AUTO SALESMEN: Sis bought a Mag Wagon & got reamed...how does she get out of it?

[bull]

It is frustrating when a friend or family member goes out and does this. You have to let it go. No boby tied those people up and made them agree to the terms to get to go home, they agree to them themselves. The government is not here to protect people from themselves. If you go into a store and they tell you they want $3.50 for a 12 oz. can of Coke most people would not buy it,they would try somewhere else.How do you think Dealerships can buy large prime tracts of Real Estate to build these Car lots on? The ultimate responsibility of each persons well being relies upon themselves.

I agree to a point. The thing is people buy canned beverages all the time and there is no paperwork involved. How often does the average person buy a car? Once every two years maybe? You've oversimplified your allegory but in the end the buyer has to beware no matter what the product or purchase arrangement.

Bill, if worse comes to worse there is a legal yet effective way to help the dealership see things your sister's way. It involves a large sign attached to a piece of wood and lots of free time spend out on the sidewalk in front of the dealership. That's right... picket! It's worked before and it'll work again. Dealerships rely on lots of traffic for their business, thus the balloons, banners, displays, etc. Nothing puts a wad in their shorts quicker than some poor young lady out front with a sign that says "I got screwed by So-and-So Dodge."

[Shakey]

It is frustrating when a friend or family member goes out and does this. You have to let it go. No boby tied those people up and made them agree to the terms to get to go home, they agree to them themselves. The government is not here to protect people from themselves. If you go into a store and they tell you they want $3.50 for a 12 oz. can of Coke most people would not buy it,they would try somewhere else.How do you think Dealerships can buy large prime tracts of Real Estate to build these Car lots on? The ultimate responsibility of each persons well being relies upon themselves.

I agree to a point. The thing is people buy canned beverages all the time and there is no paperwork involved. How often does the average person buy a car? Once every two years maybe? You've oversimplified your allegory but in the end the buyer has to beware no matter what the product or purchase arrangement.

Bill, if worse comes to worse there is a legal yet effective way to help the dealership see things your sister's way. It involves a large sign attached to a piece of wood and lots of free time spend out on the sidewalk in front of the dealership. That's right... picket! It's worked before and it'll work again. Dealerships rely on lots of traffic for their business, thus the balloons, banners, displays, etc. Nothing puts a wad in their shorts quicker than some poor young lady out front with a sign that says "I got screwed by So-and-So Dodge."

Better yet, have her husband put on a t-shirt that says "Mean ol' Dodge Dealer" and he can put the boots to her on the sidwalk in front of the dealership.  That'll get their attention!

[ChgrSteve67]

Something else they can do if they got a crappy interest rate is refinance the car.
I'll keep my opinion to myself on how I feel about dealership auto loan companies.

Have them check with their bank or credit union and see if they can get a better rate,
also a lot of credit unions also have extended warranty's and gap insurance cheaper than any dealership.

Also have them ask about getting additional points or half points taken off the interest rate buy doing things like direct deposit and / or automatic withraw of the car payment each month.

[DC_1]

Sorry to here about your experience with that dealer. I have had issues with the local DCX dealer were I live. So much so that I buy or lease my vehicles form the dealer in my home town 4 hours away. I have been dealing with the same salesman since 1996 and I look at the dealer locally and even test drive the cars. But then I call my guy and ask him what its going to cost me. He is allways $3000 - $4000 cheaper than anyone local. Plus he delivers the car to me free of charge!

This summer when I brought my truck in for service to the local dealer I ran into a guy in the service dept who was really bitching about the dealer. If you have some time read his saga

http://www.donotbuydodge.ca/

And the Big 3 wonder why people are buying Japanese!

Cheers!

[Silver R/T]

ya dealers are almost all of them are croocks, I never go to dealer to buy car/truck etc.

[Ponch ®]

ya dealers are almost all of them are croocks, I never go to dealer to buy car/truck etc.

Do you EVER...EVER put any thought into any of your posts?

