Hellobee Boards

@MrsBrewer: I would definitely recommend not going in and buying the same day.

I'm bad at negotiating too, but my husband is great at it. Plan on a couple weekends, go to a couple of dealers if you can, and see who will give you the best price. Just leave and tell them you need to think on it, and they will definitely follow up on the phone if that is a better way for you to negotiate on the phone instead of in person! It was amazing to see how much lower they will go if you play a little hard to get! GOOD LUCK!

Agree with not going in to buy on one day. Go look around, start the conversation if you like something and go back after a weekend or two.

Yes, go to your credit union and they will basically let you know what you're qualified for. I didn't get an actual check, but basically the dealership contacts the bank to get the money. In our case though, we had a 1.5% rate locked and when we finalized our purchase price of the car the dealership asked to run our financing just to see what they could offer. Sure enough they found a different local CU that offered 1%. So dealership financing is not always bad.

I would definitely see what rate your CU can give you - then when you go in see what the dealer offers.

I don't remember the exact numbers but it was something like our CU gave us 2% and the dealer offered 4% - we told them the CU was lower so they gave us 1% to beat them- score!

@MrsBrewer: Are you looking new or pre-owned/certified?

Our dealership partners with our credit union and we got the same rate either way so it was easier to just do at the dealership all at once.

Also some dealerships here have no negotiating pricing- so you pay what is marked and work with the same person beginning to end.

We bought ours the same day because it was the very last 2014 (In Dec 15) on the lot and used would have been just a little less than brand new. So we were happy with it.

I also vote for negotiating prices online if possible. It might be a bit trickier for used cars than new since stock will be varied at each dealer, but I bet people still do it all the time.

My advice if you go this route is to understand all the extra fees and taxes b/c the dealer might still try to rip you off. I negotiated everything online and confirmed what extra fees to expect, and when I walked into the dealer the salesman verbally confirmed the correct sales price but wrote down a final price that was way more than agreed upon! I said if he could explain how he got from A to B with numbers then I would pay that but of course he couldn't. It's just another dirty sales tactic, so be smart and beware!

@MrsBrewer: The cost of the tag transfer will vary depending on how much time you have left on your registration (or something like that if I remember). Tax amount again should be pretty fixed based on your local tax rate.

I've been at shopping lately and I haven't been able to get anyone to negotiate online at all! I've contacted about 6 dealerships so far and the all REFUSE to talk price if I'm not physically there. I've only been to two, and still haven't bought a car lol, but got two totally different quotes for the same car. And the price does actually drop after you leave.

Go in knowing your credit score and with a financing quote so you can take that out of the equation. But don't let them only quote you a monthly price - they all tried to do that to me and I forced them to show what the car actually COST.

I would figure out exactly which vehicle you want, and then shop online to see what is out there / where others are priced at.
We bought our Traverse last year, and the first dealership had a set price and didn't budge at ALL on it even though they were overpriced, they just kept trying to sell me on the monthly payment. Seriously over an hour negotiating and they did NOTHING.
We ended up getting a nicer one with the AWD we wanted, for less money at a different dealership. DH just walked in, said he would pay asking w/ tax/title/license included, but wanted $X amount on our trade in, they took it and we left an hour later with the SUV. We did pre-approve with our bank and wrote a check that day. The dealer said upfront he didn't think he could beat the rate, and it was easier to work with our current bank anyways.

In 2015, we bought a certified used 2012 Toyota Sienna XLE with 38,000 miles for around $28,000 including all the taxes and fees. We walked in at 7pm and we were out the door with the car at 830pm.

My husband and I list car buying at the top of the things we hate the most to do. We don't really negotiate, we don't want to waste time forever, we just want to walk in and buy the car and leave and drive it for at least 10 years. We also don't bother going in multiple times because we have to arrange childcare, I don't want to drag my kids to dealerships, and if we're looking it at based on my husband's hourly billable time, its a huge waste of money.

Honestly, we USUALLY buy our cars straight cash because even dealing with financing is annoying and you command much better prices when you walk in and say this is how much I have to spend, yes or no. But a fully-loaded van even used was a little more than we wanted to pony up in cash with a baby on the way and one in daycare. So we financed part of it.

We first plugged in what we wanted into TrueCar's website in the used section. Basically we looked at Hondas and Toyotas and plugged in the trim levels with the options we wanted. It gave us a good idea on what a great price would be on the van we wanted within 100 miles of where we lived. This is how we found our car. The listed price on the vehicle on the dealer website was $26,995 and I knew it was a great price. The only drawback was the dealership was 60 miles away. So we knew if we were going to haul all the way there, we better be ready to buy.

We called once about the car to inquire if the car was still available. That's when they paired us with the salesman. Said thanks and hung up. Then we called him a second time to ask him to go check the car and physically confirm that it had the specific items we wanted (power liftgate, power doors, captains chairs, power seats, etc). That's when we hooked the salesperson.

