The original post was using hypothetical numbers to make it the calc easier and make the real question come across more clearly (though I definitely failed at that).
Pre-incentive discount or not, what matters at the end of the day is what the dealer makes in profit. And with my offer, the dealer would make more in profit than someone walking in and paying asking price for the car…yet the dealer still let me walk away.
Is this what they are actually offering or are you just assuming that their $88k price is pre-incentive?
99% sure the advertised price doesn’t apply to leases because there’s trunk money embedded in that price.
That’s not how it works.
Selling price is selling price, and incentives are incentives. If they’re itemized, they’re usually taxable. So either the $7,500 or the entire $24k is taxable.
The incentives aren’t itemized in my quote, they just list MSRP, “discounts”, selling price, fees, and all that nets to the “capitalized cost.”
But I do think your comment on trunk money makes sense. Although the price they advertise doesn’t show any incentives being applied to it. I can see how maybe MB has $10K in “trunk money” for a purchase of a 2024 EQS and $16.5K for a lease. If that was case, the dealer would only be able to decrease the price by $6.5K + the $7.5K EV credit to come out to the same profit they would make in an outright sale.
Does anyone know if MB has any trunk money this month for a '24 EQS that applies to purchases?
Who cares?
If you want to lease, you need to be setting your target deal based off lease incentives and you need to know your number before talking to a dealer. Anything they say other than “yes” or “no” to your offer is just noise.
You’re way overthinking this. Don’t try to make sense of their noise. It’s whole purpose is to manipulate you into paying more. Just ignore it.
Anything other than the following is a huge waste of time:
Researching Signed Deals & Tips and Marketplace to know what pre-incentive discount to target off MSRP.
And looking at those same subs to find other levers such as maximizing rebates and minimizing rent charge thru MSD or one-pay.
Some on here suggest what you’re suggesting, which is to find the pre-incentive discount to target, then apply rebates, etc. But others say don’t worry about the details, just give the dealer a number to get to and let them figure out how they want to get there.
So I used all the info I found to get to what I think is a reasonable number ($700/mo incl. taxes $0 DAS). I know what the dealer came back with $741/mo, is only $984 more than my target for the total lease period–so it seems easy to just give in and pay the $741/mo (which is probably what the dealer is hoping for). But I think as long as I have a reasonable target and am willing to wait (and work) for a deal, then I should just stick with it.
Btw, how does one target a “pre-incentive” discount? Do you actually go and say, for example for a $100K MSRP car, “I’m looking to get to $80K, before any lease incentives?”
I read about J_Boxer’s EQS 580 deal and get how the MF issue can sometimes be worked around via one-pay. But, in my case, the MF they seem to be using is 0.00220. So a 0.0004 reduction only gets us to 0.0018.
As some of you have said, I think the dealer doesn’t really need to sell this car. They may want to just keep using it as a loaner to 20-30K miles and then sell it later as certified. Not sure if that makes more sense than selling it now to take advantage of all the lease incentives. Or they may just be working with another buyer or think that they’ll sell it this coming weekend.
Perhaps it’s time for me to just move on.
The distinction that I usually see is: you do ALL the math (RV, MF, incentives, taxes - separate any trades) so you know what the number should be, when making an offer
If they laugh and want to see your math you can show it to them, demonstrating you understand the market and incentives and that is how you arrived at your payment, not “because my current lease is $25/mo more” or whatever arbitrary reason one wants a G-Wagen for $599 on a sign-and-drive.
Ok, I just found out that the $16.5K in dealer lease cash also applies to purchases, only the $7.5K EV credit is for leases only. In that case, it makes sense for the dealer to not be able to take the full $24K off the asking price as some of the $16.5K in lease cash is already embedded into the price.
It just means they were never taking $24k off the asking price and the actual deal was misunderstood.
See, this is the great misunderstanding of that concept.
You are conflating establishing a target deal with actually negotiating the deal.
To properly establish a target deal, you need all of that information.
Once you have a target deal established and are negotiating the deal, you can effectively do so by either offering a totally broken down offer with all thise details or by offering a monthly/das. When you do the latter, you are allowing the dealer to structure the deal in different ways thay may be beneficial to them (for example, marking up the money factor in exchange for a larger discount), however, you still need all the details initially to work out what the monthly/das is for your target. When making an offer, you need to make a totally unambiguous offer. That can only be done by either giving every detail or by giving only a monthly/das. Anything in between leaves room for interpretation.
What you shouldn’t do is just blindly make up a monthly/das amount and pursue that. When people say not to shop the monthly payment, THAT is what they’re saying not to do.
The customer looking to squeeze every penny out of a deal is NOT a customer worth having. Let some other store deal with that.
Remember the customers with the LEAST profitable deals routinely give out the WORST csi scores.
Maybe I misworded it, but of course I’m not saying I blindly make up the number or just do some high-level research to figure out what others are paying.
I meant figuring out all the details (MF, residual, incentives, etc.) and then coming up with a reasonable number based on that–a number that can be backed with up facts, like you said.
But I appreciate your guidance nevertheless.
I think the bottom line answer is: Yes, dealers do apply the MFBS lease incentives like you would expect, but sometimes the asking price already includes a significant purchase incentive (trunk money) as well. So you can’t just subtract the full $24K in current lease incentives from the asking price because when you’re leasing, the purchase trunk money goes away and is replaced by the lease incentives.
Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t get a dealer to a great pre-incentive price in the first place. But it’s not just asking price - lease incentives = purchase price for a lease.
I guess it’s also fair to say that a dealer doesn’t “owe” the consumer the trunk money that is provided by the manufacturer to the dealer as an incentive for the dealer to discount the vehicle. It’s up to the dealer if they want to give any or all of that trunk money to the consumer in the form of a dealer discount. Hence this is a manufacturer to dealer incentive.
Now, a rebate is money provided by the manufacturer/lender that is supposed to go directly to the consumer as part of the deal. This is the manufacturer to consumer incentive.
If one wants it for that price, they are welcome to contact MBNA about franchising their very own MB dealership full of fire-sale EQ products and overpriced trinkets from Alabama.