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Comment by lflux | Hacker News Reader

I had my credit union's car purchasing department handle my car purchase. Did everything over email - I told them what I wanted and in what color, they did the legwork to find a dealer that had what I wanted. Emailed me a quote, then the dealer delivered it to my door.

No haggling, no visiting dealers, just email and signing some papers.

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If you're willing to pay the dealer's quote, then car salesmen will love you and you'll have a great time at a dealership anyway.

The entire bullshit process begins when you try to get a price that doesn't have thousands of extra dollars in for the dealership.

Sure, if the quote is out the door, but it never seems to be from what I've seen.

This was "Here's the price excluding title transfer including delivery"

Here is what I do, and it works well:

1. Call the dealer and ask for the internet sales manager.

2. Tell the manager exactly what you want (many people are not able to do this accurately and consistently).

3. Ask for the out-the-door price.

4. Repeat for any number of dealers that you are willing to drive to.

5. Buy from the dealer you choose.

I usually get several quotes within $100 or so of each other. At that point, I just pick the place with a low price and in a location that I prefer to pick up my car.

That's close to my procedure but last time I did car shopping two dealers made me come in and after an hour of paperwork it turned out that they didn't keep their end of the bargain but added 1000-2000 to the price. I walked out but still wasted a lot of time. Only the third dealer stuck to his promise afte a little amount of negotiating.

Buying a car and medical billing are the sleaziest businesses I have ever dealt with.

You need to be careful and make sure to select dealers that are outside of their conglomerates. When we were shopping our last Subaru no one would budge on us until we started talking with Oregon dealers, then all of a sudden they'd drop the price a ton.

Turns out almost all Subaru dealerships in SW WA are owned by the same owner under different names so they just coordinate to not deal unless they know they're actually competing for a sale.

I had this problem buying a motorcycle; I don't know if or how the local dealers coordinated, but I got a dramatically better price half a state away. I took the quote to the local dealer and offered to add on half what shipping would cost me. - worked out somewhat lower than any of the local dealers were willing to pay and I got to buy from a local dealer (which ended up not being a big deal anyhow, but it was something I thought would be important)

If you get an out the door quote that you're willing to accept, tell them that you're coming in with a check made out in exactly that amount and if it turns out that isn't enough, you'll leave.

While I fully agree on hating the process, I've found the easiest working reply to these tactics by accident:

Simply visit the dealer, get through exactly the model you want, be reasonably interested (but not too much in love), ask for a quote, leave some contact details and leave.

Never answer and come back in about a month with a cheque when they've bidded themselves 20% down without you even saying a word.

This only works if your vehicle isn't niche or if demand is more than supply.

I guess you could just multiply by X dealers and use the same "time is on my side" approach.

Well, yes, that's kind of implied isn't it? If it was in demand then they won't have to negotiate with you as much. Some could even charge more if the demand is high enough.

9 times out of 10 when you ask for the quote, the answer will be "what will it take to put you in this car today" and the haggling starts. They will dance and do tricks to keep you in the showroom. You need to be determined to walk out, and probably get as far as opening the door, to get them to quote a number first.

Isn't this the same for Tesla? You have to accept tesla's quote with no negotiation?

It’s different because with Tesla you can’t negotiate. The price is the price, take it or leave it. With a traditional dealership, you can refrain from negotiating, but then you’re leaving money on the table, potentially thousands of dollars.

There are "no haggle" dealers though and there have been brands over the years that were no haggle. But it has to pretty much be at the brand level at least or the process doesn't work in the consumer's favor. And that doesn't even account for financing and trade-ins.

However, especially as you get to luxury brands and buyers aren't trying to get to minimal prices, I expect the "dealer experience" gets better.

So they have better salespeople that will never negotiate? Seems like a win for them.

It’s a win for everyone. That’s why roughly 99.9% of goods are sold this way.

How did you get a decent price? My employer offers a similar service as part of the benefits program. You print out a piece of paper, take it to the dealer, and get a prenegotiated price. Sounds amazing in theory until you do more research and realize you’re still paying $1000s more.

I emailed a bunch of dealers before my CU told me this service existed and got quotes, and they were competitive. It differed like, $500-1000 from what area dealers were offering and i was willing to take it.

So, some legwork with a throwaway email address, but still very sofa compatibile.

I emailed dealers and no one wanted to work over email. One even flat out wrote back saying they don’t send quotes over email because they know i will just shop around for a lower price.

I found the same thing. Everyone wanted you to come in so they could play their games. Still not that bad if you’re just making a cash on the barrel purchase but I did have to visit dealers.

I did that successfully in 2001 but in 2014 nobody would give me quotes over E-mail.

The only way I know to get a good deal is to walk into a dealership, know exactly which car & options you want & say you're paying cash & are willing to pay $100 over the manufacturer's invoice. They'll cut the nonsense and take the deal.

90% of the games begin when you finance the vehicle at the dealership. Don't want to put $2000 down? Let's just add another year to the term. Or how about we add $50 / month to the payment? I watched in shock as salesmen would come back with increasingly worse offers in terms of total cost and customers would leave happy thinking they were great negotiators.

Americans are shockingly bad at math.

> say you're paying cash & are willing to pay $100 over the manufacturer's invoice

It's good to research what the invoice price is, but this isn't their actual cost. Manufacturers offer incentives to dealerships based on all sorts of things, including hitting certain sales goals. These rebates aren't factored into the invoice price, so even buying at invoice isn't always an amazing deal. My understanding is that the rebates/incentives are bigger with some manufacturers than others, but I don't know the details.

That's true. You're probably still getting screwed, but quite a bit less than everyone else. If you don't want to get screwed at all, don't buy a new car from a dealership.

Ya, all this talk of how to get a good deal... There is no such thing at a new car dealership. Wait until the car has 20,000 miles on it. Get it for way, way less.

Here's a decent article about how auto pricing has evolved beyond manufacturer's invoice due to the internet:

https://clark.com/cars/eye-opening-truth-about-dealer-invoic...

Thanks for sharing. It's been over a decade since I worked at a dealership & obviously haven't kept up with the industry very much.

"are willing to pay $100 over the manufacturer's invoice. "

With the two new cars I have bought so far I paid substantially under invoice both times. Seems a made up number to me.

I also paid cash each time and they begged me to finance for three months so they would get more incentives from the manufacturer.

Go to the internet sales manager at the dealer. Last time I did it it was no-nonsense. They ask for my requirements, quote a price. I compare prices among a few dealers and went with the best. I go there and a car is ready for me to test drive. I had pre-negotiated a loan with my credit union so 30 minutes of paperwork and I'm out.

You can play the different sales managers off each other too. You have room to negotiate if you want to spend the time.

In all fairness that does assume you don’t care about test driving etc. but in general if you don’t have dealer financing needs, are happy to do a private sale or donation for your trade-in, and know what you want and will pay, the dealer experience is mostly just mildly annoying even if you buy a car from one.

Right - I knew exactly what I wanted since I had driven the car as a rental.

What sort of credit union offers car purchasing service? what other services do they offer?

A bunch in the bay area. I use San Francisco Federal, but they use PatelCo CU's service.

My bank and credit union both offer car buying services via TrueCar (which my bank actually owns around 10% of so they really encourage people to use it). In my case I paid around 5% less for my car than the "best" price I was able to get by visiting a dealer and going through the traditional song-and-dance routine. It seems like one of the big benefits is that they make it really easy to check the prices at a bunch of dealers. I don't remember if they actually offered any substantial saving at my local dealer compared to the price I "negotiated", but I was able to find a dealer that was willing to do a cheaper price around 70 miles away.

Costco has a similar arrangement.

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