Buying Without Getting Reamed

[swpbrz]

Ill share my rant although it was with a suburu dealership.

I initially made it very very clear I wanted a 5 year payment plan and no additional warranty. Very very clear. First to the sales guy, then the finance guy. I get into the finance guy and he tells me he wants to go over the info anyway at the end just in case. Fine I say I want my car lets go.

So he has his list of things he tells me i cant live without and I say no to all of them.. He says he can swap something for something else and get me a mirror for free. Awesome thanks. Oh and a gas cap thats really cool thanks man.

Finally he says if I move some other things around it looks like I can get you that extended warranty and keep your payments the same.

Heres where I messed up. I wanted this guy to just be a normal human. I thought he was in the army and he seemed decent im going to take my guard down and try and assume this is one decent human talking to another enjoying the awesome experience of buying a car. Wrong wrong wrong. He was the enemy and he was being as slippery and slimey as an evil screw could be.

It ended up being a really fishy way of saying Im going to extend your terms to 6 years instead of 5. Add 3000 to the price and your payments will stay the same.

In the flow of the conversation this was directly after actually getting me a few free things. So it seemed on the surface like he wasnt trying to completely screw me into something I already made very clear I did not want to pay for.

It was also directly after me saying I want 5 year terms and can pay this much per month.

Bar none. At the begging I said 5 years x a month is what I want and what they agreed too. In my mind he lied, even though he was just being extremely weaselly and technically did not lie. In the brotherhood of man he lied and abused the trust I wanted to give him. Not cool.

Thats fine. I learned my lesson. I will never treat anyone in a dealership as human again. They are all officially lying scum to me. Where I work and the company I keep that type of fuckery is so far beyond ok I didnt even see it coming. The guy seemed to have some kind of self respect. was in the army. I didnt want to have to treat him like an evil dude, but no longer.

ok well thats a rant, and finance people in any industry are mostly scum trying to scrape off the top of someone elses work.

[Fortis]

Originally Posted by Lonewolf

The what is your budget per month or "up to" trick along with the foursquare worksheet are designed to distract you from what you are actually paying.

Negotiate an out the door price...don't get caught up in the monthly crap, as op points out...

Exactly. Do all your calculations before you get to the dealership. The only thing that matters is the price settled on. If you tell them your target monthly payment is $375-$400 you might walk out of the dealership with just that... and an 84 month car loan lol. You'd be better off not telling them how much you want to pay every month.

[LXXXV1]

Originally Posted by Fortis

You'd be better off not telling them how much you want to pay every month.

^That. The entire time discussing with my salesman, I never let him know how much I was comfortable paying monthly. I did ask him to give me quotes on a 5 year payment plan with $3k, $5k, and $10k down, and lease quotes for 36 months with $1k, $2k, and $3k down. After that, I basically got to choose my favorite option.

Can't tell how much of my experience was luck bc the EXACT model I wanted(whiteout, 6mt, monogram, bone stock) was being delivered to them a week after I inquried.

[mact]

Originally Posted by swpbrz

It ended up being a really fishy way of saying Im going to extend your terms to 6 years instead of 5. Add 3000 to the price and your payments will stay the same.

This is one of their biggest scams. Nearly every dealer i've ever dealt with pushed the "We can get you down to a monthly payment of $xxx." line. I can't imagine how many people fall for this. You've got to disregard the monthly payment and look at the big picture, the final price when all is said and done.

[billwot]

While I still believe the best policy for buying a car is never go to the dealership until its time to pick up the car, here are some more tips:

1) negotiate the purchase price of the vehicle
2) negotiate the offer for your trade-in, if you have one
3) work out the financing, if you're using dealer financing

These are 3 separate transactions, and you need to handle each one independently.

[FlamingRectumSyndrome]

Originally Posted by mact

Also, MAKE ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that the number you and the salesperson arrive at matches the number that the finance guy gives you. That is where they tried to **** me over, but failed.

Awwwww.... crap.

Remember the 2.5% finance the sales guy quoted me on the computer print out? The price we agreed on, and shook hands on? I went back and looked at the actual sales contract.

They changed it to 2.79%.

Now this adds about $150 to the price of the car, financed over 5 years, so we're looking at an extra $2.50 per payment, but still... you can't trust the bastards to act in any way that's honest or honorable.

Oh, did I mention the car is being shipped up from Los Angeles, about 350 miles away? When I asked how long before it would arrive, the sales guy said "Oh, it'll be a couple of days". That was on Friday, April 18th. Yesterday was Wednesday, April 23rd. Still no car. So I called and asked, and the sales guy said "It's coming up this weekend". Okay... so two days (I was figuring on it going onto the truck Monday morning and getting here Tuesday or Wednesday) turns into, what, 8 days? No. Just got a call from my friendly Scion Salesman, telling me it'll arrive on Wednesday, April 30th. When I said "gee, John, it's turning into a long two days" he said "Well, this is the first time I've had to ship a car, so live and learn".

