Comment by ocdtrekkie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ocdtrekkie | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I am not super concerned about seeing the physical car ahead of the order: I know the dealer can be held responsible should there be undisclosed damage. And I probably have already sat in the model of car I'm interested in long before I've bought one.

The biggest thing is the unholy horror that is negotiating with car dealerships. How do I negotiate with a website? If I am not negotiating, am I getting as good of a price as I would have if I was?

Additionally, I need a really simple/straightforward layout of what is or isn't included in the price and financing terms. Too often I had dealers focusing on the "monthly cost" while de-emphasizing the total cost, term of the financing, etc. That went not just for the car itself, but the add-ons like extended warranty and what-not upsells.

I want to see the total cost of the car (as negotiated), the total cost of any add-on features, and the total cost of the financing package selected (interest over the term), and then the monthly cost of each over that term below it.

You want to have total transparency. It makes sense. The "secret" of the industry is that dealers are not in the car selling business, they are in the financing business.

Currently there is a lot of asymmetry of information between the dealer and a consumer. How do you know that the dealer is giving you the best offer from a lender vs. a bit worse offer from a lender they have a relationship with?

To be fair on that, I regularly get requests from my banks for me to consider letting them give me a "better rate" for my auto loan, and it is generally three or four times the APR I got from the dealership for my auto loan. I tell them what it is, they apologize for bothering me, and hang up. So I feel like I (probably) managed a good deal there.

I'm going to shop around, so I don't really mind if the dealer is offering from a lender they have a relationship with. What keeps that in check is that another dealership will maybe offer me something better. I assume I can do this even if I am buying over the web.

I just found it particularly amazing how much the salespeople were focused on that monthly cost and dodging that total cost number or the term length. Maybe some consumers are fooled by this and let themselves get chained to something they'll be paying for figuratively forever?

I absolutely held it against dealers when negotiating if I felt like they weren't answering the question I was asking (literal total dollar price), so I feel like a website that exposed that information well would appeal to me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com