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Comment by matwood | Hacker News Reader

Unless you're being forced to buy a car because of a wreck or something similar, you have to remember that you have 100% of the power. I've had salesman and "sales managers" laugh at my price and then chase me out as I walked out, only to call me a week later offering my price to which I told them was no longer good so it needed to be lower. I've had the finance guy literally not shaking my hand at the end of the deal and telling me never to buy a car there again (I had to correct his mistakes over and over). Buying a car is war, and if you approach it that way it can be quite amusing.

Some other stories, I had a friend when buying one of his cars it was a month long negotiation. I would be in his office, the phone would ring he would pick up say "No" and just hang up on the sales guy. Pretty hilarious actually.

Another friend walked into the dealership, money in hand and told the guy a price and that he had 45 minutes before he had to go back to work. He said it was awesome watching the salesman run all over the lot in the heat, but the deal got done.

If someone does not want to negotiate, CarMax is okay. The prices are not the best, but they are clearly shown online and the buying process is dead simple.

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This is true. The buyer has all the power in a car purchase, especially for a sports car or motorcycle which are nonessential to daily life. I'll tell you two stories of acquaintances. One wanted a Lamborghini, so he researched what he wanted, drew up a letter to the dealer and included a cashier check for the price he was willing to pay, and a return envelope. Initially the dealer responded in the negative, but without returning the check. Six months later his car arrived.

I accompanied another friend to a motorcycle dealer. He had previously negotiated the price of the bike and brought cash in that amount. He puts the cash on the counter, and the salesman starts running this game about how the owner really likes that bike and doesn't want to sell it, except at a higher price, and all this. The buyer reaches into the giant stack of cash -- thousands of dollars in $20 bills always seems like a lot of money -- counts out a thousand dollars, and puts it in his pocket. He says the remaining amount of money is the most he's willing to pay after hearing the salesman's story. The salesman disappears, comes back and desperately tries to close the deal at the original price, but eventually has to settle for the money that's literally on the table.

There is almost nobody more desperate than a car salesman, so dealing with them is actually pretty easy.

This has to be the best example of "cash talks" that I've ever heard. Definitely going to keep this one in my back pocket!

As much as I would like to do this to a shady used car salesman, I'm hoping I will never need purchase a car again. I'm going to use public transport, biking, walking and carsharing until self-driving cars arrive. I'm sure many millennials are in the same boat.

Yep, car free since 2010!

If you live in any modern city (not sure about the US though since the car culture is prevalent there in most places) you usually don't need a car for daily activities or going to work. But once you want to have 1) kids 2) a bigger place 3) some land instead of just an apartment, you will end up living farther from the city and having to own a car at some point, unless you have a very large income that can accommodate such standards of livings right inside the city.

I'm not a believer in kids=cars and I don't like to see it propagated, even if it's true for many Anericans. There was a feature in the New Tork Times in the last few weeks about how rapidly cargo biking is gaining popularity with families. I ride to school with my older child and there are half a dozen other families doing the same thing. Globally it is absurd to suggest that children require cars. It is a uniquely American perspective.

> It is a uniquely American perspective.

Nope, in Japanese cities rents are very expensive, and if you want to have space for more than one kid you either need to start doing three jobs to afford a bigger place, or start packing and leave further away where a car is much more likely to be needed. You only have efficient public transportation inside the large metropolitan centers, once you are a little out of that, your options drop progressively.

Do the math.

> It is a uniquely American perspective.

Citation needed. Oh wait, there is none, because you are wrong.

You may get by with public transportation for commuting and taking the kids to school, but unless you want to get stuck at the house on weekends, you will need a car, unless you want to live in the city center.

> but unless you want to get stuck at the house on weekends, you will need a car, unless you want to live in the city center.

Sounds like a mostly American perspective to me. I'm Norwegian, living in the UK, with a 6 year old son. I did consider getting a drivers license (never felt the need for one before) when we had our son, and it was a bit tiresome when he was too little to walk, but I don't feel a need for it any more. Maybe I'll get a drivers license one day, but I don't bet on it (I'm 40 and have done just fine so far)

Certainly there are plenty of people in Europe and elsewhere who see a car as a nice convenience that becomes even nicer to have when you get a kid, but I don't know many people that see it as a necessity.

Do you live in a big (or bigger than average) city?

I live in the UK in a small town and can not imagine having kids but no car. Most of my friends find having a car is essential even without kids (though I prefer to not have a car unless 100% necessary).

