I learned not to base my purchase on the payment... but I have, and the one, I knew I was going to pay it off. Ive dealt with good and bad dealers.. Ive learned not to give my information.....some of these dealers will check your credit . And they have done that to me. I also know that they will lowball you on your trade. Its because if you have a nice trade in, they will actually make more money on the used vehicle than they will on the new one... do I trust dealers? No. But I remember years ago, this one dealer wouldnt come to agreement on what I was willing to pay.. this was a new car. It was a cash deal. I drove up in a car, and they actually had the gall to tell me that I "needed" the new car... I told them I have a car. I can drive away in it just like I drove in. They didnt expect that. They finally pissed me off. Told them you lost a sale.

 

So what you are saying is that you no longer look at the purchase price of a new vehicle when you accept a dealer's trade offer?

What you posted doesn't make sense. When a dealer provides you with the offer sheet (known as a "4-square" or "pencil" in the industry), the vehicle sales price must be listed and clearly displayed separately from the trade, separate from the taxes, separate from any dealer add-on's, separate from rebates, separate from the monthly payments. This way you can clearly see the actual purchase price of the vehicle you are buying. If that number changes at all when new offer sheets are presented or when you introduce a trade, you should be able to notice that easily. That purchase price is also required by law to be on the final bill of sale that you as a buyer would sign. Again, you have opportunity to review that number to ensure it does not change. In other words, a dealer can't magically change a price and have it go completely unnoticed, unless a customer is just absolutely not paying any bit of attention whatsoever.

It also doesn't make sense because you've been advocating springing up a trade at the last minute. And what you gave here is an example of doing exactly that.... coming to an agreed price of a truck, then following your strategy of adding in a trade. You're saying now that following your advice will result in the math changing in favor of the dealer and inflating the price of the truck you are buying? Because that's how it reads.

Yes, and there's nothing wrong with helping people spot shady dealers or to understand some of the dealer methodology. But having worked in the industry, some of the advice you are giving would actually create a far more painful dealer experience for most people here. And your explanation and rationalization doesn't make any sense.

 

I believe you get another $1,000 rebate if you have a trade-in so it's better to be upfront about that too... so your final price also reflects the $1,000 rebate.

Just put all the cards on the table and do not budge from the trade-in value (I got $1k above KBB wholesale blue book, that was good enough) and $10k off MSRP for mine.

E-mailed for four hours beforehand.. 10 e-mails later, I came in the dealership and I was in the new F-150 within an hour. Easiest transaction. Some people think they can haggle all day in the dealership and still get screwed at the end.

 

"When a dealer provides you with the offer sheet (known as a "4-square" or "pencil" in the industry), the vehicle sales price must be listed and clearly displayed separately from the trade, separate from the taxes, separate from any dealer add-on's, separate from rebates, separate from the monthly payments"

EXACTLY! I want to see that write up, or at least a half assed OTD without a trade first, because if they are a dishonest dealer the second offer with the trade, the sale price will magically increase so they can make their trade offer look better than it is or hide some more profit. If we don't start with the non trade offer write up you don't have a baseline OTD price and your taking the dealer at face value. Granted if you know what your buying is worth you should be able to spot an inflated sale price, but that's easy to get around to by pushing people through the paperwork or down talking. You were in sales, you know that people get starstruck, overwhelmed or confused with the whole process of buying a big ticket item, dishonest dealers prey on that to take advantage of them.

Dealer has two identical truck, and two sellers that are identically qualified, just one with no trade. John doe 1 buys the truck OTD for 45k with no trade. Jane doe buys identical truck 2 with a trade valued at 10k, shady dealer bumps the selling price up to 48k and inflates the trade by 2k. With an honest dealer the sale price would have been(45-10) 35k, but since they fugged the trade value and selling price the sale price is (48-12) 36k, but Jane is happy because she thinks she got over book for her trade when really she lost a grand in the deal.

I would show you proof on paper, but both the dealers that tried that crap refused to let me have a copy of the offers after i questioned them as to why the base sale price increased. Multiple RV dealers did the same thing when we bought a new camper last year, all of a sudden the selling price of the camper increased $2500-3k when trading in our old camper, hummm.

Wiggums, I tried to email but all but 2 refused to give me an OTD over email. That would have made my life much less painful if i could have at least gotten a ballpark without wasting half my day.

 

Whoops, nevermind...

 

I have never had a dealer up the purchase price just because I wanted more for my trade-in. It has always been two separate negotiations.

I have never asked for OTD, I only asked for $10K below MSRP and my trade-in, and told him that others had such deals going on. I always assume 8.25% tax and at the most $350 in various fees and I knew they'd add that at the end.

