Anyone bought a new car recently?

[Anonymous]

Thanks everyone, this is all really helpful. I wish you could just go buy the dang car for a reasonable price without all this bullcrapola.

[Anonymous]

Amen. We are going to buy a car this summer and I'm already dreading the sleazy salesman and the total crap we will have to go through.

[Anonymous]

We had to leave this area to get the best price. We bought from Sport out near Baltimore. The Dc suburb dealers only carry loaded cars on their lots. the "extra" package adds thousands to the price. And it is all bundled together.

[Anonymous]

Sort of tangential: has any listened to the This American Life story about the car dealership? My takeaway from that episode was that apparently car dealers (or maybe just Chrysler) are desperate to meet their quota at the end of the month so that the manufacturer will give them a bonus, which can be as much as 80k. The people buying cars at the end of the month snagged crazy deals as a result. Has anyone else found this to be true at other dealerships??

[Anonymous]

I used the USAA car buying service (another awesome benefit of marrying my military man). Easy peasy. I have heard that the Costco program is very similar. Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sort of tangential: has any listened to the This American Life story about the car dealership? My takeaway from that episode was that apparently car dealers (or maybe just Chrysler) are desperate to meet their quota at the end of the month so that the manufacturer will give them a bonus, which can be as much as 80k. The people buying cars at the end of the month snagged crazy deals as a result. Has anyone else found this to be true at other dealerships??

YES! I loved this episode! I think about this when I've bought cars.

[Anonymous]

Use Costco or truecar as a starting point to your negotiation and to find the invoice price for the car and options (especially if your work or bank has a deal with truecar - as that will give you a lower truecar price). A good price is usually around 4% below invoice. Costco (for our last purchase) was 250.00 below invoice, truecar came in with a range for the three dealers, some above Costco, another significantly below. email the dealers that have the car you want on the lot - give them the best price you have and see if they can beat it. Commit a few hours and save a couple thousand. Just don't step in a dealership until you have your out-the-door price confirmed in writing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Use Costco or truecar as a starting point to your negotiation and to find the invoice price for the car and options (especially if your work or bank has a deal with truecar - as that will give you a lower truecar price). A good price is usually around 4% below invoice. Costco (for our last purchase) was 250.00 below invoice, truecar came in with a range for the three dealers, some above Costco, another significantly below. email the dealers that have the car you want on the lot - give them the best price you have and see if they can beat it. Commit a few hours and save a couple thousand. Just don't step in a dealership until you have your out-the-door price confirmed in writing.

Good advice. Also do this with a few dealers and walk out when your price point is not met, they will most certainly give you call with a "nicer" price.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sort of tangential: has any listened to the This American Life story about the car dealership? My takeaway from that episode was that apparently car dealers (or maybe just Chrysler) are desperate to meet their quota at the end of the month so that the manufacturer will give them a bonus, which can be as much as 80k. The people buying cars at the end of the month snagged crazy deals as a result. Has anyone else found this to be true at other dealerships??

This is very true, they have monthly quota's so best time is probably to in there around the 25-26th (go to a few dealers around this time) lightly negotiate, then walk out, they will surely give you call before the month is over. Even better than end of the month is end of a quarter. like end of March, June etc, there are better deals to be had.

[Anonymous]

The price online is the internet price. Print it out and bring it in. I bought a 2015 Suburban on Saturday and had to do that, plus some other negotiating skills I've learned from working in sales.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I used the USAA car buying service (another awesome benefit of marrying my military man). Easy peasy. I have heard that the Costco program is very similar. Good luck!

USAA car buying service is powered by TrueCar and will provide you the same pricing as TrueCar. Its easy peasy because dealer won't complain given the nice profit they're making on your car purchase. Ask yourself this question: Who do you think is paying to keep their website operational? As its free for you to use, the funding comes from the dealers. Do you think the dealers would fund a site that marginalizes their profits? Nope, its the "idea" and hope that you're getting a nice price, keeping you happy.....while the dealer are selling you car they are very content with. Fyi, dealers have to pay TrueCar $300 for every sale that comes in via TrueCar.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP here, I think you can do better than Costco pricing, use that as starting point (as you know you can get the car for Costco price no matter what) so you start with $1-2k under the Costco pricing. As stated before, any method that entails pricing being provided to you upfront, either via 1) sellers website, 2) costco pricing 3) truecar or anywhere else, means there is $1-2k on the table to be negotiated for a 20k car if not more. Forgot to mention that there are a few dealers that still have 2013 models, yes 2013 models, available that can be had for a steep discount, ie 2013 Nissan Altima V6 non-leather at Nissan Tysons, MSRP is close to 30k, they listed them for around 20k, which means you can probably get it for 18k plus tax/tags. I checked this a few weeks ago so they may/may not be there now.

Best of luck.

-car guy

Have you tried the Costco program? In my experience, the dealer website price is VERY high and can be beat by much more than $1-2k, Truecar or other prices are still quite high, but the Costco price is pretty darn good. I'd be interested to hear if you have been able to get a better price than Costco -- maybe I can be doing better! Caveat: I've only purchased new cars this way, not used. There seems to be even more haggling with used cars.

We tried and we got a better offer off the bat from Fitzgerald Subaru by Rockville. On top of that, Costco was running a promo that gave us a $500 gift card if we bought (or placed an order) on a Subie before a certain deadline. In return, Costco wanted us to answer 5 minute survey on the phone. This was in summer of 2012.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP here, I think you can do better than Costco pricing, use that as starting point (as you know you can get the car for Costco price no matter what) so you start with $1-2k under the Costco pricing. As stated before, any method that entails pricing being provided to you upfront, either via 1) sellers website, 2) costco pricing 3) truecar or anywhere else, means there is $1-2k on the table to be negotiated for a 20k car if not more. Forgot to mention that there are a few dealers that still have 2013 models, yes 2013 models, available that can be had for a steep discount, ie 2013 Nissan Altima V6 non-leather at Nissan Tysons, MSRP is close to 30k, they listed them for around 20k, which means you can probably get it for 18k plus tax/tags. I checked this a few weeks ago so they may/may not be there now.

Best of luck.

-car guy

Have you tried the Costco program? In my experience, the dealer website price is VERY high and can be beat by much more than $1-2k, Truecar or other prices are still quite high, but the Costco price is pretty darn good. I'd be interested to hear if you have been able to get a better price than Costco -- maybe I can be doing better! Caveat: I've only purchased new cars this way, not used. There seems to be even more haggling with used cars.

Depends which dealer website price you're referring to. There are dealers that only show MSRP price and possibly also copied MSRP price into the "real" sale price field, then there are dealers that list MSRP and their (close to real) selling price. I've seen many website where their "real" selling price is better than Costco pricing. Remember, sometimes the manufacturer incentives change faster than Costco can keep up, also it may be near end of month and dealer may lower the price to get even more sales.....Costco does not reflect the latter. An example, I just spec'ed a 2014 Focus Hatchback with manual transmission on TrueCar, its showing $14.3k. If you search on a few Ford dealer websites, you'll find the same car listed at $11.5

[Anonymous]

I recently bought a Highlander from Koons using Truecar. It was a better deal than the Costco price in my case. My price appeared to be higher than the website price, but the online price included fewer fees, so the Truecar price was actually lower after accounting for the fine print.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I recently bought a Highlander from Koons using Truecar. It was a better deal than the Costco price in my case. My price appeared to be higher than the website price, but the online price included fewer fees, so the Truecar price was actually lower after accounting for the fine print.

Did the Truecar price include destination charge? I think its around $800 or so.