"This is a great deal, trust me"
Car Shopping Experience
With the advent of winter, we decided that Grandma’s Cadillac wouldn’t be the best bad weather car, if fact it is horrible in poor conditions. Thus our search began for what would be my first new car. We wanted something with room, good safety rating, somewhat reliable, and good in bad weather. The car we had always talked about was the Hyundai Tucson, a small SUV that meets all our criteria and is very cheap. Maybe we should have gone with our first instincts and not bothers to experience the “shop around” process; however, that was not to be so. The more we looked the more we were overwhelmed with the choices that were out there. There are over 30 small SUVs, over 50 regular cars that would be acceptable, and dozens of random, yet interesting cars. For example, the Toyota Prius looked promising (great gas mileage, tax, rebate, very reliable; however, one little problem, my knees hit the steering wheel. Toyota spent billions researching a hybrid engine, but they didn’t think to add one of those steering wheel adjusters in the car. Anyway, because there were so many choices we settled on a small 4X4 SUV. For the sake of brevity, I will not go into a detailed description of the cars, it is the process that was so infuriating. So we went to dealerships and of course they make you fill out this form with your name, address, phone number etc before you even start. After the fifth place, I just refused to give more then my name (especially when I just wanted general information). Not to generalize, but car salesmen are all lying scum (is that wrong to say?). They are not to be trusted and things like invoice price, MSRP, and destination charges all mean absolutely nothing. They will show you the actual invoice and pretend that if they can’t sell the car for more then that then they lose money, which is a huge lie. No matter what, they will never make you an offer in which they lose money or break even. So once we went around to enough places to test drive the ones we wanted, and created an excel sheet to organize them (and some of their vital stats, MPG, warranty, price range), we narrowed it town to about five cars (Hyundai Tucson, Kia Sportage, Honda CRV, Subaru Forrester, and a Mazda Tribute). The Forrester was ranked #1 was consumer reports and the CR-V was #2, the rest where middle of the road, but inexpensive.
So in order to try and get a good deal (because bargaining with salesmen is useless) I first tried several on-line car search engines. I’ll make this quick, not one website was useful in any way. They don’t give real prices or accurate information, at best they will give you a phone number of a local dealership. Don’t waste your time with them, although I wasted many an hour. However my next idea was much better. I went to all the manufacturers’ websites (i.e. Honda.com) and got a list of all the email addresses for dealerships within 25 miles. Then I emailed each one (and there was about 65 in total) saying I am trying to decide between their car and a similar car, and I got an offer of $XX,XXX from this other place, can you beat it? And the price I used was lower then anything I had heard from a dealer. 75% of the responses were auto-replies and useless, but I got many actually responses either asking for specific information or giving me a price. After a few days I called the dealership that got me to the lowest price for each of the five cars and made sure there weren’t hidden fees; if there weren’t then I would send out another batch of email with this new lower price. I did this over and over again until I had sets of dealers competing against each other (and another key was it was near the end of the month and I was promising to buy before December and thus meet their quota (which I never did, but I would have if the right situation was given)).
I got was seemed like a great offer of $20,399 for a 2006 Forrester from Liberty Subaru in Jersey. I was happy with this was sent out another round of emails to just Subaru places and got an offer $200 lower from Ramsey Subaru; I sent that offer back to the first place and we went down another $200, and then finally the newer place offer $19,799 “just because they didn’t want the other place to get my business.” Great; however, it was the last day of the month and Lindee felt rushed and thus we decided to risk losing the monthly rebate and take a few more days. The next day the rebate for December looked the same but the original dealership, but I for an email from Liberty Subaru saying that because of some dealership rebate they could not make the deal for $19,500. I still didn’t feel like I owed this dealership anything and wanted to save Molly a trip in the car, so I went to the local Subaru place and said, “I got an offer of $19,500, can you match it, here is my credit card”, and they said the other dealership must be lying because that price is impossible and they said there best price was $21,200. With them out of the picture, and a snow storm predicted for the next day, I called Liberty to set everything up, but one little glitch, there maintenance team left for the day and it would take 2 days for them to clean and check the car before we could take it. So I called up Ramsey and the conversation went like this with the manager (after the salesmen was useless)Me: Liberty offered me $19,500 for the car, but if you can get it to me tonight, then you don’t have to beat that price, just match it.
Manager: Well, I don’t know if we can do that, maybe if you were here ready to buy it…
Me: Well your place is far away and my baby daughter hates the car, are you going to be able to give me the price when I get there.
Manager: Honestly, I can’t say yes over the phone, but if you come down here, and you’re ready to sign the papers, then I’m sure we will be able to work everything out and make you happy.
Me: Ok, but I’m not paying more the $19,500.
Manager: I understand, we’ll work it out when you get here.
So I drive all the way to Ramsey and when I get there and say what I want, they say they can’t do it, and then they called the Liberty dealerships liars. I wanted to scream and yell, but I didn’t want to waste my time. I don’t him that they were purposely manipulative and deceptive and that they knew I can a baby with me and they still wouldn’t give me the deal that they overtly implied they would. Now, even though I wanted the car right away, Ramsey would never get my business. I went to Liberty, they explained why they couldn’t have the car ready that day (which seemed reasonable), gave me the $19,500 price (no hidden fees) and I signed the papers. We picked up the car two days later and all is well. The End.
Ps, Glen, I want to start a website would people submit the final price they paid on a car and it would be a useful research site. I’m thinking about paying people $1 to scan and email me their papers with the final price on it.
