Had something similar happen to me at Fette Infiniti in Clifton, NJ in December 2017.
Went to go in to inquire about 2018 Q50 Red Sport. I was trading in 2015 Grand Cherokee Summit W/ Hemi.
They gave me a ridiculous number of over $3K DAS with a very high monthly payment. My Credit was and still is Excellent.
I was very polite and didn’t sound like a smart ass with the negations but long story short, they let me walk and never once adjusted their price.
Ended up going to Flemington Infiniti a week later and got what I wanted with only 1st month payment DAS. I used the website TrueCar and had the dealerships contact me. Did everything through email and got competitive numbers that way. I guess they knew that lead from True Car also means they are competing with nearby dealers so they know right off the bat to give the best numbers.
I’ll be giving Fette another shot only because I have some leverage, where I can tell them I went to them first last time and took my business elsewhere due to high numbers.
Edit: I also got video from rear facing dash cam where all these people are looking over the Grand Cherokee for trade in inspection. It was a VERY nice looking car. One guy can be heard saying “Why is this guy so paranoid?”. They took it for a very thorough test drive as well. I know they liked it.
When I went to Flemington Infiniti. We agreed on price for Q50 and Grand Cherokee trade in price. They never looked at it or test drove it. We agreed on everything via email. I just sent them a picture of it.
Several years ago I was planing to buy a Acura MDX. I went to a dealership and had a pretty long test drive (like an hour or something cause the sales didn’t recognize the road correctly). But anyway, we still had a good communication during this so I decided to come back next day, cause it was almost 8pm when we got back to the dealership.
So the next day, I went back to it. I still remember the MSRP is like 54K. After the sales showed me all the lease numbers, of course it’s a horrible deal like 700+/month with some 8k down, but no matter how horrible it is, I just cannot put together the number.
Then I had to ask: what was the MSRP, is it 54K?
He said: no, it is 57K.
I replied: why, it is 54K on sticker?
He said: cause we need to make 2.5K profit on top of that.
I was so shocked and said: you cannot even make any profit even selling on MSRP?
He answered quite resoundingly: No, we always put profit on top of that…
Then I directly went to the next door and got a 1000/month range rover sport.
So I think generally we agree that you won’t get good numbers by just walking into a dealership, but that doesn’t mean the dealer has to do something to treat customer like a complete idiot.
I get that they have to start from high number to have room negotiate down if it not average Joe.
Why need to start with rip-off slap in the face number irrelevant if you are smart or dumb client.
Everyone eventually learns how they were taken for a ride on their first lease (well, before Leasehackr days) and don’t come back.
Though theoretically dealerships should have ran out of all clients like that but I guess new customer is born every day to be taken advance of.
Sill, starting with rip-of number should not be par course. Almost like selling home to homemakers with $0 income using NINJA loans.
It happens but doesn’t make it right.
My first car I got 3k below MSRP for a 22k (~13.5%) and people in my office were so surprised I got such a high discount. Given that I had only moved to the US, I was pretty happy with myself. I came from a country where car dealers are owned by manufacturers and prices are set and its the same in every city for everyone. It wasn’t a bad deal but the finance office did a good one on me.
Honestly I think It’s less than 1% (More like .2%) if you go by how cagey most sales staff get when you ask them to dig into holdback as part of a discount.
I kinda want to go into a dealership just to get this experience.
Maybe for a LH meet up, it is done at a dealer. 10 hackrs walk into a local known shitty dealer simultaneously (that would be quite the site in itself), whoever gets the best quote wins $75. 2nd place $25 for worst quote.