On my own I am fine with public transport, but anything between walking around the village or going to a big city isn't really covered by public transport.

My sister has three children, zero cars and some (OK, about ten) bicycles, including a cargo bike and a couple of trailers. They live in Edinburgh, which has a fair to medium public transport network, and manages to survive. I've travelled around with them and the kids and it really isn't a big deal, including long-distance journeys involving trains. One thing that does require a car is getting to out-of-the-way locations, we had to rely on relatives with vehicles for a trip out to the Museum of Flight, about 20 miles away and not at all accessible by public transport. We could probably have used the 'City Car Club' (similar to 'ZipCar') for that, if really necessary, although with children you then need to provide appropriate car seats, which is a hassle.

Anyway, for day-to-day travel and commuting, even with children, cars are not required in a medium sized city like Edinburgh.

One interesting (albeit off-topic) point she and her husband made to me was that having kids in push-chairs/buggies suddenly makes you appreciate the issues that disabled people in wheelchairs must have all the time for access to buildings.

For one kid, I agree, it's doable. More than one and it becomes complicated.

And of course, since you never got a driver's license you don't know what you're missing (and works around it)

E.g.: you have to pay/ask for someone to get something slightly oversized (either a store delivery or get a taxi), and/or doesn't have access to cheaper stores.

Pet transportation is limited.

You're pretty much dependent on others to places not covered by public transportation (and of course, this limits where you can live, and convenient public transport nearby implies a more expensive place).

Of course, for some people this makes no difference, and things like Uber make it easier nowadays.

> Pet transportation is limited.

My local tram network has 2 types of tickets: (a) Adults or (b) Children/pets.

Good, now take your 20kg dog that is sick and can't move in it to the vet.

I have to confess I would find the idea of not having a drivers license pretty extraordinary. If I lived and worked somewhere like New York City or London, I could imagine not owning a car depending upon the exact circumstances, especially given the availability of short-term rentals like Zipcar these days.

But essentially depending upon others to get out of the city for the weekend to anyplace that isn't likely an other city? Or being able to travel to destinations outside of towns/cities without having someone along who can drive? I'd find it incredibly limiting. In fact, I'm in the midst of planning a couple of hiking weeks in the Pacific Northwest that would be utterly undoable without renting a car.

Whatever works for you of course. I just can't imagine it.

> unless you want to get stuck at the house on weekends, you will need a car, unless you want to live in the city center.

There are buses, trains and trams to the countryside.

Yes, usually on a limited or very limited schedule.

(With some notable exceptions like Germany)

This kind of American exceptionalism is just as bad as the "we're the best at everything!" nonsense you see in American politics.

No way is "children require cars" a uniquely American perspective. I have a lot of in-laws in urban China and the ones who are now having children pretty much universally buy cars if they didn't already have them. I lived in France for several years and I don't think I knew anyone with children who didn't own a car. Look at just about any city on the planet and what do you see? Cars, cars, and more cars. Cars as far as the eye can see.

Car culture is not an American thing. It's a first world thing, where "first world" includes the wealthy parts of the third world too. Now, it's certainly possible that this is not necessary, but that's how it currently is all over the place. If you want to change it, you won't get anywhere if you think that it's somehow unique to a single country.

But is having more than one car per family common anywhere else on the planet than in United States?

Much of Western Europe (along with Japan) owns more cars per capita than the US does.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/its...

Is having more than one car per family relevant to the question of whether having kids implies having a car?

In any case, it looks like the answer is more or less "yes." The difference in car ownership per capita is not that different between the US and many other first-world countries:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_p...

But this counts a lot of vehicles we wouldn't consider "cars," like tractor trailers. If we just look at passenger vehicles, it seems that the US is nowhere near the top:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/its...

The discrepancy is pretty big and this doesn't fit with what I'd have thought. Plus the source is not available. But other sources corroborate:

http://www.forbes.com/2008/07/30/energy-europe-automobiles-b...

http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Transport/Pas...

http://www.acea.be/statistics/tag/category/passenger-car-fle...

So not only is the US not unique in being in love with cars, we're not even the most excessive at it. Maybe the next time somebody feels like getting all nationalistic about criticizing car culture, they'll point the finger at Italy, Germany, or France before they decide to aim for the US.

Thanks for the info. I was very convinced this is an US phenomenon. I stand corrected.

I learned something too! I knew we weren't alone but I just assumed we were the worst. Guess not.

The Carnegie data at least was put together for the purposes of making a point about the size of the middle class and I believe a number of those pieces, in addition to The Atlantic, are making use of that data set.

