I was nervous as hell to. I've always heard horror stories of people dealing with traditional dealers. That and the whole commitment thing. It doesn't sit well with me ;). The whole time in thinking that I may have missed something.

I truly believe that a lot of the horror stories that you hear on the net are people that went into dealerships with unreasonable expectations and then got pissy when the dealer could/would not meet them.
As nice as it seems to say "I want that car for $5000 less then the sticker price" the dealers have to make money or they starve.
There are several stories along that line on this forum and the OPs always felt the dealer was "ripping them off' or being "shady" just because they couldn't get the price they wanted.
I bet there are as many "I had the most obnoxious, self entitled dbag of a customer" stories from salespeople as there are "the salesman didn't have a clue" ones from buyers.
My wife sells RVs and some of the stories she tells are hilarious because of just how bad the customers can be.

My salesman had just finished his Scion sales training and was really new, so it took a while but he was just as excited as I was. It was a great experience. I sent him a card with some photos and a gift card as thanks.

Explained all of the features? Lol what features?

Sounds like a rare dealer indeed...they must like their customers, lol

I didn't really have any problems except for getting the interest rate low enough. I knew how much the car was, how much I wanted the minimum monthly payment to be, and what the maximum interest rate I was willing to borrow at. After some research I decided that my terms were reasonable and realistic. I went in and told the salesman what I was interested in, test drove the one I wanted then sat down to figure out the money. I did the standard paperwork to get an offer on financing, they came back with a crazy interest rate and payments I wouldn't afford. It was understandable since I'm so young and have almost no credit history. I pretty much just said I couldn't afford the payments. The salesman talked a bit, I just said basically the same thing. Then they cut the interest rate almost in half but it was still more than I wanted to budget for. At this point the salesman said they couldn't do any better and after 20-30 mins with no change I left. When I got home I noticed I had a couple missed calls(it's hard to hear your phone ring while on a motorcycle). The salesman left a voicemail saying that some corporate financing manager was visiting and wanted to meet me and approve a better deal (sure it was BS but I went with it). At this point I knew they really wanted to sell me the car, so we talked, I added a bit more to the down payment and got the interest rate/payments I wanted. Then I had my awesome new car. I didn't enjoy the haggling over the interest rate but it was worth it and honestly it really wasn't a big deal anyway.

I think most of the bad stories are people going into a dealership with unrealistic expectations about what is reasonable on both the dealers end and in terms of their own budget (I know of way to many people who bought cars that they really couldn't afford, at least not with out going broke every month)

I think a lot of people go in and say, "I want this car for X payment" and don't learn about the details. then when they find out that they paid X and the term of the loan is for 10 years or whatever they get pissed.

essentially everything in this thread:
http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=63261
thing is they got shit reviews on Yelp and a guy I know who bought his there hated them. sales manager told me that he was only like 2 months on the job and that he changed a lot of the staff and how they did things. that probably had a lot to do with it.

It was pretty easy for me at the dealer, pretty much called said hey this is what I am looking for do you have one in stock?

They responded "yes we do". I said ok "sounds good, I do not have a trade and this is what I want to pay for the car." They responded "let me ask my manager if we can do that can you hold for about 5 minutes?" I responded "sure". They came back at a price I did not like and I responded "Ok, thank you for the offer however I am not willing to pay that price so I will have to pass at this time please do not save my number and call and bug me every other day". The salesman then says "Hold on a minute let me go see what we can do 1 more time" I say "ok". they come back and say they can not go that low but can sell it to me at $100 more than what I was wanting" I said "ok lets do it I am not in front of a computer right now can I give you all the info you need to get finance and everything else rolling and once it is a good to go deal you call let me know and I will head down and sign everything and take delivery?" They then responded "absolutely we need ....". I then gave them what they needed.

Got a call about 2 hours alter stating everything was good to go go ahead and come down, i said "I will be there in about 3 hours go ahead get the car ready for delivery".

When I showed up they had the paper work ready, I signed everything and took delivery of the vehicle 40 minutes after walking into the dealership.

So all in all a 30 minute phone call. 45 minute drive to the dealer, 40 minutes at the dealer, 1 hour drive home (took the long route). So not quite 3 hours on the total project and just a little over an hour not driving.

I would say my experience was pretty good, and was happy with it. I would not say I was lucky though as this is how I purchase all my vehicles regardless of the dealer. Either they want your business and will make your life easy, or they do not want your business which you can tell from the get go. If they do not want your business and are being difficult I stop them in their tracks and call a different dealer.

However regardless of weather or not I am buying subaru or dodge I only work with 2 dealerships I have bought a lot of vehicles from them (same salesman at both) and they do not BS me around. But then they never did from the get go either. From day one of buying my first new vehicle the above process is pretty much how I have done it. I have never spent more than a hour at a dealer buying a vehicle if you take out the time spent on the phone before going to get it and the time driving there and then driving home.

If you mean business and they can tell your life will be easy at the dealer. If they feel they can push you around maybe not so much.

My purchase was fantastic, they gave me an absurdly high amount for my trade in order to sell me their car at the "Pure" price.

:sigh:Same here! Easiest and best car buying experience ever, and I actually feel good about it still. (usually I am filled with buyer's remorse by now)

My experience started out bad, but ended good. First of all, I wasn't even sure on whether I wanted a BRZ Premium, Limited, or the new Series.Blue. I was looking at a lot of options on cars.com and truecar. In the end, I decided to go with the Series.Blue that MSRP's for just over 30k, but I knew MSRP is no real number. Contacted every single dealer who had a Series.blue within 200 miles and shot ridiculously low offers, got a few reasonable e-mails back (and a lot 'you are crazy' ones). Came to the closest dealer, but when I was ready to fill out paperwork, I saw that he put destination on top of the agreed price. Walked out. Called two more dealerships and made the closer one match the price of the one that's a bit farther away. Came in to take a look at it, and sign the paperwork. 27,500 for Series.Blue +TTL+Service Plan+Warranty. Got it at 1k over MSRP with everything included. I'm pretty happy.

I felt I was being generous when I was searching for a car, MSRP, Manual transmission, no options (no audio, no clear bra, no lug nuts, no sticker that says 'scion' on the bumper), you'd think I had called up and said "After I fucked your mom last night she said I could get the car for free". If it wasn't for my father calling every dealership in the area and some out of state I simply would not own this car because nobody was willing to sell me what I wanted.

I didn't mind waiting, putting down a deposit, I was flexible on color, didn't matter. Even then, when I sat down to sign the paperwork it took 4 hours, 3 of which were sales tactics of "oops messed up the form, gotta print again on this machine that was obsolete before you were born, in the meantime howabout this sticker that's going to protect your car from being stolen for $500? It's only $8/month!"

There are some dealerships that would have killed to have me as a customer, MSRP, no options, just pull the car off the truck peel the plastic off do the inspection, test drive, sign the papers and drive away, it would have been 3 hours worth of work for them and fat profit margin.

:bonk:

Oh no doubt that there are real horror stories as well! I was just saying that sometime it is the buyer not the dealer that is the monster.
Of course on any forum you usually only hear the bad stories and then almost always just from the customers perspective. This of course leaves an impression that all the dealers are horrible people that just want to screw everybody over when statistically I bet that is not the case.
There will always still be a certain percentage of shady or just plain incompetent dealerships because...people!

I had a very easy experience, but I work at the dealership I bought it at lol. Got an amazing price on my trade though, turns out it needed alot more work than I thought. Still got ACV for it though.(Needed approx $8500 worth of work)