He kept calling and asking if we wanted to set up a time to come in because he only worked certain days and he wanted to make sure he was the one to sell us the car. We said we'll get back to you because you guys are really far so we want to check some local places out.

Time of year, month, and day in terms of shopping really helps. We called the salesman on a weekday and told him we'd come in to test drive the car on a day that ended up being the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. Turns out it was not a day he was originally supposed to work, but he came in to try and earn that commish. It was the end-ish of the month, at the end-ish of the year, on a rainy day, in the evening, you get the idea. Dealership closed at 830pm, we walked in at 7pm, so we were on the clock.

We test drove the car in under 15 minutes and waited while they valued our Jeep for trade-in. That meant we were captive with the guy for 20 minutes in the showroom with him wanting to run our financing (we did not tell him we had CU financing at that point). We said we'd wait until the trade-in value came in first before we discussed financing.

At this point, my husband legitimately needed to jump on a conference call, so it threw the guy's game off because he cut him off to ask if he could use an empty office to make a call. So I think at that point the dealer didn't know if we were serious about buying or not because the man had left the negotiation desk. (Eyeroll).

They came back and said they would offer $4,000 on our trade. I told him I wanted the car for $26,000 even, $5,000 on our trade, and we can button this up right now. He was like there's no way, blah blah, the car is rock bottom priced, maybe I can get you $4,500 on the trade, etc.

We weren't that far apart since I felt like I offered him reasonable terms, so we ended up with $26,495 and $5,000 on the trade. It was only at that point that I was willing to talk about financing. And that's when I told him I already brought my own. He asked if he could try and run their own financing and I told him I wasn't interested/wasn't enough time. I think this is the point where you could have them try to beat it or not, but for us we knew it wasn't going to make much of a difference, but that it would eat up a lot of time. Used car interest rates tend to be higher and a little tougher to incentivize. (Oh, and FYI, Toyota loves to offer you a super low interest rate but then tack on a "loan fee" - especially when you use that 0% APR - that basically negates the value of the interest rate cut).

It really depends on how your specific bank handles it, but for us, we got financed through our credit union and had a physical check in hand. Basically, they approved us for a certain amount and gave us a blank check that we filled in at the dealership and we could spend up to the approved amount. We put down $10,000 cash (actually, it was $5,000 in a personal check, $5,000 on our Amex for points since we could put up to that amount on the card towards the purchase of a car), got the $5,000 for our trade, and cut the CU check for the remainder. By the time my husband was off the call, we were done and we were ready to sign paperwork.

I will say that because we hauled out so far and because we knew the van was the best deal within 100 miles of us, DH and I agreed on how much flex/wiggle we were going to be okay with going in (I think we were willing to pay full price and take as low as $4000 on the trade in). Because we had the game plan beforehand, every time the dealer asked me if I wanted to check with my husband first or whatever, I was like no. And we didn't have to waste time asking for a second to confer with one another. The only time I had to go to my husband was when we agreed to terms I walked over to whisper where we landed and he gave me a thumbs up and I went back to finish the paperwork.

Sorry for the novel, but we legit HATE buying cars, and have a really weird way to buying that prioritizes spending as little time as possible at the dealership, so I thought I would detail. Good luck. Vans are awesome!

I agree 100% with @CarDad: we had a great experience with True Car, we actually found out about it through our insurance who uses them for a car buying service.

I also agree with not negotiating on monthly payments, it's so much easier for them to jack up the price that way.

We used AutoNation and did most of the negotiating through True Car online. We had the final price in hand in 4 hours through e-mail with the dealer and took two more to do the paperwork in person, it was super easy and not an unpleasant experience. We shopped around a lot and test drove a ton of cars, but when we found the right place, it was super easy and really was the exact price we paid in the end.

Our car insurance also did financing, so we locked in a great rate through them, also True Car, our bank (super crappy rate) and the dealer ended up matching it, so we were happy!

So, I personally sold cars for a couple years and my husband is a service manager of 15 years now. Car sales are actually the least profitable part of a dealerships business. They do not make a lot of money off of each car. Dealerships make money first off of financing / selling extended warranties then service and finally car sales.

It really does not matter if you buy a car same day or not, unless you feel more comfortable taking time to look at numbers. Definitely try to buy at the end of a month then at the beginning. You will never be able to negotiate a lot of money off of a car. The biggest favor you can do for yourself is get a pre-approval from a bank and see if the dealership can match it. When we bought our car recently, we got a pre-approval from our bank for about 4%; when we went to the dealership they were trying to finance us for 7.5%. When we showed them the pre-approval they matched our rate and we just financed through them out of convenience. Extended warranties are usually never worth it. If you have a specific car in mind you can try to compare similar models / mileage with different dealerships in the area. You will be able to see what the average going rate is. I also tend to look at KBB for what used cars are selling for.

We didn't use Costco's program, but we were able to get a local dealer to match the offer.