Yup, that’s when you thank them for their time and move on. If they can’t handle basic reading comprehension, there’s no point in going back and forth. They’ve shown they’re not interested, so move on to someone that is.
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The target deal that is created should be a monthly payment and DAS, IMO. I don’t think that there’s any reason to get into the weeds. Sales people don’t understand or care about MF, RV, etc. You should know exactly what inputs are needed to get to your output.
This is what I sent to each dealer when I was working on my Civic deal, after making pleasantries and establishing some rapport;
I am not going to shop yours or anybody else’s quote, I will make a deposit on your vehicle immediately and come in to sign this week if we can make a deal happen.
2020 Civic Sport CVT Aegean Blue, Stock# E0F030282 (or similiar)
Term: 36/12k miles
Zip: 48114 (6% tax)
I qualify for $1k loyalty incentive
I need new plates which are $70 (birthday 7/6)
I will sign for $200/mo with first payment due at signing, including all taxes/fees (if plate fee is more than $70 I will cover it). If you can do this deal, I’ll call you to place a deposit and can pick up this week. Hopefully we can do business together and get this done. If not, I appreciate your time and effort!
I came up with $200/mo based on the most aggressive lower trim Civic selling price discounts that I’ve seen, the RV/MF, the available incentives and my own taxes, fees etc. Actually I came up with 204/mo, but 200 was a nice round number lol.
19/20 dealers said no…this is ridiculous, how did you calculate that, your numbers are off, lowest we can do 259, we can do 200 with 2000 DAS, even I can’t get that deal, bla bla bla. I thanked them for their time and moved on. It only took 1 dealer to agree to it.
IMO - keep it as simple as possible and don’t over complicate it. Once you start going back and forth about MF, selling price, etc you’re playing the game and you’re unlikely to meet your goal. If they want to mark up the MF or add accessories/BS and are able to do the same monthly by applying an equivalent vehicle selling price discount, who cares?? Let them adjust the variables however they want on their end to get you to the output (monthly payment) that you need.
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This right here. Cannot be said enough. 
Arguing about whether they are willing to do 5% or 6% or whether the MF is marked up by .0001 or not will in most cases get you nowhere with the sales rep who doesn’t have a clue what this stuff is anyways. A simple “If you can do $XXX/mo with $YYY DAS I will be in to sign today” will go far.
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Like Chris mentioned, don’t forget to mention the eligibility-based rebates you qualify for, if any, such as loyalty, grad, etc.
Otherwise they’ll have to assume it comes out of their pocket
I agree with this for a salesperson, but for GSM/GM I will always include discount, incentives, RV, and MF. Several dealers have thanked me for making everything as straightforward as possible.
I’ve always been a bigger fan of breaking the deal down rather than dealing with monthly/das, especially when dealing with a car where FOLP is at play. On my most recent lease, I deliberately tried to deal with only monthly/Das. That lasted about 2 minutes before I ended up having to break the deal down anyway to show how I got to the numbers and gave up on doing things based on the monthly/Das.
I certainly don’t think it’s best for everyone to worry about breaking everything down, but it seems to be what works best for me.
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When helping my relative with an A6, off the first email the GM and I agreed on base MF and only needed to negotiate pre-incentive discount. Really easy.
All the dealers by me refuse to release the MF and RV to me when I am trying to work a deal. They keep stating that they will provide paperwork in person. I stated that without those numbers, I cannot in good faith go to their dealership as they are not being transparent with their offers.
While I’m all for not rewarding a dealership for not being transparent, there’s really no need to ever get rv/mf from the dealer. Do your research on what they should be, put together a target deal, and make them an offer. If they want to mark up the mf and can hit your target, who cares? A marked up mf with a commensurate discount is better for you anyway.
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Residual you know, work your target deal with base mf and make an offer for Drive off and monthly. No need to argue with dealer about m.f.
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Can you please tell me the best way to approach the dealer. I have what I want to pay. I know the MF/RV. I know the discount they will need to provide, do I just attack the discount and state this is what my payment should be at?
“I’d like to lease stock number xxxxxxx. My offer is yyyyyy. If you agree, I can be there in 1 hour to take delivery.”
You definitely want to be sure that your numbers are actually correct and feasible before offering though. A good place to start is to put together your numbers and post them here with the calculator and the justification for your pre-incentive discount target for review.
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After you use the calculator and gain a payment.
Email them:
I want to pay $XXX a month for $0 DAS or Out the Door.
Can you do this?
Edit : Yes I meant to say DAS not down.
A nit, I would substitute down for drive-off.
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I would also suggest googling “calculating a lease payment manually”, since some dealers might want to know how you came up with your monthly. It has happened to me twice in the past couple of weeks, and one dealer came back telling me my numbers made sense but they could not do the deal.
NEVER share the LH calculator.
It is a tough market out there, so be prepared to adjust your expectations as you start reaching out to dealers.
EDIT: LH has an article for calculating a lease payment:How To Calculate Lease Payments By Hand — LEASEHACKR.
I’ve told dealers I used an online lease calculator. I don’t share the link or say which specific one, I haven’t had any major blowback about it.
I usually have more problems discussing the discount percentage because it’s ingrained in their math to include incentives in the discount. Seems to be better to request the sale price including incentives, and then simply itemize which incentives you used.
I like the idea of simply asking for the monthly @ $0 DAS (with listing incentives), but it’s been discussed on LH previously the low monthly will scare some dealers away from even running the numbers to see if it makes sense.
When dealers ask me where I want to be monthly-wise, after giving them a number I usually point out the incentives I included in the deal.
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Thank you to everyone for your replies. I may of went about this the wrong way. So currently I am after a RDX tech package. They are basically all the same MSRP at the local dealerships. I have been calling and stating if you can give me 36/12k, 9 percent off MSRP with 1st month DAS for X amount, I will sign today. I should essentially leave off the MSRP percentage discount and just state 36/12k, for X per month with 1st DAS.
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You can go that way or just tell them the dollar amount you want off. I’ve had success just saying the dollar amount pre incentives.
Didn’t we just have a thread on exactly this? Why pre-incentives, post incentives, why convolute a straight forward conversation?
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