Check out this 5 minute video of tips by Rob Gruhl on how to buy your next car from a dealership. I remember going with my wife on her last car shopping trip (before we were married), and she ended up doing everything you're not supposed to. If we had seen this video and had some of this guidance, she might have walked away feeling better about her purchase.
The only thing I see lacking in what he says is what you should do if you're not extroverted enough to follow his tips – in this case, find a friend – the one that loves to haggle/argue/debate/etc, and coach him/her with this video on exactly what the game plan is to follow. Let this friend be the voice for you at the dealership – even though you'll be the one signing the final papers, there's nothing that says you can't bring in a designated hitter to face that salesman's pitch (pun intended).
I, for one, plan to follow these guidelines for my next car purchase. Looks like that'll be sometime around the end of 2008, wish me luck! :-)
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September 24th, 2007 on 5:28 PM
this is basically how i bought my first new car. i didn't have any idea what i wanted so my first-first-first step was to create a big sheet of options & accessories & a grading system. I'd take my sheet with me to dealers, check out different cars, note base price, cost of extras, etc and give the car an overall "desirabilty" grade. I took those home, compared my notes against each other, and decided what was worth what. Then I started the test drives. Picked my car, and did the cross-bidding by phone. If a dealer wouldn't give me a price, I'd hang up and call the next dealer on my list. I got the price down from over $14k to $10,200. When I took that final number and called back the next closest priced dealer, they told me I was "full of shit" – so I knew I finally had the bargain I sought!! I went in on a Sunday night – end of month – 9pm – with a friend. The dealership didn't try to sell me a thing… just "here's the paperwork" and we were done. It was a great experience (and totally freaked out the friend).
My 2nd car, I made up for all the work I did. I was driving a car with NO brakes, I needed something immediately, I did EVERYTHING wrong. But I knew it. And I refinanced the deal as fast as I could. And while the dealership was all happy that they screwed me over, all the really did was assure that I'll NEVER buy from them again.
One thing not mentioned in the video: Beware of the "here, we'll give you couopons for free maintenance for first xxx miles" pitch. I feel for it – because I tend to suck at routine service checks because of the cost. Turns out my "free maintenance" including nothing but oil changes… which took over 4 hrs at a dealership that was out of my way. I think I used 1 coupon – not even believing they actually did the oil change – before accepting that I'd been suckered.
September 24th, 2007 on 7:33 PM
This is great and I'm favoriting it. Thanks Ross.