Crew, if anyone has any questions or issues they are having involving cars or dealerships post them here and I will do my best to help. I especially hate seeing issues that usually have simple solutions. I don’t consider myself an expert but I have been doing this since I was 16 and I know some people that can help even if I can’t. Ask me anything!! Financing, buy vs. lease, warranty, trade or sell, new vs. used… chances are someone else can learn from your situation as well.
Go.
DB
Looking forward to this being a really helpful and informative thread, thanks for posting it :tup:
Me too!
It’s awesome that you are willing to take the time to help the way you do.
:tup:
Is there a “preferred” amount to put down? Or, if you plan on financing just put down what you can to get your payment to be affordable?
Obviously more is better.
From my stand point it seems like putting 10% down takes some of the pressure off both parties to conduct a sale. I could be wrong. Does it even matter?
If you’ve got good credit right now you’re probably well better off with a small down payment. My last investment statement shows I got just over a 20% return this year. Do you think my money is better off sitting in an account earning 20% and compounding for the next 36-60 months, or being used to save a little interest on a 2.5 to 3% interest rate loan?
I probably won’t get 20+% next year but I bet I do good enough over the life of my car loan that I’d rather borrow the full amount at 2.49% and keep my funds invested.
A friend of mine bought a new (bought in 2011/my2011) f-150 ecoboost from a local dealership. About 6 months ago, he started having issues with the transmission shifting hard, which seems to be an extremely common issues on the ford forums with the 2011’s (including a TSB from ford for certain date ranges ).
Since the issue started, he has taken it to this dealership multiple times. It has gone something like this (might be slightly out of order or whatnot, just going from memory- dont have the documentation in front of me).
#1 They did a tranny computer reflash, didnt fix the issue.
#2 Oops, we did the wrong reflash, we will do the right one and it will fix the issue. It didn’t.
#3 Oh its an issue with the rear diff. We serviced that and the issue will be fixed. It wasnt.
#4 There isnt a problem with this truck. We cant reproduce it. The mileage during this service did not change and the truck was never moved by the dealer.
#5 Same as #4. Still a problem with the truck. Friend talks to the mechanic that looked at the truck and asked why his 2012 rental f-150 doesn’t have the shifting issue. He says “they fixed the issue in the 2012+ models” and backtracks when questioned about it.
#6 Truck starts to studder when accelerating at highway speeds. Charge air sensor replaced. Air pump ordered because its making a ton of noise-- indefinite backorder on this item (obviously not the dealers fault).
#7 Truck still shifting hard, still studdering. Now they want to replace the tranny solenoid pack. Charge air sensor is supposedly bad again, and they say they will replace it again.
During this whole process, the dealer has been very dishonest. He had the service advisor on speakerphone when he said “The truck is in the shop torn apart right now” when we were literally standing next to it in the parking lot where it was parked from the beginning.
They got to the point where the dealership said “just trade the truck in” and he entertained the idea and talked numbers. The dealer gave him an absolutely insulting offer (both trade in and on the price of a new truck).
He has been in contact with ford corporate, but the second he mentioned lemon law, they refused to talk to him on the phone anymore.
How do you deal with situations like this?
Correct. In cases of people with good credit this is true and good advice to take. If you have bad credit some banks will require 10-20% down before they will even loan you money and more money down makes sense for the buyer to save interest in that case. Money down can also help us when negotiating with bank to get an approval or get a better rate. I will post some examples of car loans and the actual dollars paid in finance charge tomorrow so you can see the dollars saved.
---------- Post added at 09:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:24 PM ----------
The best thing you can do is see if the manufacturer can help but manufacturers get very cautious when customers start saying “lemon law” because of the legal repercussions. I would advise anyone to go that route only when every other avenue has been exhausted. And I mean every avenue. First, go to the owner of the dealership and see what they can do. Maybe a different technician can work on it or the manufacturer can have engineers get involved. If that doesn’t work and no one can find the problem talk to the dealer about trading into a new vehicle. If that doesn’t satisfy the customer, deal with the manufacturer to try to come to a solution or ask them to take it to a different dealer for service. If there is a real issue he might be able to get financial help from the manufacturer to get a new truck. I know of instances where Chevy has given people certificates for $1000+ to use towards a new vehicle but they must be the original owner who bought it new. If it is bought used this is not going to happen. Also he needs to keep in mind the only two places he can get the best help are the manufacturer and the dealership he bought it. In 15 years and all the people who think they have a “lemon” I can only think of 3 cases where it really was a lemon and went through the legal process. We have however traded people out of cars there was nothing wrong with other than in their mind in the attempt to keep them happy.
I appreciate the response. Sent you a pm with some more specific questions. Don’t want to clutter the thread.
I have seen some questions come up in other threads. Anyone need anything?
Sorry for the long post…
How much % do you guys need to make on a car? I am looking at picking up a new car. I did a lot of research, and I found out the dealer cost, dealer invoice, MSRP, and GM preferred price for every option of the car. It was leaked online a few months ago. I built the exact car I wanted and the difference between cost and MSRP is roughly $4k. I want a painless transaction with ZERO haggling. One of your salesmen called me a month ago and we briefly discussed what is involved with ordering a new car, and he said “you pay MSRP minus whatever incentives GM is offering at that time”. He said I have 2 weeks to decide to buy the car once it comes in (or something like that). Well, fuck that. Sorry, ain’t gonna happen. GM isn’t going to offer ANY incentives on a '14 when they have '13’s sitting on the lot. Basically, I would come into your dealership, order a car, a few weeks later it would come in, you’d prep it, do the paperwork/financing, and make $4000. I figure that would be roughly 2-3 hours of work at most. Quite a deal for you!
