Quote:
Originally Posted by altoid
Did you guys contact multiple dealers for quotes right away, or did you try to work with them one at a time?
I'm just about ready to start emailing and get the ball rolling, and the itch is getting insane.
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in short, definitely contact multiple dealers and collect as much info as you can. a quick excel or google docs spreadsheet will go a long way toward helping you record and organize the info you get from each dealer (dealer name and location, car available, car price, fees, shipping, total cost).
getting multiple quotes from various dealers will benefit you by (i) making the process faster; (ii) allowing you to drive down quotes through competitive bidding (i.e., letting a dealer know when another dealer is offering you lower price point); (iii) allowing you to get other information you need, e.g., cost of shipping.
for example, a car might be more expensive in CO than MA by 500$, but costs $600 less to ship from CO, so it's actually a better deal. when shopping around, i was up front with northeast dealers that their prices needed to beat nearby dealers by enough to outweigh the additional cost of shipping. they managed to do that easily.
not sure what you're shopping for, but check out the actual dealer inventories on their websites. i found that dealers often listed lower prices on their own websites than they did on cars.com or other aggregate sites. e.g., bertera subaru in CT (where i got mine) has some brz cars listed on their websites below msrp, but on cars.com, they were listed at msrp. good luck!