Also, OTD may get complicated by a few rebates that you don't qualify for. I didn't want surprises when I got there so I had him include all rebates in the $10k off MSRP, then when I got there, he checked to see if I qualified for more rebates.. which I didn't so I was happy with $10k off for the cash deal.

So many times, I see $10k off ads but there's always about $1,000 or $2,000 that I wouldn't qualify. I made that very clear in the e-mail. And he didn't try to gouge me by looking at the $49k sticker and seeing a $2k luxury discount in the sticker then claim the MSRP was $51k. That's unethical and sleazy.

My 2012 F-150 trade-in was in perfect condition and always serviced by Ford. I think he could verify that with my VIN, I'm almost sure. I told him CarMax offered me $24k for it and he accepted that number.

Easiest transaction ever.

 

What you're describing is really poor negotiation skills by customers, not dishonesty by a dealership.

The price of a vehicle is on the window sticker. Any OTD (out the door) price that is under that MSRP shown on the window sticker is a NEGOTIATED price. No two customers get the same negotiated price. That price is always going to fluctuate regardless of whether there is a trade or not. That doesn't mean the dealer is being dishonest, it's just a fact of negotiation. It's not fudging the sales price, it's negotiation plain and simple. Just because every customer doesn't get the rock bottom price that one person manages to negotiate doesn't mean that the dealer is ripping off everyone else. They are like any retail business, they rely on profits from selling products.

Negotiation skills and tactics vary. If a customer has very poor negotiation skills, the result is they will probably pay more than a customer that has sharp negotiation skills.

There is no such thing as an inflated sales price of a vehicle unless the price is ABOVE the MSRP shown on the window sticker. That will happen several ways: 1) products have been pre-installed on the vehicle that increase the price/value, 2) the vehicle is high demand/low volume and the dealer believes they can get above market value based on limited availability (this happens with Raptors, GT350's, etc). In any case, the dealer will have an addendum sticker on the vehicle reflecting the price increase so the customer knows what to expect to pay.

Having said all of that, yes there are dealers and examples plenty of shady negotiation tactics. I could write a book on those and what I've seen when I was selling vehicles. But simply claiming that a dealer is shady because two people get two different deals based on their negotiation skills is hardly helpful in this thread. And if you're having car dealerships and RV dealerships do this to you repeatedly, you may want to re-think your negotiation tactics.

 

A best practice when negotiating the price of a new vehicle is to remove rebates until you're happy with the sales price offered by the dealer. Rebates are not dealership money. What is dealership money is the negotiated price of the vehicle BEFORE applying any rebate whatsoever. Rebates are manufacturer/finance company money.

For instance, if you walk into a dealership and ask for $10K off MSRP, and $3,000 of that is rebates. The dealer took $7,000 off. If you walked into a dealership and asked for $10K off MSRP, and $6,000 of that is rebates, the dealer only took $4,000 off.

At the end of the day you paid the same price, but who got the better deal?

 

Unethical and shady dealers will say that this truck has an MSRP $51,080, not the sticker's $49,080 total, and that the $10k discount would bring it down to $41,080. I've seen that many times on $$ off deals. That's why I always check the Window Sticker prices.

 

The problem here is I have no idea what dealers actually pay. I simply went to cars.com, looked at new F-150's and found that within a 150-mile radius, the biggest discount on a new XLT Supercrew 4x4 5.0L was $11,000. I read the description on the rebates because not all customers qualify for all.

Seeing I didn't qualify for two $500 rebates, I concluded getting $10,000 off was the best number possible. Making it a little more difficult was I was pretty specific in what I wanted.. XLT 4x4 with 6.5' bed, 302A, and console with the column shifter, not the floor shifter.

Then I went to Ford.com and found the cheapest XLT that had everything I wanted and I sent them an e-mail asking if they'd do $10k off with all rebates applied since that was the deal I was finding elsewhere. I also was quick to add the trade-in value CarMax offered.

Honestly, if I tried to get $10k off the MSRP without a single rebate being applied, I don't think that would happen. Also, some inexperienced customers would see a price on another F-150 and expect the dealership to match it. That's not reasonable, not all F-150's are the same. The best way was $$ off MSRP for me.

 

I've personally never seen any dealer attempt to try such a tactic, but I know exactly how that works. And yes it's a bit shady, but there's an easy way around that.

The dealer will use that strategy to inflate the "discounts" they are giving to the customer. It just looks like the dealer is giving the customer more money, but the fact is nothing actually changes on the pricing. That's an automatic discount, just like other rebates that customers qualify for are automatic. Dealers will lump all discounts and rebates together like that often, and again it's to inflate that discount number they want to show to "prove" how much you are saving by buying from them.

