My experience last year was that I needed to call sales manager and ask if he was interested in bidding. Most said yes but then didn’t respond to my RFP. However most quotes a price when I called them back.
Unfortunately the dinosaur mentality pervades and they all think they can corner you if they can just get you inside the showroom. But why would anyone go one on one when they can get competitive bids?
I’ve found most salesman to be lazy around here. They fail to send information when asked, even after coming up with rough lease numbers and often when they send info it’s missing most of what’s asked for, I’m sure by design. I don’t know if it’s as bad outside of the northeast but nothing would surprise me.
It’s much easier to get numbers if you’re financing or paying cash. I think it’s because with leasing there are a lot more numbers to play around with so they know they can easily screw you out of more money versus finance/cash. In the past, I would always get offers via email when paying cash. Basically getting a good lease deal in the NYC area is much more difficult. The best I got yesterday were $299/mo incl taxes, $0 drive-off for a Civic EX-L, and $289/mo incl taxes, $0 drive-off for a Mazda3. Both significantly above the “1% MSRP” rule.
LOL. An RFP is not what I call shopping for a car …What’s next? An RFP for a gallon of milk to all the grocery stores?
Always negotiate sales price of the car. Lock that in and then you can discuss whether you intend to lease it or finance it. In most cases the price should be the same no matter how you want to structure the transaction. There are some cases where the manufacturer has differing incentives on purchases vs. leases but you should be up on the incentives before you walk into the dealership. Look at Edmunds or a similar site to judge what incentives are in play.
Once you have the sale price you can calculate the payments. If you start your discussion from the payment side you are playing the dealer’s game. They have so many ways to play with the numbers it will make your head spin.
the problem is, some dealer incentives are not available for lease that are available for purchase. i.e. if the dealer gets a $1000 Kickback for selling the car as opposed to leasing, there is no way they will agree to the same “sale price” on the lease that they will for an actual sale.
cause if you go in, they have the upper hand and will try to push you to buy it at their price.
I bought my car 100% via email and phone. If they don’t want your business, plenty of other deals who do