[Orange_Crush]

In Charlotte, NC, where, if what they sell has wheels, they are worthless backstabbing shyster sons-of-bitches, your best defense is to be informed.

Since I pay cash for my cars, what I do is the following.   

I research EXACTLY which car I want, EXACTLY what dealer invoice is, EXACTLY how much I'm willing to pay, and which dealer has the car I want.

I take the car I'm trading in or selling to CarMax.   The money they give you won't be as good as if you sell the car outright, but it'll be a lot better than what the dealership will give you as a trade-in...besides, if the dealership does give you a better price on your trade-in, they'll just up the price of the car you're buying (or sneak it into your financing).

Its like the Vegas rule...the house never loses.

After I have the money (as CarMax pays with a draft you may have to borrow a car for a couple of days until the money hits your account), I walk into the dealership, I walk up the the first of the greasy bastards I see (like I said, there are no good car salesmen in Charlotte...good guys exist, just not here). and tell him EXACTLY what I am interested in.   

The first thing he's gonna do is offer me a test drive.   I'll drive the car and test out the radio, seats, comfort, A/C, Heat, etc.

Then, we'll get back to the dealership and the first thing he'll do is pull out the foursquare sheet (AKA customer fucking tool).   He'll ask you what monthly payment you want, DO NOT FALL INTO THIS TRAP.   He will ask this over and over and try to insist you give it to him.   Just tell him that you only look at bottom line price and NOT monthly payment.

He will then likely ask if you are planning to finance, tell him yes (yes, you're lying...at least I am...) if you finance, the dealership gets a commission from the lender.

He will ask if you have a trade-in, tell him no.   This may hurt you a little bit, but you've gotta have money to buy the car.

Then, he's gonna ask you what you're wanting to pay.   Don't fall into this trap either.   You don't want to put the power in his hands.

Then, he's gonna (hopefully) quote you a highball price.   Just laugh.   Say "no way!"   Bend over the desk and say "here, this'll make it easier."   ask him if he's gonna kiss you first...whatever...have some fun with it.

After you do all this, he's gonna ask you what you want to pay, give him YOUR price, but not the price you're actually willing to pay...offer LESS (my rule of thumb is whatever puts me 200 bucks below dealer invoice not taking into accout FTD incentives, rebates, etc.).   In addition,   this is not such a low figure that the salesman will laugh in my face.   You may get lucky, but, more than likely, it'll be time for "The manager talk."   The manager talk is BS,   every salesman knows EXACTLY what the dealership's bottom line is on a sale.   The "manager talk" is a tool to make you sweat it out.

Car salesmen are good people-readers so make sure you keep him off balance and the best way to do that is to quickly shift from an attitude of mistrust to an attitude of "HEY...I'M YOUR BUDDY!" and back again.   Also, subtly keep yourself in a position of superiority.   WHen he sits, you stand.   WHen you shake his hand, look into his eyes and keep a firm grip.   If he starts to act hostile, be hostile right back or just walk out.   Never be so hung up on a car that you aren't willing to walk out.

One of my favorite tactics is to take a trip to the bathroom or coffee machine during every "manager talk" or every time to salesman leaves the office.   This puts him in a position of having to go find me.   He does this enough times, he'll give me whatever deal I want just to get rid of me.

Also, if your wife or someone else is in the office with you while the salesman is out doing whatever, DO NOT TALK about the sale in the office.   I've been to more than one dealership where they leave the telephone intercom on so they can hear what you're saying.

Okay, you go back-and-forth and finally agree on a price that is satisfactory to you.   Now you go see the finance manager.   He'll give you the upsells (extended warranty, etc) just say no.Then he'll give you the final bill which has all your tax, tag, etc. fees.   These will, as usual, be exhorbitant.   The one you need to focus on is the admin fee...usually 350 bucks.   ABSOLUTELY, CATEGORICALLY refuse to pay it.   Some dealerships won't budge on it, in that case, tell them they can:

A:   Drop the price of the car the same amount as the admin fee.

