I do not think you understand how a broker actually works.
Hackable deals exist because theres plenty of excess margin to be gained from information-poor consumers.
Transparency in the marketplace lowers costs. Iām not hacking grocery or gas purchases because I can easily and readily compare pricing.
Same problem exists in healthcare.
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We where in the process of buying a Chrysler last week, the dealers who insist on you coming to the dealership are those with crazy market ad-ons, they know you will run away once they send you a quote showing nitro, gps tracking and that imaginary seat sealant for $3500-$6000, however if they get your a$$ to the store, they know they can negotiate.
I went to my local dealer because we wanted to test drive the car, two hours to negotiate dealer ad-on from $3500 to $1500, if they told me it was $3500 I would not go, like the HB Chrysler, I asked 3 times about ad-ons, he finally said $5700, I blocked his number and email and called it good, not driving from San Diego to LA to find out about $5700 ad-on and 12% interest rate to compensate for his internet price thatās cheaper than everyone within 500 miles for the same car.
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No, probably not, but they seem to advertise an endless stream of low priced deals with very strong discounts. Those vehicles have to come from somewhere, which means there is a dealer willing to make that deal. I am sure it is a very small percentage of the deals they do on a monthly basis. Maybe the dealers do it to move stale inventory or difficult to sell units. I donāt know.
What I believe is that many dealers will try to take advantage of less well informed customers, which is why they want to get them into the showroom. It seems to me that dealers would be smart to offer good deals to local customers who will use their service department with the likelihood of getting them back in three years for their next lease. As a customer, if I feel I was taken advantage of on a vehicle I would tend not to use that dealership for anything else in the future.
There is a reason buying a vehicle is one of the most dreaded events for the average consumer. It is probably why many people use brokers. There seem to be many good brokers on this site who work hard to get good deals for their customers. I donāt know if that is universally true across the industry.
0 down. The sale price they offered was 11% off from MSRP.
Does the Internet and email in general have an expiration date that is happening soon?
Are car shipping companies having a mass shutdown date any time soon?
Do electronic signatures and/or paperwork have a date coming up anytime soon upon which they will no longer be valid?
For the last 10 cars I have bought and leased the entire deal was done over email with paperwork completed electronically in advance or via FedEx both ways, and in 7 of 10 I walked into the dealer only for delivery and 3 of 10 were shipped with no dealer/in-person contact.
Coming into the dealer is not at all necessary, and the dealer I take it to locally makes money on the service (warranty) from my deal the same way the dealer I bought it from makes money on service from their locals that didnāt buy local.
If dealers want to have a customer-facing operation that demands in-person attendance then it is easy to move on to those that do not.
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I donāt understand what you mean but regardless of what a dealer is doing the best use of the LH calc is the ability to use it to output a target payment/DAS based on a aggressive but realistic discount along with any incentives base MF and your term RV to KNOW what the payment should look likeā¦a baseline if you willā¦otherwise you have no clue whether a dealerās quote or offer is āgoodā or not because you donāt have anything to compare it to.
This is all predicated on a failure at the first step.
Manipulation of advertised pricing is only an issue if you actually pay any attention to advertised pricing. By leading with what the dealer wants you to pay, youve set yourself up for failure from the get go.
The value in the LH calculator is that it is a tool that helps you totally bypass asking the dealer how much they want you to pay.
To put it more bluntly, if the LH calculator is useless to you because youāre going off of dealer advertised prices, it is your approach thatās useless.
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Yeah, I didnāt like the way I worded that either. Advertised prices have nothing to do with the way I use the LH calculator. The manipulation point still stands, though, and as with the other things I mentioned, it has gotten noticeably worse since my last lease signing 18 months ago.
How so?
In what way does the way a dealer has manipulated their advertised pricing effect you in any way if youāre bringing an offer to them?
I recently leased an EV9 in FL. I havenāt the slightest clue what price the dealer was advertising, if they included any add ons or mark ups in that, if they rolled in incentives, etc. Never once did I look what they were advertising and never once did it come up in conversation.
Do you have any theory as to why this is the case? Iāve told salespeople straight up when finishing transactions that I appreciate what the dealership is doing for me and the effort that they have put in, given the front end return. I always let them know that I understand the importance of the surveys I may receive and I will answer them accordingly. Iāve told a couple of them that they could punch me in the face right then and there and they would still get a perfect survey from me. Itās literally the least you can do in exchange for an aggressive deal.
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Yeah I mean it doesnāt, as I thought I clarified in my previous post. It is merely an observation Iāve made in my current car shopping experience, that I was sharing as evidence to support OPs original observation, that dealerships have gotten more aggressive/worse in the last few years. Which I am now regretting 
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So you drove over and just stated your desired monthly payment, term, etc. and eventually one of the dealers agreed to your terms, just like that? How many visits/calls/etc did it take to get it closed? 
