Another 101 needed?: best practices for negotiation

Signed Deals & Tips
1

Guys,

I’m newish, and this site is a treasure trove of lease tips and hacks.

Really, really good.

But, while I get lease hacking is somewhat more advanced, I think it might not be a bad idea to add another 101 re getting to the best price from the dealer.

For example, I’m reaching out to a number of dealers right now.

I am inclined to send along screen grabs of deals.

But everyone wants me to come in, in person, and I really don’t want that.

If somebody could create a punchlist.

e.g.,

  1. copy this email. [boilerplate follows]
  2. Say you are ready to buy.
  3. Insist on email only.
  4. go for price first,
  5. Once price is set, list lease terms.
  6. Gap insurance and that fix up the car thing, last.

This isn’t exactly right. What are the real steps?

Next: what to do when nobody follows the plan?

What to do when they say, come on in…

APOLOGIES IF THIS IS ALREADY ON THE FORUM SOMEWHERE. I COULD NOT FIND IT.

EITHER WAY, WOULD SUGGEST ADDING TO BLUE BOX, TOP 3 TIPS SECTION, TO BE MOST USEFUL.

AGAIN, MY HEARTFELT THANKS TO THE PROS HERE WHO MAKE THIS THING HAPPEN.

3 Likes
2

Every deal is different.

3

I’ve searched for the same thing, and sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a one size fits all solution. I’ve emailed numerous dealers when I was searching for my BMW and I was pretty shocked at the lack of interest in dealing with me. Based on my limited experience, by asking for numbers online I got about a 2/10 hit rate. 7 out of 10 actually responded. 5 of those would respond with a boiler plate, “sure I’d love to get those numbers for you! Just come on in and I’ll get you taken care of!”. Out of the 2 salespeople that actually responded with numbers, 1 was a half ass set of numbers that didn’t make any sense and the other was a thorough set of numbers that were sooooo inflated it was like we were worlds apart in terms of sales price.

In the end, I ended up going with the dealer that I test drove with. They gave me the very best deal from the get-go and didn’t play any of those annoying dealership games with me. Feel free to try for yourself! I’d be happy to comment on your proposed emails if you want to post them on here, but truth is I have very little success.

Just for your reference, whenever I emailed a dealer, I made it very clear that I understood what the RV/MF/incentives and MSDs were. I just asked them if they could beat a specific sales price.

4

Thank you. I’ve got this strange dynamic going where they have sort of agreed to a price, but then are just agreeing to payment figures, and they aren’t showing the math.

5

Sounds pretty standard. It’s part of their games. They assume that giving payment information will sound a lot more enticing than the sale price. If you think they’ve agreed to a price, it might be worth calling them at that point and clarifying the numbers so you’re on the same page. Hopefully by now you’ve gotten the RV/MF/etc and you should be able to reverse engineer the sales price out of that.

6

I just got a quote of 9600 for a Bolt Premier, loaded. One pay. This all makes my head explode.

7

That’s a very good price. I did slightly better in SoCal last week, but that price went up already.

8

Very few dealers will do much by email. However I have found that if you follow up by phone that most will give you a phone quote and you can then shop the numbers. Many also seem to prefer text messages. Unfortunately car sales 101 teaches them to waste as much of your time as they can so that you are “invested” in the deal. So the best course is make it clear that you won’t play those games and won’t be visiting except to ink the paperwork and drive off. Speaking of which I had 2 dealers offer to bring me the car and the paperwork. That was tempting but I have yet to see a dealer get the paperwork right the first time so I would decline that offer.