B.   Tell them to stick the car up their poopchute.

I'm not going to pay an extra 400 bucks to a dealership for some unspecified admin fee so I can pay their personnell to do what they're supposed to pay them to do.

Now, once you have that ironed out, tell them you no longer want to finance and you're paying cash.   If they don't go for it, just leave, chances are about 90% they will be fine with it.

If you are financing, just make sure that you have your bank's interest rate in your back pocket.   If the dealership's is better than your bank's (it often is) then GREAT!   sign the papers, gitcher car, and be on your way, if not, go to your bank, complete the financing process, and go back and gitcher car and be on your way.

This system has worked very well for me.

[Orange_Crush]

ya dealers are almost all of them are croocks, I never go to dealer to buy car/truck etc.

Do you EVER...EVER put any thought into any of your posts?

You're just now noticing this??

[HAZZARDJOHN]

Orange crush you are exactly right! The only thing I would add is Never buy the car on the same day you work out the deal! And under no circumstances give them a deposit! they always will try this, and it is a psycological game. I am lucky because I worked at a dealership and found out who the best salesman was and bought a car from him. We have since become friends, and we have Barbecues and go to the bar. He is a great guy. I don’t care if he starts selling Saturns I will go to him for all my new car needs, because he doesn’t play games. I have sent a lot of people to him and they say the same thing. He figured out along time ago that it doesn’t pay to tick off your customers after the sale. Almost all of his business is repeated. When I graduated college I was going to buy a new truck, before I lost my Employee discount. Well he moved on to another dealership, and I couldn’t take my employee plan over there.   So I walked in to the first salesman that came and talked to me. This guy did the whole buddy, buddy thing. This was in Dec of ’03, Well they were selling ’03 F150’s with a certain package for a really good deal, of 19,000 for a XLT 4X4. It was the year end close out and the 04’s were already out so they had to get rid of the old body style. I picked out a loaded Lariat with leather interior and did the math on it. According to them it should be 24,000 if you knock off the same amount of the sticker price. A good deal I thought for a truck that sold new for over 30k. Anyways the Buddy,Buddy guy disappeared and a Hindu guy comes out to “finish the deal.” My mistake #1: He asked how much am I willing to pay a month. I said my answer. My mistake #2 I was trading in my old truck, he drove it and told me what they were going to give me for it. It was about $5000 less than trade in value. I told him that I couldn’t accept that and I got up to walk away! Mistake #3: I stopped when he said there must be something we can do about this. He then said he needed to get on the horn with Ford and work this out. I then went into the lobby and started watching a movie that was playing. Mistake #4: I stayed until the movie was over and watched half of another one. He then came back in and shook my hand and said we worked it out. Mistake #5: I assumed he meant that ford either knocked the difference of the total amount or they are going to give me more for my truck. Here is where I start to do things right. He asks for my keys to my old truck, I ask what for, He says so they can pull it back inside the lot. I said I am not taking the new truck home today!   He gave me the guilt trip about how he had to beg ford to do it and if he had to call them back they would be upset at him. I said tough. He then said he could wait until tomorrow morning, but that would be pushing ford. Then he proceeded to go through the financing of this truck through ford, and confused the hell out of me. I said give me a copy of everything and let me go through it tonight. For some reason he just had a tough time with this one, but finally he let me have the forms, than he pulled the old, “give me what ever you can to hold it for you!” There were four of them identical to this one on the lot! I said if it sells then I guess it wasn’t meant to be. And I walked away. I never came back!   He called me about a week later and left a message and said he would like to work something out. The kicker was I went through the papers and somehow the price of the truck went up to $37,000 it was at 8% interest for 72 months. The sticker on the truck was 34,000 and with the end of the year incentives it should have been at $27,000 for any idiot of the street let alone my employee discount that should have brought the price down to 24k. I still have the paper work and I still can’t figure out where the price jumped up 13,000 dollars! The up side is I bought a truck from my friend and I left their dealer stickers on it and parked it in the employee parking right next to the manager’s car every day just to prove my point. He gave me the fleet discount and I got a real good deal on my Ranger.