From the comments to that article, there seem to be some questions around what vehicles exactly are being counted and whether the methodology is consistent from country to country (e.g. pickups are probably quite a bit more common in the US than in western Europe). You could also argue that per capita isn't really the best measure and you may consider adjusting for income measures, demographics, and urbanization.

That said, there's a stereotype of Americans as a car culture where people drive everywhere and western Europeans as living in the core of medieval cities and walking/biking/taking transit everyplace. And that stereotype doesn't hold up.

Not sure if you've ever heard of Carmax, but it's designed to be the opposite of what you experienced.

I used them to basically order the car I wanted over the internet. I browsed their site, found the cheapest one in their inventory, and paid to have it shipped to my local Carmax. They called me to let me know the car was there and I went and test drove it. The price was set, so no haggling, and just friendly service. It was the best experience and probably the only way i'll buy a car again.

Check it out next time... it really was surprisingly good service...

ps. I've had the car for 6 years and ended up being an overall terrific buy...

My problem isn't so much with the car-buying process, it's with the concept of car ownership, full stop. I don't want to own a depreciating asset, deal with maintenance, parking, insurance and other costs. Most importantly, I believe in denser, more walk-able cities and I'm going to do my (small) part to make that happen by supporting alternative transport.

If you buy slightly nicer luxury-ish vehicles (M-series BMW, E/S class Mercedes, Audi, Porsche) the extended warranties are unbeatable. It's nice getting a Porsche Cayman rebuilt for $150 deductible because you purchased a $4500 100,000 mile warranty. Jalopnik had a write-up on a guy who bought the much maligned Range Rover and basically recouped his purchase cost in 1 or 2 warranty-covered repairs.

If you're waiting for self-driving cars in the sense of ordering one from your phone to pick you up at an arbitrary location, I'm afraid you're going to be waiting a long time. The fact that autopilot systems seem to work pretty well on highways in good weather has IMO made a lot of people way way optimistic about robo-Uber arriving in timescales less than multiple decades.

I'd love to be wrong but there's a huge gap between works pretty well on highways and can negotiate city streets to an arbitrary location without a human present.

If you engineer your life to never need a car, you'll likewise always be in the position of power while buying one.

I used to work at a car dealership as a title clerk. You are right about one thing: car salesmen are desperate. They're being conned just as much as the buyers are. Their ability to support their families is tied to their commission. At the dealership I worked at, the salesmen literally drew lots to see how much of their base salary they would have to pay to the company that month in "operating costs." The theory behind that one was to keep the salesmen keen to close sales.

That was my first job, but I've had dozens since and nowhere else have I seen such unambiguously shady and downright illegal behavior occur under one roof, almost entirely by the senior management and higher. The rank and file weren't too bad. Every one of them would tell me to learn all I could there, but go back to college so I wouldn't have to do what they did for a living.

Thanks for some perspective from the other side.

It's too easy to demonize people who I'm sure don't want to be engaging in this bullshit in the first place.

I'm sure there are sales staff who get off on shafting customers, but I don't think you can say it's all of em.

"Just doing my job/following orders." does not work as an excuse for their behavior. I will not do anything illegal to a sales person, but I find the only approach that safeguards yourself is to treat them as a being lacking empathy and with a distaste for anything truthful unless it benefits them.

Too many times I had to work with friends/family who were outright lied to by those desperate to close a sale.

I read Chandler Phillips' Confessions of a Car Salesman last year (originally published in 2009) and found it really interesting/telling:

http://www.edmunds.com/car-buying/confessions-of-a-car-sales...

That "show the money" story is old school brutal all kinds of awesome. Thanks for sharing it.

Relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4986790

" I've had the finance guy literally not shaking my hand at the end of the deal and telling me never to buy a car there again"

That's a very, very common scam. The "Finance Guy" (or the Sales Guy's Manager) - saying never come back again. Sometimes they'll even say how they screwed up, and lost money on this deal. Sometimes they say they may have to sue to get some money back...

It's all an absolute complete scam. Car Dealers have been doing this for 50+ years, and they pass down the techniques and drama to new sales teams. They will never, ever do a deal that they aren't completely happy with.

And the "mistakes" (also a super common technique) are almost always placed on the deal so that the person buying the car takes away satisfaction at having "fixed" tiny parts of the deal.

