[tracerit]

Originally Posted by ashtray

^^^Banking on a dealer to offer you MORE for your trade than, oh, ANY valuation you come up with is a pipe dream. There's "trade-in" value, private party value, and retail value. Oh, and also auction value (and cost to transport and sell it at auction), and then there's "we got you in our trap" value where you're drooling over the new car so much they'll give you pennies on your trade in and make you feel like they're doing you a favor. ("Actually that offer of $3.52 was really generous of us, bc we're just going to take it to auction - but first the transmission probably needs replacing, all new tires, fix all the scratches, re-upholster the interior, and then add $2k to transport it 100 miles away to the auction and pay a 15% fee to sell it there. Really, at that price, you're the one ripping US off - but Im doing you a favor."

Don't believe me? Wait and see! (Go to CarMax first - they'll make you an offer to buy your car that's good for 7 days or something. And it will be about 80% of trade in value. And after you go talk numbers with the Subaru dealer, that lowball CarMax offer will seem very generous.)

Also expect to be talked into extras - LoJack, extended warranty, etc. it's not a "hard sell", but a passive aggressive soft sell. They will add it in on the sticker "oh, you want that. Everyone gets it. Highly recommend it." and then "it's only $20/month more - for piece of mind, that's the best deal you'll get this week!"

Have fun!

Thanks for putting it out so bluntly haha. I sold a car to carmax in the past and it was about $1-1.5k less than what i had in mind but i was comfortable with it because i needed to sell the car and could not bother with meeting a bunch of no shows anymore. the daelership i'm looking to place a deposit on stresses that they don't upsell... we'll see when i call later. they do want to try to get my financing business though.