Have a great day!
John

[doechsle]

 It took 2 months for me to get a deal I would accept on my new Truck.The Truck I wanted was a Conversion so it was not like I could just go to another dealer to get a different price quote.I even called the conversion company to find out it was a custom ordered conversion and evedently the person who ordered it could not come up with the financing. But what made it happen was the fact I stayed on the Sales Managers butt about the truck and even went ahead to another dealer and made a good deal on a std that would leave me with enough to customize it myself. I took that to the other dealer and showed it to him and he knew then I was serious enough and he gave me a deal I would accept.If it wasnt such a cool truck I would never had went thru that much trouble though.

[69_500]

Me and my wife had the same sort of scene play out 3 years ago while looking for a truck. I get a green slip price from Dodge, and was looking at a 2500 Ram quad cab, 4X4, with the HEMI. I couldn't spring the extra money to get the cummings I really wanted.
Anyway we had a 2002 Mitsubishi Eclipse with I think 3,000 miles on it, and we owed $5,000 on the car. The truck I was looking at stickered at $30,480. Without any money down we had already figured the payements for 5 years to be around $500 a month. We were planning on putting $3,000 down, and trading in the car, which at the time was going for about $14,000 trade in value. My wife worked at a car lot and we looked up the t rade in amount in their books.
Anyways the discount worked out to be that we could get the truck for $25,980 I   think it was. So we were pretty excited about that, and figured that all in all we would be financing about $20,000 after trading in the Eclipse. Well we hadn't told them we were trading in anything up until then. So then we informed them we wanted to trade the car in towards the truck. They took it for a drive, then came back with some figures on how much the payement would be. First figure he comes back with is $980 a month for 48 months. Now I'm no idiot so I asked him if I looked like I had failed 3rd grade math. Probably not the nicest thing to say, but did he think I just fell off the turnip truck. I asked him if he was thinking he had made a mistake on his figures. He said no. I asked to see his figures and he said "its our policy to not show those."
I stood up ready to leave, and he stopped me. Told me he could work things out. So 20 minutes later he come back with another idiotic amount. $642 a month for 72 months. Once again I asked what figures he was using to come up with that amount. He said 6% interest, with $3,000 down. I then asked what they were giving me on the Eclipse he said $4,000. Now remember this is a car with 3,000 miles on the car, and is only 1 year old. So he was adding $1,000 to the sell price, and he was trying to not honor the green slip I had. So he was charging me $31,480 for the car, and I noticed that the interest rate wasn't 6% but 16%. If my wife hadn't been there at the dealership, I would have reached over that desk and knocked his teeth out. We just got up and walked out. 3 days later he had the nerve to call me at the house and ask if we were going to come back in and go over the numbers again, and maybe get the truck. I just laughed at him, do they really think people are that dumb?

[HAZZARDJOHN]

You brought up another Good tip!

Never Tell them what you owe on your trade. It should make no difference. They aren't going to offer you any more than you owe and I honestly think they purposly offer you 1000 less. If they don't know what you owe they will be forced to guess. They don't want you storming out of there because they offered you too little, but they really want you to be upside down on your loan so that they can finance more from you.   You will probably get a little higher than they would give you if they knew this information. Don't count on it though. The more knowledge they have the easier it is going to be to mislead you!

[69_500]

I always tell them upfront I'm not trading in anything. Or if I do tell them that I'm trading a car in, I don't tell them I owe anything on it, even if I do.