I can see charging MSRP for a super rare car that you are only allocated a few of, but not a common car that every dealer is going to have.
Another thing, what do you think of the truecar.com pricing?
What car are you trying to buy? That will certainly help me give you some direction. I don’t know why you were told that and I would like to.
As for Truecar… I think it is simply another web company who thinks they are helping the consumer. They may or may not, I don’t know. Personally, KBB, Edmunds, Truecar, etc are just putting up info and it is really up to the consumer to make sure it is accurate. I have never found the info to be accurate and I would say it can be close but it is never 100%. New cars especially are more difficult to price than any of you guys can imagine and no matter how much time you spend on the internet talking to “experts” I would still take it with some cynicism. Every deal is different. What if the price they say you should pay is clouded by a majority of people trading in a competitive lease but you don’t have one? Or because the majority traded a similar vehicle and had a loyalty bonus? Or the other way around… what if they don’t have those incentives and you should get them?
Anyone who buys anything, especially a car/house/large purchase, should look at the price compared to what you are getting in return. Quality, value per dollar and most importantly… customer service. The old phrase “you get what you pay for” is 100% true. To answer your profit question… I will tell you that no one pays MSRP unless, like you said, it’s a rare car or specialty vehicle and it doesn’t happen often. Also, on some vehicles dealers lose money, some vehicles dealers make money. It’s just the way the business works but as I said each deal is very different. We chase our competitors extremely aggressively which translates into lower prices than those around us and why we are in the top 5 in the nation regularly (#1 in USA in May). We even pay a company to scrub every dealer website (and I mean every one!!) so we can compare the price of our used cars to the same one on someone else’s website to make us inline or less expensive. As a general rule no one sells cars for less than Basil or Paddock in our area. If you paid less somewhere else you didn’t get the same product you would have gotten from either of us. I truly believe that.
When you are buying a car the best thing you can do is this:
My experience with truecar.com went as follows. I plugged in the exact options I wanted. It showed me the MSRP, and then it showed me what I would pay at the participating dealers. It wouldn’t tell me which dealers, only that there were 3 within 80 miles. As soon as I submitted my contact information it showed me which ones. The dealers were Ki-Po, Basil, and Emerling. Basically I could “lock in” the price that each dealer would honor. The prices were fairly generous. Roughly $3000 off of MSRP on a car that optioned out to $37k. The only problem was that none of the 3 had a car on their lots with the exact options, and my phone started ringing off the hook. That is how your salesman called me, and we talked about ordering a '14. I asked each of the dealers to get a hold of me once Chevy announced pricing for the '14’s. Only Ki-Po has followed up.
Gotcha. I’ll address the issue with my rep and have someone else call you!
Courtesy of joelster we have discovered a missing item in the pricing many people see online. The manufacturers destination charge. Make sure for any of you looking up pricing make sure it is either included or add in the appropriate amount. It will be anywhere from $500-1000.
Question on taking a car for a test drive - I honestly prefer taking a vehicle for a test by myself if I am genuinely interested in it. It provides for a much more comfortable experience all together and makes my decision easier knowing I don’t have to talk to a random sales person and just give myself time to focus on the car itself, etc.
In my experiences, most often the sales person jumps in the car as well. I’m sure this is standard practice so they can try to sell the car as your driving it. However I’ve also had it happen where the sales person tosses the keys to me and says take it for a spin, etc.
My question- is it a dealer by dealer policy on if the sales person needs to accompany a test drive? Is it wrong to ask to test drive a car by myself?
It isn’t wrong to ask and it typically is policy at most dealers that you are accompanied. Some dealers don’t really care either way. In many cases it is better for insurance, safety and so the rep can answer questions. I usually tell our guys sit there and be quiet so the customer can do what you said, experience the car. To me that makes sense. I will let people on a regular basis that either have been here a few times and can’t decide, have purchased from us before or people who seem like they have good intentions.
Having someone in the car who works at the dealership is good protection for the business as well. You would be surprised how often people get in our cars and drive them like they stole it. People have smashed vehicles, smoked the tires, used them to go to Lowe’s/Home Depot and scratched the crap out of them pickup bed etc. I could tell some good stories…
Heh, West Herr just tossed me the keys to a new 05 GTO back when I was shopping for mine and said “bring it back in 15-20 minutes”. I wouldn’t say “like I stole it” but it was a pretty spirited test drive that involved a couple pulls on the 219.
I can’t blame them at all for sending a sales guy on the test drive. My personal experience has been if I show up in my business casual work clothes driving something nice I often get unaccompanied drives. Pretty sure Dave would know better if I strolled into Basil.
I’ve definitely been in the 3-digit speed range with salesmen in the other seat. Usually I just get, “You know the ticket is yours if we get pulled over, right?”.
NOTE: No solo test drives for Jay and boardjnky. Ever. For anything.