Is there a "perfect" time to buy a new car?

Trucks approaching $70k. Who knew.

 

I got mine for less than Half of that....

 

Want to come negotiate my next vehicle purchase?

 

Really, anymore you don't need to be as aggressive as you used to be even 5 years ago when negotiating. With truecar and the intragores you just do your research, go in with your ducks in a row and everything on paper, you can get a good deal. Some dealers and salesman will still try and get over on you but just walk away from them, there's another dealership 10 or 20 miles in each direction and they will want to sell you a car.

 

Surprisingly, lots of folks still fall in traps. They are either intimidated or nervous. It sounds easy but to look a person in the face and say "No" is hard for some folks.... I know lots of smart and wise people that have been hosed at dealerships....

 

^^^ THIS!

I don't recall if I mentioned it in the other truck thread, but I used that Truecar app to get my deal......then I pinned one dealer against the other to get an even better deal. That freakin app took away half the headaches involved in negotiating a good deal, I highly recommend giving them a try.

 

I just found that Truecar was still pretty high. I was able to negotiate another $5k off my truck from what Truecar had.

 

Oh, it's still easy to get f@cked if you don't prep a head of time. When I bought my Mazda, I had everything on paper and they tried sneaking in a couple of things after the deal was done and we were signing the paperwork. I stopped two and let them get over on me on one small thing but that was so they felt they got something and I told them straight up that I knew and was letting it go.
My Audi was 6 hours of negotiating and we both left with sore buttholes from getting f@cked. But hey, it was just the tip!!!

 

Ha ha. Yeah, dealers hate me. I actually had 1 experience where my wife picked out the car, I made an offer, they accepted, I thought we were done.... The salesman said "We have you all ready now, just sign here..." The payment must have been base on 25% interest.... It went South quick. My wife wanted the car but knew to keep quiet.... 6 hours later even the GM was mad... They kept trying to slide stuff in. I actually did the math for them to show the FM what my wife's payment should be.... Ba ha ha. My wife got the car. We never went on that car lot again. On the flip side, I have bought 2 trucks in 30 minutes..... and bought motorcycles with never going to the dealership.... All dealers are not that way, and the salesperson can make it painless....

 

Oh yeah, if you think of buying a car as a round of golf and truecar as just a single golf club in your bag, it's great. Truecar, the various other brand dealers website in the area, the manufacturer's website, the manu's finance side website, the local paper's ads (they are still useful). . .

and don't think that your initial drive and your being under par on the first hole means you won. You have 17 more holes to go.

 

I had one funny/sketchy situation years ago. It was one of those $x,xxx or $x financing type incentives on a vehicle. I went from one dealership back to this other one because the price was so much better. I'm sitting in the office, ready to sign the papers and the salesman from the other dealership calls me. Says to check and make sure they weren't using both incentives to get me there, with only one listed on the paperwork. Sure enough, I check and they did exactly that. I walked out and the guy had nothing to say. Went to the other dealership and haven't been back to that first once since.

Since then, I'm a little more thorough on dealership numbers.

 

Truecar is a racket. It takes advantage of shopper's fears and paints it like its the best deal out there. Only problem is, the best dealers don't do business with Truecar because they don't want to pay them $399 every time they sell something. So in reality, its only a good deal from a handful of dealers. Again....pretty good marketing on their part. Deals...not so great.

 

That wouldn't surprise me at all, the first of the 3 dealers I communicated with took off only $5k from the MSRP, obviously, I passed.
Dealer #2 right off the bat made me an offer that was $9k below MSRP.
Dealer #3 took almost a week to make a similar offer as #2 except their truck had roughly $2500 more in upgrades so IMHO the better deal overall. The only reason why I didn't go with dealer #3 is because dealer #2 wound up taking another $1.7k off their original offer AND they were giving me about $1.5k more on my trade in........so yea, even with TrueCar app you have to be diligent on the incoming offers, they're always looking out for their bottom line.

 

I've always liked Edmunds and used them as a guide the last few vehicles I bought.

 

Didn't they start out as a good thing, purely pro-customer, pulling info from state records, but they soon found a way to extort dealers for voluntary info, leading to them being just another marketing tool instead of a customer resource? Kind of like Carfax.

 

So kinda like Angies list? or Yelp?

 

They just found a way to extort the dealers into paying ridiculous fees. I put my dealership on it once and here's how it went down. Customer 80% of the time established relationship with me first. Came to my website, asked for info, called, or actually came in and did a test drive. They then went on to do more research, possibly checked Autotrader, and then Truecar to "validate" the info they'd been given by the dealer. Well, if they then bought from me, but used the Truecar site where my inventory was listed, then we had to pay Truecar $399 for that sale. Its a hoax. Very rarely were customers starting on Truecar, then seeing my inventory, and them sending me that customer. They want you to think that's how it works, but it doesn't. I hate them. Along with Yelp.

 

Because I handle all of the dealership's marketing, you guys can only imagine how many solicitation calls I get per day. Its gotten comical, but its fun so I normally have fun when they lure me into the shark tank. Here's how the calls go:

"Um, yes Kris..so I understand you handle all the marketing for the dealership?"
Me: That's right.
"Well Kris, what if I could guarantee you a 20% increase in sales every month? Would you be interested?
Me: Absolutely! 20% increase...wow.
"We have this new (insert your choice of bullshit here)"
Me: Are you familiar with my dealership already? Did you research me before you called?
"No I really didn't, but..."
Me: Well we sell 700 vehicles per month, so you're going to guarantee me another 120 sales?
"Oh wow, that's a lot of vehicles. I'm assuming you guys are already doing..."
Me: Yeah, we do everything. But thanks for calling. Good bye.