New car negotiating

[dr.girlfriend]

I'll be honest, I really HATE negotiating.  We want to buy a new car for the first time in over a decade, and we are looking at the Ioniq 6, which is in relatively high demand and low inventory.  How much do y'all think we could knock off the price with negotiating?  I'm so tempted to just ... not if it's not really much.  :-)

[mich1]

Have you looked into a car buying service? Costco, USAA and a few others have them too. DH bought his Miata from one, and it was almost the easiest purchase ever.

Especially if you hate negotiating, let them do it for you.

[dr.girlfriend]

Aug 5, 2023 12:43:53 GMT -5 mich1 said:

Have you looked into a car buying service? Costco, USAA and a few others have them too. DH bought his Miata from one, and it was almost the easiest purchase ever.

Especially if you hate negotiating, let them do it for you.

I tried to figure out the Costco thing because I've heard good things about them but on the website it just seems to find a dealer in my area and tell me to contact them, so I'm a little unclear on how it's helpful.  I'll look into it a little more, though, thanks!

[quesyrah]

We got about $6,000 off our minivan last summer.

Once we started to get out of our chairs, all of a sudden they were able to talk to the manager and “see what they could do.”

It was also on the 29th so they probably just needed the sale.

[wanderingback]

Aug 5, 2023 13:37:27 GMT -5 dr.girlfriend said:

Aug 5, 2023 12:43:53 GMT -5 mich1 said:

Have you looked into a car buying service? Costco, USAA and a few others have them too. DH bought his Miata from one, and it was almost the easiest purchase ever.

Especially if you hate negotiating, let them do it for you.

I tried to figure out the Costco thing because I've heard good things about them but on the website it just seems to find a dealer in my area and tell me to contact them, so I'm a little unclear on how it's helpful.  I'll look into it a little more, though, thanks!

I don’t know about Costco but I used USAA car buying service many years ago. I don’t know what happens on the back end but we contacted them, they told us what dealer to go to and they gave the best rate we had gotten so far. That was many years ago but I presume if car buying services are still around it’s a similar approach.

[winemaker06]

It has been a year since I was shopping now, but all the EVs were going for $5-10k over MSRP. So getting to pay ‘only’ MSRP was a win!
You might want to do some specific EV6 forum searches to see if that is still the case so your can set your expectations.

[mlkgls]

I don’t know anything about that particular make and model, but I think I used the True Car service through either Costco or Sam’s last fall. TBH, I’m not sure how much it saved because every dealership seemed to have thousands of dollars in mandatory dealer add-ons above MSRP, but the TC dealership 45 minutes away was $1-1.5k cheaper than the dealership 5 minutes from my house. For a popular make and model. 

[gt7301b]

We just bought a new car and there was very little negotiating. We found one dealership out of ~ 10 in the area that was willing to negotiate. You can always negotiate, worst thing that happens is they are firm on the price.

[chpmnk1015]

I'm the only person in my friend group who payed sticker for a new car in the last year+ that I know...everyone else payed over... it stinks right now

[chilerellanos]

I bought a new Honda cr-v last September, and there was no negotiation. I paid MSRP.

There was so little inventory at the time (idk if that’s improved) and I live in an area where there’s not a lot of shopping options, so 🤷🏼‍♀️

[pierogigirl]

I bought a Toyota Hybrid. I went with the dealer that wasn't charging over MSRP. I got it for sticker price. I was able to negotiate on the warranty I wanted and I paid for standard services for 3? years (oil changes, etc) up front to save a few hundred on maintenance during that time.

[dancingirl21]

Try and do some research before going in. If you can find a forum for that specific car, all the better. We bought a Kia Telluride in 2021 and there was no haggling. Most of the dealerships were charging $10k over sticker and people were paying it. By using a forum online, I found the one dealer in our area (still 1 hour away) selling at exactly MSRP. We jumped on that “deal”.

[puppyluv]

We were considering a Bolt EUV for a while. I contacted every dealership in a 2 hour range and the best deal I could get was $2600 over MSRP + taxes and fees. Negotiating wont get you far if there is low inventory because the sell so quickly anyways.

[melmel4854]

Aug 5, 2023 20:29:08 GMT -5 mlkgls said:

I don’t know anything about that particular make and model, but I think I used the True Car service through either Costco or Sam’s last fall. TBH, I’m not sure how much it saved because every dealership seemed to have thousands of dollars in mandatory dealer add-ons above MSRP, but the TC dealership 45 minutes away was $1-1.5k cheaper than the dealership 5 minutes from my house. For a popular make and model. 

I bought a 2023 in December of 2022 and I think the fees were close to $4,000! They were selling at MSRP though. I said Absolutely NOT on the fees and they took them off. I drove an hour away to find the car I wanted at MSRP, then was told there were all of these dumb fees. I would have walked my fat ass right out the door if they said No to taking off the fees.

I had a 2021 so I didn't need a new car if they weren't going to budge. I was in my "FOMO era" when my neighbor got a new car and I needed the same one. LOL.

[circa1978]

Depending of the car, I think most people are lucky to negotiate.

A relative runs a BMW dealership and he didn't even have a current year model of the car my mom bought from him. She had to buy a production slot and wait for it to come in. He gave her his family discount but it was still only a few thousand dollars off a $$$$$ SUV for his own godmother, so things are tough. We were talking when my mom picked up the car and he said they have seen no reduction in demand for their stock - if anything demand is higher than ever. There were six other brand new cars custom ordered in the bay with my mom's and they come in almost every day. He said the economy might be bad but its great for the rich at the moment. People are buying six figure cars on the regular and not blinking at the cost or the wait. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Good for him, not so much for us lol.

[ellipses84]

With the internet, you can’t really negotiate on cars like you used to. Every customer can look up prices online and drive to a dealer 45 minutes away for a better deal. There still some things to negotiate but most places aren’t charging way over MSRP or bluebook value (unless they are all consistently overpriced which has happened I’ve the past 3 years).

Do your research ahead of time to know what competitions prices are in your area.

Get pre-approval for the best interest rates you can get (usually a credit union and join one if you aren’t a member). Even if you have cash and don’t want to finance, you can still explore this as part of a negotiation.

If you have a trade in don’t tell them until the deal is almost done (you can be wishy washy if they ask and say you aren’t sure).

If you find a car you like, you can try to negotiate price first. Then see if the dealer can offer you 0% if you are financing or match your best your pre-approved rate or give you a better discount if you pay cash (sometimes they might push you to finance over paying cash or there’s some combo of a big down payment).

Once you have that figured out, ask what your trade in would be worth and negotiate hard on the trade in value (they tend to lowball this).

If they try to upsell you on maintenance or warranty packages, you can say no or you can use it as negotiation… like if they already asked told you they couldn’t go up $500 on their trade in value ask if they could give you the $500 upgrade free instead.

If you don’t want to deal with any of this, I know a lot of people who have used Car Max, or other similar services to have the exact car they wanted delivered to them sight unseen at a fair price and they were happy with it (and had the option to return in a certain amount of days).

If there’s a specific car/ color you want and your local dealer doesn’t have it, you can tell them what you are looking for and the price you expect and have them call you if they can locate it. Tell them you don’t want to come in person until they have the car for you to purchase at a pre-negotiated rate. I’ve done his and had the car transport from a neighboring state at no cost to me.

[orangello]

We bought new in May. The only negotiating we could do was on the interest rate - we knew ahead of time what we could get and they matched it (reluctantly) in order to keep the financing. They knew the car would sell fast since inventory is so low and demand so high, so there’s not a lot of room to negotiate.