Do dealers contact each other?

GM of dealer 2 called the GM of dealer 1 to complain that he was giving too good a deal

LOL what? Isn’t that collusion as stated above?

The moral of the story is that people suck, and we have people both buying and selling cars. It’s a recipe for mass sucking.

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I think it would only be collusion if they came to some sort of agreement. As it was, it was just one complaining to another.

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In a perfect world, it wouldn’t matter whether you had a quote or not. You would give the dealer your best offer, and they would accept, decline, or counter. I suspect one reason they want to see a quote is because if you actually have one and they don’t meet it, there’s a good chance of you buying elsewhere. If you don’t really have one, then you may realize you can’t do any better and come back around and buy from them. Who the quote is from really just gives them an idea of who is undercutting them and I suppose they could make a stink with some regional rep from the manufacturer. I personally wouldn’t provide that information.

I think you’re probably more likely to get asked for a quote if the numbers are unreasonably low. If it looks plausible that the numbers could have come from another dealer, they’re probably less likely to question it. I may or may not have used a fake but plausible quote to energize a stalled negotiation in the past with good success.

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I know for a fact that Autonation dealerships have a central system where they can see what quote other autonation dealerships sent you. I was sitting at the CA desk and he actually showed me his screen with all the other 4 dealerships I had contacted under the same brand, whom had I talked to, what emails were exchanged and what quotes were given… :S

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Written quotes are apparently meaningless (if you are good with photoshop). :roll_eyes:

I’m very good with Photoshop, but since I can’t get dealers to beat real quotes (after promising to do so), there doesn’t seem to be any point in that!

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See the problem with that was the price was too ridiculous. I feel like if you know what numbers you are working with, you would have success like this guy

Exactly. In my case I think it was a combination of things. It was the possibility of losing the sale to someone else (the dealer who provided the “quote”), me presenting the numbers with a “if you can match this, call me to take a credit card deposit”, and showing them how the deal would actually break down. I think the dealer was just being lazy and thinking they’d have to take too much of a discount to get to my number. So, I laid out the whole breakdown with a base MF, realistic amounts for title/reg and dealer fees, the actual rebates, etc. that showed how much discount they’d need to apply to the MSRP in order to get to what I wanted. Within 10 minutes of sending the email I had left a deposit with a monthly payment that they swore for 3 days was $25 less than they could possibly do.

I’ve seen 27% off on i8 so that might not be fake…

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this exactly. hahahaha.

Wow, that’s a bit much. I should say that when I provided the dealer with a “quote” I wanted them to match, it was just an itemized breakdown of all the figures you’d typically be given with a quote from a dealer in a generic format. I would never actually think to modify a real dealer’s quote and present it along with their name as something real. While it’s probably not technically illegal, that gets too far into “forged document” territory.

This is new to me and I recently learned in an MBA business course that is ALWAYS smart to share your leads and prospects with your direct competition. Usually, at regional dealer association meetings, they all actually bring their monthly P&L documents to further help each other out.

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I guess that makes sense considering Autonation’s stance on 4Runner TRD Pros was MSRP or higher consistently throughout the country even in weaker markets / regions. They have consistency I’ll give them that.

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I have tried various methods from being honest, making up numbers, and simply not giving a crap by forwarding quotes at their request knowing they probably couldn’t beat the quoted numbers.

The latter, once reaching a certain discount threshold, is simply a waste of time which usually results in a ton of “That’s a great offer. You should take it”.

One thing I haven’t done was leverage two dealerships of the same brand and franchise across town against one another. Both quotes were super competitive (top 2 discounts) and didn’t feel like having that blow up in my face if they talked to each other since I would assume they are on friendly terms.

Was that the right move or should I have tried to leverage those two against one another had I not cared about the end result?

Has someone tried that and can share how that ended up?

I found that recently too the dealer wanted the offer I had had in writing, personally I have leased for a while but I usually get the offer over the phone or via text and even asked if that is common to write every offer up (sometimes they change daily) formally.

A dealer has multiple avenues and tools to separate you from your money, many of them you (not you specifically, the public in general “you”) probably have no idea about. So why not use every tool at your disposal? It’s like going hunting and blindfolding yourself before taking your shot.

In fact whenever I work a deal for a client I always ask if they had collected any offers they would consider accepting prior to contacting me. Why? I use it as a tool to either leverage a better deal or as a tool for me to pass on business that would take entirely too much effort to realize a negligible result.

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It’s absolutely a tool. As a former salesperson, if somebody came in with a worksheet from somewhere else, I’d grab it, run to the manager, slam it down and say “it’s time to get to work, beat it or don’t, but I just got you a commitment”. 90% of the time the dealer will beat it if there’s still hold back, the hopes of future service appts, referrals or whatever. Or them coming back to buy their next one.

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Out of curiosity, how often did the buyer take your new quote and try to get someone else to beat THAT? I’ve heard stories of buyers who will spend days grinding down a few bucks pitting quotes against quotes.

That’s the waste of time I don’t get - to spend days for just extra $50 saved over the course of 36 month while time spend probably would be worth few times that saving.

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