I’m trying to work a deal with Cadillac, but they’re adding .001 to the MF and pretending like I don’t know what they’re doing. I told him what the buy rate is for this month and he says that my information is incorrect, but it’s not. (I made sure that I entered the correct parameters for the online calculator here, e.g. zip code, mileage, term, trim level, etc.)
My question is: Where does the rate findr get its data from? I’m 99% certain that the dealer is bullshi**ing me, but how do I respond to his claim that my numbers are wrong? I know everybody is going to say, “find another dealer”. However, how can we objectively prove what the program numbers are for this month? More importantly, how certain are we that the information in the rate findr is accurate?
Plenty of dealers act like the max markup is the standard rate, and I think .001 is the max allowed by GM Financial. If the dealer is willing to provide extra discount to nullify the markup and it meets your target, does the markup matter? I can’t speak to your specific questions, except to say that I’ve never found an issue with Rate Findr’s data.
Pretty sure the data provider for RateFinder is Edmunds. A dealer is allowed to mark up the money factor if they would like as one of their ways to make money from a deal. Why not just ask? “So, you guys are marking up the rate?” Or phrase it in a way that says, “If you do the deal at buy rate, all other numbers remaining the same, I’ll be on my way to sign the deal and pick up the car right now”.
When you made your offer to the dealer at buy rate and they came back with a marked up money factor, did it include a larger discount to meet your target deal? Or did you ask for a quote and now your in this spot?
The dealer gave me a strong discount on the price of the vehicle (9%), but marked up the MF by almost 250 basis points (2+%). It’s easier to hide where they’re making their profit this way because the term sheet never discloses the money factor. (I backed into it by plugging the few datapoints I was given into a spreadsheet and running calculations).
If the dealer was reasonable about the bump in the MF, maybe it wouldn’t piss me off so much. But jacking the rate by a full two points is abusive and just annoys me.
I’m trying to double dip and get the strong discount AND the buy rate on the MF. I’m going to see which dealer blinks first before the month ends.
Keep in mind this is pretty common that when you see a large discount off MSRP, more often than not it is accompanied by either a rate bump or hard adds ( tint, nitrogen, vin etch ) etc…
I also would do similar to you and just shoot back with your target involving either a larger discount or base mf and see what they say. Obv it may be a Monday decision for the dealer if they still have the car. All this is making the assumption that you’re good either way it falls.