In other words, they're more than willing to cut themselves all kinds of slack to excuse their lies and failures, but they won't hesitate to lie to you in order to screw you out of more money. I had hoped that the stereotype of the cheesy-ass car salesman was in the past. It's apparently alive and well, and can be found at your local Scion dealership.

[strat61caster]

Originally Posted by FlamingRectumSyndrome

He asked if I could swing $450 a month, and I told him I could. So he comes back with "Good news, the figure is actually $429 a month".

I know it's too late for you but this was the point when you gave them power. I never spoke about the monthly price and when the finance guy brought it up every time I said "I don't care about the monthly payments" and looked at the final price.

Always always always look at the final price of the vehicle and the interest rate, those are the only two numbers that matter, everything else derives from those two numbers and if you lose sight of them you allow yourself to get taken for a ride.

I put ~$10k down, no options on mine and my payments were under $325/month, the second you wrote $450/month I knew they were screwing with you.

Sorry you had to deal with a shitty dealer, for me it's been the lowest point of owning this car, hopefully you feel similarly.

Edit: Also the 2.79% interest 'mistake' is called yo yo financing, they'll call you in to re sign the contract, look over it extremely thoroughly if you decide to do it, they might offer to give you a 'rebate' of some kind. My dealer promised it to me cash (the difference in the mistake, they wrote it for 2.19% said that it should be 2.25% and they 'reimbursed me' for the difference) but instead sent it to the financial company to be applied to my loan shady shady shady.

http://www.myfoxdc.com/story/2391737...#axzz2zqJDh0YK

[Mikem53]

Haha.. Fun games at the dealership.. First they tell you how great the car is, and how you are buying one of the best cars out there. Then when you're convinced and ready to buy they use scare tactics on you so you can spend another couple grand on the warranty.
Not to mention all the BS kind of games they play with interest rates and securing loans and fees, etc...
Good stuff.. They even make you sign for the things you don't want.. The whole process sucks.. They should be sued for false advertising, how can they say "fixed" pricing and get away with it. Lol..
I hope I don't get tired of this car anytime soon... so I don't have to go through all this crap again.
Good luck!

[reni]

Yep, always negotiate everything over email/phone and be prepared to walk if they charge a cent more when you go to pick up the car.


Also if the car was 350 miles away personally I would just go get it myself.

[billwot]

Originally Posted by reni

Yep, always negotiate everything over email/phone and be prepared to walk if they charge a cent more when you go to pick up the car.


Also if the car was 350 miles away personally I would just go get it myself.

[mweidner311]

Originally Posted by reni

Yep, always negotiate everything over email/phone and be prepared to walk if they charge a cent more when you go to pick up the car.


Also if the car was 350 miles away personally I would just go get it myself.

Couldnt agree more! You can ALWAYS go buy somewhere else. I would have went there myself one dealership buying from another and selling to that guy of course they're going to screw you.... smh i hate them all

[Colominicano]

they dont call it the "stealership" for no reason.

[HLS30]

The key generally is to be a bigger a**hole than the sales and financing guys are. If you want the car, call them every day asking what they can do for you on the price. Show up and test drive and waste their time as much as you can get away with. Bring in lower quotes (no matter how far away they're from). You want to get to the point where they just want you to go away, and to do that they're going to have to give you a good deal.


Oh hey, lookey there, first post! Going to be picking up a Monogram once my current fun car sells, and I'm already getting under the dealer's skin...

[FlamingRectumSyndrome]

Originally Posted by HLS30

The key generally is to be a bigger a**hole than the sales and financing guys are. If you want the car, call them every day asking what they can do for you on the price. Show up and test drive and waste their time as much as you can get away with. Bring in lower quotes (no matter how far away they're from). You want to get to the point where they just want you to go away, and to do that they're going to have to give you a good deal.


Oh hey, lookey there, first post! Going to be picking up a Monogram once my current fun car sells, and I'm already getting under the dealer's skin...

Oh, trust me, the sales guy was getting tired of my constantly checking his figures. As has been stated by so many others, you have to stay focused on what the total cost is going to be, and not the payments. The annoying part is having to keep checking that they haven't screwed with the interest rate, or thrown in some sort of maintenance scheme or paint protection that you didn't ask for.

And you're selling a '72 240Z to get your FR-S? Have a look here:
http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=64174