.

As for the cash bit, just deposit the cash into the bank account with the rest of the £14k.