The only way that would affect you in any way is if you used your strategy to come to the dealership and ask for $10K off MSRP. $10K off could quite literally mean any combination of rebates and discounts at the discretion of the dealer, including discounts shown on the window sticker. That's why I always advocate to ignore all rebates and discounts that the dealer has no control over, and go straight for negotiating the price of the vehicle first. Once you are happy with the negotiated price, then apply all rebates. Start at total MSRP and work down towards invoice, getting as close or even under invoice if possible for your negotiated price. That's the true test of really getting a great deal.

 

LOL, you sure have an excuse for everything. What ever, obviously your right, this couldn't happend to me multiple times by multiple dealers, or that i have have friends who have previously worked for dealers where this was common practice to snow the customer for another 5k on a trade or have them paying more then they would have without the trade. Obviously misrepresenting the trade vs sale price is perfectly fine, lie is negotiating right?. This is why i left sales, honesty makes you the bad guy.

Again, if you ever have the displeasure of being in SE MI hit me up, ill show you that im not making this up. Im going to be in the market for a SXS soon, maybe ill just bring a gopro and you can see first hand.

 

This info is available online, but I'll give you a quick rundown so you know what you are shopping for and maybe help you out with a future purchase.

There aren't any resources to show you what dealers actually pay, but there are lots of resources on the internet that will show you dealer invoice (or get you very close to the actual dealer invoice). Dealers actually pay less than invoice. The dollar amount between invoice and the actual dealer cost is called "holdback", which is typically around 3% of the MSRP. There are also volume incentives that dealers get paid for hitting certain sales numbers, plus other manufacturer to dealer incentives. You really don't have any way to research this, and dealers will not share this information.

So once you've figured out what truck you want, let's say in this example it's a new F-150 that retails at $48,550. You're starting at MSRP. First thing you want to do is negotiate the actual dollars the dealer is willing to take off the price of that truck, ignoring all rebates and incentives. We are talking about what the sales manager is willing to take off the sticker price, and make this clear to your sales consultant when you are negotiating. Most people can get down to just above invoice or right at invoice without too much trouble, in this example that truck would have an invoice price of $45,153. You can even request the dealer print out the invoice pricing to verify. So if you get to invoice price, the dealer has discounted the truck by $3,397. A rough calculation of holdback, the dealer is pocketing around $1,450. If you're really strong at negotiating, you might get the dealer to cut into a portion of that holdback, but be ready for a fight. Most dealers resist very hard against going below invoice.

Once you're happy on a price and agree, then you apply all rebates and incentives that you qualify for.

But that's a quick summary of how to understand what the dealer is making on new vehicles, and how much negotiating room there actually is.... which isn't really much at all. That's why dealers advertise using every incentive and rebate in the book to reflect a bigger "savings" and to bring customers in the door. But the reality is understanding how new vehicle pricing works in order to negotiate the best deal possible.

Hope this helps shed some light.

 

In all of your examples, you never once gave the MSRP of the vehicles in question. So how are we to come to the conclusion that a dealer was being shady with pricing if we have no retail pricing reference to start with in the first place?

Without that information, everything you presented was based entirely on negotiation: one person got a better negotiated price than another.

If they both paid below MSRP, then neither one of them got ripped off.

 

I was told that it's okay if they're doing a lease, they base the monthly payments on the price without the factory discounts in the sticker, but not when it's a cash price. You'd be surprised how many in southern California do it that way, that's why I always click the link to the window sticker on dealership websites. About half of the F-150's priced at $10k off on the cars.com website did it that way, and I will not do business with them. The other half F-150's were $10k off without that dishonest tactic.

After I got mine, my friend wanted to get one at $10k off but he could only get $7k off because the rebates weren't there anymore. I looked in cars.com and the best I could find was $7k off too. The rebates came back a couple weeks later.

That was the other problem - rebates fluctuate regularly, it's hard for me to keep up to date. The best option for me was going to cars.com so I would know the best possible price after all the rebates are factored in. Dealers will throw in all rebates if they want to boast, "$10k off MSRP" in their ads. Sometimes all Ecoboosts get another $2k off, sometimes the 2.7EB gets $4k off, it really varies. I had to e-mail and ask if I qualified for all and he was sure, but added I may qualify for more, but I didn't.

My price was $4,200 below invoice (assuming it's $1,500 below MSRP which seems to be about right) plus $4,500 in rebates. Again, I don't know what the invoice is, I don't know what incentives are from Ford if they hit a quota, and I don't know how much the holdbacks are, there are so many other things that I don't know about. I figure, if other dealerships can do $10k off, so can they. It's better to look at the very best price you can find on cars.com then go from there.