I went in to test drive, took the card of the sales guy, told him Iād send him an offer.
Emailed over my offer for both my trade in and the new lease. Spoke to the manager on the phone for about 5 minutes. He countered about 1% less discount that I offered (which was already quite aggressive at the time) and with a little lower on the trade. We agreed at 1% lower discount than my original offer but with my trade number.
Was the first dealer I made an offer with, I spent maybe 5 minutes on the phone and one email. I could have walked away when they didnāt agree to my offer exactly as it was (and would have saved money if I had since some new incentives came out a few days later, but such is life), but the counter offer was perfectly reasonable.
People make this process way, way more difficult that it needs to be by willingly joining in on the dealerās games. I told him exactly what I wanted, that Iād come in within an hour of him agreeing to my terms, and made myself the easiest, lowest effort deal they could ever have.
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So between the incentives you missed out on and your first offer not being nearly aggressive enough you left money on the table to be sure.
Might have instead been worth 10 minutes on the phone as opposed to 5 and two emails rather than one, and also calling more than one dealer.
Itās because the users on this site who post regularly are typically exceptions, not the norm. Thevolvoguy has probably seen tens of thousands of folks come through the door. I used to work corporate and reviewed a ton of CSI data and verbatims from people purchasing vehicles and taking vehicles in for service.
For the subset of bottom-dollar-bargain-seeking customers, the vast majority of them are entitled. They want an ultra cheap car, but they also want to be treated like they just got a Porsche with $100k over MSRP. Itās not very smart or effective for a dealership to cater to this hypocritical behavior. With the lone exception of the vehicle allocations based on volume, general operational metrics would have dealerships rejecting sales from this cohort.
But the auto industry is to blame for this as well. The industry was built on hardball negotiation tactics to create antagonism. So when the aggressive negotiators come through the door, itās typically a friction-filled process that isnāt meant to maximize customer satisfaction. How could anyone in their right mind think a 5 hour long protracted negotiation is going to get a 10 on a CSI survey? And yet many dealerships (not Keithās of course - since he hates talking to customers) want folks in the showroom to grind them through a 5 hour long sales process to maximize margins.
I am a proponent of throwing away CSI scores when customers are clearly in there only for the deal, and not for the satisfaction. But itās unlikely Volvo Corporate and I are on the same page. Volvo thinks every vehicle sale should be held to the same satisfaction standard. If so, itād make more sense to institute flat pricing with no bottom-feeder-incentives. Volvo also wants its cake and eat it too. So itās not just the customer population that has hypocritical attitudes.
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@thevolvoguy specifically calls out LH members for this type of behavior though. Thatās disappointing to me and Iām wondering what, if anything this forum could do to improve that aspect for dealers. Dealers should be able to see this forum as a resource on the other side of the transaction too, not a place that they dread receiving leads from.
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Unfortunately, I believe the thevolvoguy is taking the negative feelings he has for a āgeneral lead that originates from LHā and applying that sentiment against the āpeople interacting with him in threads.ā
Like I donāt think heād have an issue with you if you got a XC60 from him. But he has no mechanism to disaggregate you from the 100 other people coming in from LHās lead gen pipe.
Probably explains why eventually brokers and sellers will develop a rolodex of quality clients they can go back to, and theyāll reduce the dependency on LH lead-gen.
Mad props to the dealers and brokers on LH who deal with LH users on the daily and do not get their psyche ground down to a pulp.
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I view the purpose of this forum is to educate consumers about all aspects of leasing. It should not just cater to the bottom-feeders looking for that unicorn deal. Leasing is confusing enough for the average person. Leasehackr, and the knowledgeable posters here, help make the process more transparent for the average person. Nothing irks me more than a person who asks for evaluation of a $900 a month Kia EV9 deal convinced the dealer has given them the best deal possible. They are possibly being taken advantage of by the dealer when another person posts a $590 deal for essentially the same vehicle with same terms. I realize not all situations are the same on every deal, but at least Leasehackr gives people a fighting chance against signing a poor deal. Creating a Win-Win situation for both parties makes everyone happy and the dealer gets their high CSI scores.
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Brokers/dealers should modify their marketplace listings.
If youāre a bargain chasing user that wants a former loaner, please text me 3am on a Sunday at
1-888-YOU-GTFO.
If you like the listed price and want a win-win situation where you get a good vehicle at an attractive price and my CSI metric doesnāt get screwed, please text me at
1-800-YAY-VLVO