Car shopping this weekend, a sales sleaze story, & a few tips

[alyeskakc]

Hi Rachel,

First off I'm glad you weren't seriously hurt in your accident. I 
know they can be quite scary, I've had two in the last 18 years. 

Anyway congrats on not having to buy a new car, I definately know 
what a pain that is. It seems that if your a woman the salesmen just 
get really sleazy. They seem to think that we don't know anything 
about cars at all. I know a lot of guys who don't have a clue about 
cars either. 

Anyway when I went to buy my Explorer 4 years ago, said sleaze ball 
took my s-10 blazer to get appraised for a trade and I took the 
Explorer for the night.  Came back the next day to talk a deal. Blue 
book at the time was $2500 to $3000 for trade on my Blazer. The 
sleazeball offered me $500 and went up to $750 for my Blazer(the rear 
end was worth $500 on it's own) and didn't want to negotiate on the 
Explorer. So I took my keys and left. He tried to play on my emotions 
as I left by saying things like look at this vehicle and blah, blah. 
I said yes it's very nice but I'm taking my Blazer and I left.

The next day I went to the Credit Union Auto buying service told them 
what I wanted. They did a regional search and a month later I had my 
nice brand new Explorer, at pretty much the price I wanted, and no 
sleazy salespeople. I highly recommned to anyone buying a new or used 
car, if you belong to a credit union and they offer this service, use 
it. It makes buying a car so much nicer. 

Also use the net as a resource there are several sites that will tell 
the invoice price of the vehicle verses sticker. What types of dealer 
kickback there are. For example if sticker price is $32,000 the 
dealer gets 3% of that from the factory no matter what they sell the 
car for. 

So let's say dealer invoice is $25,000 and sticker is $32,000. You 
offer 3% over invoice. The dealer will make $750 from you plus $960 
from the factory. So in reality the dealer made almost a 7% profit 
over invoice. The salesperson probably got an $86 commission off the 
sale, for maybe a couple hours work.  So when they tell things like 
they're not making any money on that offer they're snowing you.

Okay I'll step off my soap box now, sorry for the long post.

Cheers,

Kristin