Introducing Leasehackr Pre-Negotiated Deals

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Leasehackr serves a broad audience, ranging from extreme deal seekers to ordinary shoppers who simply want a great deal from somebody they can trust. For many folks, negotiating a car lease the Leasehackr way seems complicated and confusing, and the forum layout itself can be overwhelming.

To better serve ordinary shoppers, many of whom may not venture into the forum, we are launching our pilot run of Pre-Negotiated Deal, a Leasehackr exclusive.

Pre-Negotiated Deal is aimed at readers who want to put in minimal effort while still having the confidence that they’ve gotten a Leasehackr-worthy deal. The deals require zero negotiation, and delivery or pick-up can be scheduled with a few clicks of the mouse. We tried to make the process as transparent and seamless for the ordinary shopper as possible.

Check out our very first Pre-Negotiated Deal exclusively for the Tri-State Region: 2021 Audi Q3 for $349/month and 2021 Audi Q5 for $441/month! Leasehackr will receive a small service fee for every successful transaction that goes through.

While we are excited about Pre-Negotiated Deal, the small team behind Leasehackr will continue to invest our time and resources into all aspects of the platform, whether it’s curated front page content, the forum infrastructure, or changes to the Marketplace and Ask the Hackrs to ensure those forum categories can continue to be useful resources for the Leasehackr community.

Best,
The LH Team

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This is a really cool feature!

Please give idiots like me in So-Cal some options as well!

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I see it says

Leasehackr does NOT sell or lease any vehicle to you or broker your deal. All transactions and agreements made for the sale of the vehicle are between you and the dealer.

But the process seems pretty similar to a broker process: “Some dealer in your region has this deal, we’ll connect you to the dealer after you send in your contact info to LeaseHackr”

So,

LeaseHackr itself is now a broker competing with other brokers that pay to advertise on LeaseHackr?

Is there any vetting that the LH team is doing after these leads are submitted in the form, or is name/email just sent in to a Dealer like a traditional BDC (business development center) department?

If the latter, I pity the dealer that gets these leads.

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Screen Shot 2020-12-14 at 11.35.43 AM

The only things that should be variable on a “pre-negotiated deal” should be tax and DMV, IMHO.

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Are you seeing something here that suggests that isn’t the case?

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Yes, Doc Fee. It’s extra and the exact amount is not known.

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Did you click on the link to the deal and read what’s written? The doc fee is specifically spelled out…

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Nope :slight_smile: I was going off the screenshot above.

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Ok, I didn’t scroll down to the bottom to find the example deal where the doc and acq are specified.

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@Cody_Carter is your man in so-cal.

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Thanks @Ryan_S

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Are the MSD’s available to NY residents?

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I don’t get it. I thought the dealers and brokers are already doing it on their spreadsheet whether they decide to display publicly or by the message.

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Im interested also in California area

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A CLARIFICATION ON PRE-NEGOTIATED DEALS

We received mixed feedback on Pre-Negotiated Deals in the hours since we’ve announced it. A few dealers and brokers were excited and inquired as to how they could participate in it. Others said we were squeezing out @brokers and called it an unexpected turn of events.

To clarify, Pre-Negotiated Deals (PND) is the name for premium ad space on our blog that has been curated and vetted by Leasehackr. We’ve had this in the past with sponsored front page deals; PND is a more advanced iteration of that.

PND gives dealers and brokers on Leasehackr an opportunity to reach a broader audience than just the forum. According to our outreach, ordinary shoppers who visit Leasehackr find the forum overwhelming. Despite our efforts to improve the UX (e.g., “Find a Deal” drop-down menu), most users don’t even know where to start, and some are put off by the aggressiveness they perceive. PND better serves this ordinary shopper audience, including those who never set foot inside the forum (about half of LH’s traffic). In fact, so far none of the users who have submitted a PND form are existing forum users.

We thought that PND would be useful to both ordinary shoppers and the businesses here alike. The fact that the lease terms are independently reviewed and evaluated by Leasehackr lends credibility to the ad, while the sign-up process weeds out tire-kickers, which is a concern we heard when we surveyed dealers and brokers. For ordinary shoppers, PND combines a compelling Leasehackr-worthy deal with a seamless experience that is way easier than sorting through eight different mega-threads of the same brand.

PND is not a replacement for the Marketplace. PND posts can only highlight a few deals at a time, which does not compare to the hundreds of cars listed on the forum daily. PND is intended for dealers and brokers who have a specific car they wish to push.

At the end of the day, Leasehackr is a fun passion project for me and @littleviolette, in which we demystify leasing and discover good deals for consumers. This may take different forms, and we are exploring different ideas that we believe would be beneficial to both shoppers and businesses. And while revenue generation is not a primary objective, we thought we would explore avenues that could sustain our project in a manner that is fair and more commensurate with the effort we put into this community and the value we create.

We acknowledge that every small change we make has implications on the different stakeholder groups of this ecosystem, and we try our best to carefully balance the different needs of this community. (It’s really hard!) In the coming weeks, we will be dedicating our time into reviewing Marketplace practices and will be sure to get diverse perspectives so we can strike the right balance.

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I think it’s only makes sense to seize on that traffic that never makes it to the forum. This is a great way to do it and the vetting process is certainly welcome.

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Awesome idea. Many of my customers are def new to the forum and told me they have a difficult time navigating it. I will 100% be participating in the pnd section.

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What sounded from your Audi PND deal was we got a new broker for Audi who happens to be LH.

Anyways with that said, it was mentioned that for posting such deals LH gets a small fee but was not clear if it was per car basis or a flat fee.

I am OK to Pay either way but it has to be clear.

Please publish guidelines for posting PND and I would like to start with a special which is good till end of the year.

One question, how are you going to sort deals when you have multiple specials, as you know the ones on top get more attention. Maybe a search feature to sort by brands and price range might help but that is if you get a sudden influx of deals given by dealers/brokers.

As always thanks for the clarification and making this great community.

HN

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Agree with @HN308’s read of this - looking through the full PND page also left me with some uncertainty as to whether this is an existing broker’s deal being advertised, LH acting as a broker on their own, or a new broker altogether.

In addition to that, I think the original post may have fallen a bit short in terms of the transparency provided to all stakeholders to this feature, in that there was no guidance on how to participate, what sort of requirements a deal has to meet in order to be eligible for the spotlight, clarification on whether or not there was a limited set of slots that we would have to compete for, and the overall fee structure.

With that said - I think it’s great that you’re trying to make use of all traffic that hits this site because yeah, the forums can be a bit much at times, especially for someone new to leasing.

The UX problem is a big one for me because I originally came onto the forum as an end customer and ran into a lot of the same problems you mentioned, and which is why I spend a lot of effort putting together my posts, sheets, and websites to ensure maximum clarity and ease of use. To that end - I’d love to shoot some ideas back and forth.

-Andrew

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