[Old Moparz]

One of the easiest ways to get through all the interest & percentage rate BS with the tag team of salespeople & hidden managers they go visit, is to just have the figures before you go. If you pick an arbitrary price, an interest rate, the term of the loan & the sales tax amount, you can use an on line payment calculator to see what the monthly payment is.

http://autos.yahoo.com/finance/loan-calc/

The truck I bought in July was a leftover '04 in the paper for $23,000 & the sticker was $36,000. Knowing how much I was putting down & how long I wanted to make payments, I calculated the monthly payment. I did it with several interest rates, each 1/4 point apart. I got one from my bank, two on line, & waited to hear what the dealer would offer. He was a point higher than the highest, so I told him I had one a point lower than my lowest & would go there.

They suddenly discovered they could do better than the best they could do, & actually matched the lowest rate I did get. When they calculated the monthly payment, it was a lot higher than the number I had. After discussing it, I saw that they had sales tax added into the figure. Once they deducted that, the price was almost exactly to the penny of what it should've been. I left them $100 deposit with one stipulation that they agreed to, that my wife could physically drive the truck without visibility issues. (She's 5'2" tall, & the seat/windshield postion is a problem.)

No trade in, no extended warranty, no service & towing plans, & nothing extra was added, even though they tried very hard to.   

[andy74]

what you owe and what they are worth are 2 different things,if you own the car free and clear,is it worth 0?sounds like a lot of you guys should fly to syracuse and buy from me,it would be worth the cost of a plane ticket! the horror stories about shitty dealers are always amazing to me,because people always go back for another rim jobbing-why not find someone honest to deal with?

oh,and fuck carmax,any dollar amount they give you on a car is thousands less than a trade should be,unless its junk

[HAZZARDJOHN]

what you owe and what they are worth are 2 different things,if you own the car free and clear,is it worth 0?...

That is not what I meant, I just said that most people go in there hoping that they will give them what they owe. My Car salesman buddy tells me that the guys that figure out how much they are gonna give you on trade, want to know if you owe any thing. If it is lower than the amount they might other wise give you will knock it down a peg because, most people are happy if they just pay off there old loan. I would bet good money if they knew you owed nothing on the car they would lowball you because they figure you won’t care as much as someone who owes say 1,000 more than the offer. My Friend doesn’t get to figure how much he gives you for trade. They have their used car manager do that. He says he loses a ton of deals because of the lowballing that goes on. I am not saying that Car salesman are all bad. He is one of my best friends. I am sure you are a decent car salesmen. But It is a business and it helps to go in there with a strategy ahead of time.

Have a great day!
John

[ChargerBill]

Do you EVER...EVER put any thought into any of your posts?

My guess is "NO"....I think it's all about being heard and getting a high count, because I honestly think 90% of it is just plain nonsense.

[Silver R/T]

opinions are like assholes, and Im not into assholes. Good day

[ChargerBill]

opinions are like assholes, and Im not into assholes. Good day

[moparguy01]

opinions are like assholes, and Im not into assholes. Good day

neither are any of us. keep yours to yourself.

oh yeah. Good day.


sounds like they got worked over real good.

[Ponch ®]

opinions are like assholes, and Im not into assholes. Good day

my opinion is that you are an asshole. Good Day.

[ChargerBill]

UPDATE: I just got off the phone with my sister (my bro-in-law didn't want to talk to me...I think he's really embarassed) and told her that she should try to refinance through her bank credit union. She's going to check it out tomorrow. Shouldn't they be able to finance a new car for 3% to 5%? And I was wondering (just to get some satisfaction) how much $$$ will this screw the dealership and the salesman out of?

BTW: They're both home because he's sick and she is a cosmetologist who sets her own hours. What kills me is that she makes BANK, but it's mostly cash and she blows it as soon as it ends up in her hands.

[Silver R/T]

opinions are like assholes, and Im not into assholes. Good day

my opinion is that you are an asshole. Good Day.

wow we come together on this one...as I think of you the same

[ChargerBill]

Hey, this is MY thread, and if anyone is going to get it locked...it'll be ME. Now shut your trap and just THINK before you speak and we'll all cut you some slack....

[dodgeboy67]

tell her to be thankful she doesnt have 18 or 21 percent interest like me.....DAMN X WIFE