My cousin was a car dealer, and, while I love her to pieces, when she started talking about her job and their attitudes towards customers ("Buyers are liars"), I absolutely understood how just filling a role can change how you fundamentally behave (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment for more details)

Your last scenario, btw - is actually the exact way to buy a vehicle from these jerks. Do the research, find the absolute best price, end of month/quarter/year dealer incentives included, and then find a dealer that's rated well for service - and give them a Yes/No offer, all in (including shipping, transfer, paperwork, whatever the hell they want to make up - you don't care, just as long as the bottom line is less than your number) - and a time limit. If they can't do the deal within the time limit, no drama or discussion, just go to dealer #2.

There's a good chunk about this in Cialdini's "Influence" for anyone that wants more detail.

> They will never, ever do a deal that they aren't completely happy with

There was an episode of This American Life about car dealerships that everyone here should really listen to [1].

In that episode they did close deals where they were losing money, but hoping it would make them meet their monthly sales goal (set by the supplier), which would result in a bonus that would put them in the black.

[1] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/513/1...

I hope others listen to this. Not that I would consider dealerships ethical but there's also some ignorance / baseless group hate that could stand to be corrected in this thread.

In this case he actually was pissed. I had the price agreed to and the finance rate. Each step he tried to tack on higher rates, more fees, etc... all while only talking in payment amount. At the time I had a business calculator and could quickly do the math on my own to the point where he was yelling at me for telling him the payment was $1 too high.

> If someone does not want to negotiate, CarMax is okay. The prices are not the best, but they are clearly shown online and the buying process is dead simple.

You should revisit your first three paragraphs to understand why people are okay with Carmax's prices. Buying a car should not be war, it should not be a hassle, and you should not have to wonder the entire time how you're going to get screwed.

Disclaimer: I have bought over 11 cars from Carmax for myself and family; never once have I been dissatisfied. Next car is a Model S or X.

> You should revisit your first three paragraphs to understand why people are okay with Carmax's prices.

It's pretty simple, they're willing to pay extra to avoid negotiation

> Buying a car should not be war, it should not be a hassle, and you should not have to wonder the entire time how you're going to get screwed.

Why not? If you have a business idea ("it shouldnt be a hassle!") then go for it. But if you think negotiating is unfair, well, yeah, of course it's unfair. File that next to "The Spurs lost" and "I'm not married to a supermodel."

It's pretty simple, they're willing to pay extra to avoid negotiation

Negotiation costs time and stress. If one has more money than time and stress tolerance, it makes sense to pay to skip the negotiation.

I dont disagree, legit reason.

You can very easily save a couple thousand dollars in negotiation. I understand the TVM, and I see the value in two ways:

1. I can sit around a dealer for a couple hours and save a couple thousand bucks: that's $500-$1k/hr. Pretty good (e.g., worth my time).

2. I get to practice my negotiation skills. This has gotten fun. And while I will likely never be in the position of negotiating for large amounts (e.g., sale of a business), in that instance a 10% delta could equate to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I bought a pre-owned car a couple months ago from a high-end, reputable dealer. They pulled the "that guy over there is interested in the same car" trick. I was tempted to go over an introduce myself (should have). Instead I told them the color wasn't my first choice and they should sell to the other guy. I was told the manager came over to "say goodbye" (no he wasn't), so I stood up and put on my coat. We reached a deal. My wife was freaking out. It was fun.

> Why not?

i'd say it means the market isn't being allowed to work or even exist in the first place, which is the whole point of this discussion. 'going for it' is exactly what the establishments are trying to keep Tesla from doing.

> But if you think negotiating is unfair, well, yeah, of course it's unfair. File that next to "The Spurs lost" and "I'm not married to a supermodel."

So you accept and encourage car salesmen to take advantage of people with poor negotiating skills (or people that are easily manipulated)? Do these people deserve to have their money taken from them, or does their lack of skill mean that they shouldn't be buying a car at all?

I agree with the principles of what you are saying; but practically speaking: where does one draws the line? How does that differs from everyday --most often misleading and pretty much fake-- Advertisement? How about mortgage? Surely that is nothing more than ripping off the poor.

Both of those examples are objectively awful things, used by desperate people to attain control over others.

In the US, people don't really haggle every day. It's not part of the culture. This stands in stark contrast to the experience of buying a car, which is something people are never going to do frequently enough to build up haggling skills. So it's really context dependent.

In a culture where people haggle constantly (or at least more frequently), then a larger portion of people will have the relevant skill set to navigate these waters. I guess you could "solve" it by building haggling into the culture, but you could also "solve" it by forcing car dealerships to normalize with the way that most other average purchases work.