With the advent of winter, we decided that Grandma’s Cadillac wouldn’t be the best bad weather car, if fact it is horrible in poor conditions. Thus our search began for what would be my first new car. We wanted something with room, good safety rating, somewhat reliable, and good in bad weather. The car we had always talked about was the Hyundai Tucson, a small SUV that meets all our criteria and is very cheap. Maybe we should have gone with our first instincts and not bothers to experience the “shop around” process; however, that was not to be so. The more we looked the more we were overwhelmed with the choices that were out there. There are over 30 small SUVs, over 50 regular cars that would be acceptable, and dozens of random, yet interesting cars. For example, the Toyota Prius looked promising (great gas mileage, tax, rebate, very reliable; however, one little problem, my knees hit the steering wheel. Toyota spent billions researching a hybrid engine, but they didn’t think to add one of those steering wheel adjusters in the car. Anyway, because there were so many choices we settled on a small 4X4 SUV. For the sake of brevity, I will not go into a detailed description of the cars, it is the process that was so infuriating. So we went to dealerships and of course they make you fill out this form with your name, address, phone number etc before you even start. After the fifth place, I just refused to give more then my name (especially when I just wanted general information). Not to generalize, but car salesmen are all lying scum (is that wrong to say?). They are not to be trusted and things like invoice price, MSRP, and destination charges all mean absolutely nothing. They will show you the actual invoice and pretend that if they can’t sell the car for more then that then they lose money, which is a huge lie. No matter what, they will never make you an offer in which they lose money or break even. So once we went around to enough places to test drive the ones we wanted, and created an excel sheet to organize them (and some of their vital stats, MPG, warranty, price range), we narrowed it town to about five cars (Hyundai Tucson, Kia Sportage, Honda CRV, Subaru Forrester, and a Mazda Tribute). The Forrester was ranked #1 was consumer reports and the CR-V was #2, the rest where middle of the road, but inexpensive.
So in order to try and get a good deal (because bargaining with salesmen is useless) I first tried several on-line car search engines. I’ll make this quick, not one website was useful in any way. They don’t give real prices or accurate information, at best they will give you a phone number of a local dealership. Don’t waste your time with them, although I wasted many an hour. However my next idea was much better. I went to all the manufacturers’ websites (i.e. Honda.com) and got a list of all the email addresses for dealerships within 25 miles. Then I emailed each one (and there was about 65 in total) saying I am trying to decide between their car and a similar car, and I got an offer of $XX,XXX from this other place, can you beat it? And the price I used was lower then anything I had heard from a dealer. 75% of the responses were auto-replies and useless, but I got many actually responses either asking for specific information or giving me a price. After a few days I called the dealership that got me to the lowest price for each of the five cars and made sure there weren’t hidden fees; if there weren’t then I would send out another batch of email with this new lower price. I did this over and over again until I had sets of dealers competing against each other (and another key was it was near the end of the month and I was promising to buy before December and thus meet their quota (which I never did, but I would have if the right situation was given)).
I got was seemed like a great offer of $20,399 for a 2006 Forrester from Liberty Subaru in Jersey. I was happy with this was sent out another round of emails to just Subaru places and got an offer $200 lower from Ramsey Subaru; I sent that offer back to the first place and we went down another $200, and then finally the newer place offer $19,799 “just because they didn’t want the other place to get my business.” Great; however, it was the last day of the month and Lindee felt rushed and thus we decided to risk losing the monthly rebate and take a few more days. The next day the rebate for December looked the same but the original dealership, but I for an email from Liberty Subaru saying that because of some dealership rebate they could not make the deal for $19,500. I still didn’t feel like I owed this dealership anything and wanted to save Molly a trip in the car, so I went to the local Subaru place and said, “I got an offer of $19,500, can you match it, here is my credit card”, and they said the other dealership must be lying because that price is impossible and they said there best price was $21,200. With them out of the picture, and a snow storm predicted for the next day, I called Liberty to set everything up, but one little glitch, there maintenance team left for the day and it would take 2 days for them to clean and check the car before we could take it. So I called up Ramsey and the conversation went like this with the manager (after the salesmen was useless)Me: Liberty offered me $19,500 for the car, but if you can get it to me tonight, then you don’t have to beat that price, just match it.
Manager: Well, I don’t know if we can do that, maybe if you were here ready to buy it…
Me: Well your place is far away and my baby daughter hates the car, are you going to be able to give me the price when I get there.
Manager: Honestly, I can’t say yes over the phone, but if you come down here, and you’re ready to sign the papers, then I’m sure we will be able to work everything out and make you happy.
Me: Ok, but I’m not paying more the $19,500.
Manager: I understand, we’ll work it out when you get here.
So I drive all the way to Ramsey and when I get there and say what I want, they say they can’t do it, and then they called the Liberty dealerships liars. I wanted to scream and yell, but I didn’t want to waste my time. I don’t him that they were purposely manipulative and deceptive and that they knew I can a baby with me and they still wouldn’t give me the deal that they overtly implied they would. Now, even though I wanted the car right away, Ramsey would never get my business. I went to Liberty, they explained why they couldn’t have the car ready that day (which seemed reasonable), gave me the $19,500 price (no hidden fees) and I signed the papers. We picked up the car two days later and all is well. The End.
Ps, Glen, I want to start a website would people submit the final price they paid on a car and it would be a useful research site. I’m thinking about paying people $1 to scan and email me their papers with the final price on it.
Comments
How about this as a potential side business for you.. perhaps you can pay a person for sendin you the "real deal" they got .. and then folks who are shopping for cars can pay you a fee for being able to see the information you have stored on the website. What do you think of that idea ?
However, you wouldn't need to start your own site. Look at Google Base or Craigslist or epinions.com or MSN SPaces or Yahoo Groups. You can start exactly what you are saying in any one of these.