Don't know much about mortgage, but advertising is clearly a legalized and glorified antisocial behaviour. Somehow lying and tricking people into parting with their money is a respactable occupation nowadays.

I guess my flippant answer is "Yes." My less flippant answer is that autos are one of the few personal purchases that US consumers usually have to negotiate a price for. (Of course, many people regularly negotiate as part of their jobs.)

"Should" car purchases be negotiations? Well, they aren't at all dealers or with all brands but it's the way things have evolved in the US generally. I don't consider it right or wrong in some general sense; it's just the way things are. And there are other options for those who choose not to negotiate although they probably won't be quite as good a deal as an aggressively negotiated and shopped around for purchase.

> "Should" car purchases be negotiations? Well, they aren't at all dealers or with all brands but it's the way things have evolved in the US generally. I don't consider it right or wrong in some general sense; it's just the way things are.

Not for too much longer.

Is there really a general trend for new cars to be purchased at a non-negotiable price, with standard non-negotiable financing, and with trade-in independent of the new car purchase? I can point to some examples (including but not limited to Tesla) where at least a "no haggle" price is the case but it doesn't seem particularly common. One thing is that, while a lot of people claim to dislike negotiating, those same people want to get a real or perceived "good deal."

There is not such a trend, for new cars. Remember that new cars are mostly sold by dealers who have exclusive territories. That gives dealers the freedom to pick a business model that maximizes dealer profits.

Yeah. As someone who's not used to negotiating regularly, especially at car level stakes (what else do people buy that's expensive, houses?) buying a car from a dealer was an experience.

The war analogy is apt. Burn every bridge. Don't just be ready to walk, walk. It's an all day process, but it can save you literally thousands of dollars. One of my old managers went to the lot, looked around for the least saleable car, and made a standing offer for it. They called back a couple of times with higher prices, he declined. Turns out at the end of the month, they have to make a quota and would take his deal.

My old roommate in college used to figure out the price he would pay, get a cashier's check for that amount made out to the dealer, and slowly start ripping it if they didn't give him the price. He ripped it in half at the first dealer and walked out, he got his price at the second dealer. All it cost him was the $20 to have two checks issued.

I've had good results just emailing a bunch of dealerships, so they can all see each other in the To field.

Me too, for the most part. I'd always ask for the "out the door" all-cash price, all taxes and fees included.

Two dealerships wasted my time by revealing more fees after I'd already driven out, but that was fine because there was another dealership with the same offer, and they stood by it.

Buying used, it seems like cars bought directly from the owner can be had for about $3k less. It costs dealerships a lot to inspect, clean, and warehouse cars, plus pay all their high pressure salesmen.

> you have to remember that you have 100% of the power

It's simply not how humans interact with each other. Every person I ever meet face to face has a significant power over my emotions.

Work on that:

https://www.google.com/search?q=you+control+your+emotions&oq...

Edgy.

I had a dealer chase me out and then call me back and then offer me to deliver the car and contract to my home but they were so rude earlier that I went somewhere else and ended up getting an even better deal...

thanks to http://www.truecar.com. I don't know if they still help you get a good deal, but I was able to use the best deal in my area from truecar.com and bring it to someone else that was closer to me and they beat that price. I'm not sure if I got a really good deal but I ended up paying less then MSRP with taxes and fees included, so I was happy.

Well that's fine, but they're just going to extort a sweet old lady to make up the difference.

Everyone paying the same price with no middlemen is my preferred model.

> Buying a car is war, and if you approach it that way it can be quite amusing.

Lol why is buying something a war? I've gotta say, things can seem pretty backwards sometimes in the US.

Haggling is a common buying strategy outside of America as well.

Other places might not favor the armed conflict metaphor quite so much though.

Haggling is not war.

War doesn't equal battle.

The best victory is the one in which you do not actually fight.

Both are conflicts between two (or more) parties in which the ultimate question at hand is how resources be allocated.

If one side chooses to play dirty, your options are to:

1. Concede the battle and lose.

2. Walk away.

3. Up your game and win the best possible deal.

The OP described the car buying process as a masochist's dream, with the endless waiting and the characteristic pricing mind games. You take the other end of the spectrum, making it a sort of sadist's paradise, watching salesmen panic and worry.

Isn't there a middle-ground? I don't want to abuse or be abused in some social game; I merely want a box with wheels to convey me from work to home and back.

CarMax is also decent if you want to sell a car with little hassle. You'll get less than you would privately, but it's so dang easy it's almost worth it.

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