Over the summer, my last sales lady wasn’t bad, but she really didn’t do much. I knew what I wanted and the price I would pay. I had an out-the-door price in mind that I would pay and was sticking to it. She had to keep going back and forth to her bosses to see if they could sell for the price I wanted. After a couple high counter-offers that I flatly refused, they finally came out and met with me in person. They eventually met my price and there was just a bit of paperwork after that. I will say the paperwork is smoother than it was 15 years ago.
My experience at CarMax:
- Find exact car I wanted online (2006 Dodge Charger, Daytona edition)
- Fill out online request form expressing interest.
- Get call within 1/2 hour from CarMax.
- Give my credit card number authorizing shipping of car from another location.
- Show up on site with funding secured, test drive car, drive away within 20 minutes (including having the car washed).
Highly recommend CarMax to anybody.
That’s bullshit. It’s the oldest ploy in the book, designed to get you thinking that the salesperson is on your side and that you together are a team, competing against a hostile “other” to get a better price: and if she falls short, well, you both tried your best against an indifferent arbiter, and now you have a kinship, a bond forged in adversity. You feel obligated to buy after she’s done all that “work” for you.
She could have signed off on any price she wanted right there and then: next time tell her that you will walk out the door unless she personally comes up with a price acceptable to you in the next thirty seconds, and that if she has to “run it past her sales manager” you’re obviously dealing with the wrong person and will walk.
Me too, and I found the perfect way to go. My vehicle is co-owned by my business and me. My office manager gets a percentage (as a bonus) at the end of the year. I let her buy the car! Two years ago I traded in my 00 Jeep Wrangler on a new Jeep Wrangler. She phone shopped local dealers. She found what I wanted and had the salesman drive it over (maybe 9 mile drive).
I went outside between appointments, looked at it, and told her it was fine. She haggled and got a better deal than I ever could. The salesman drove my trade back. Sometimes life is good! 
I have yet to see a CarMax car that wasn’t at least $500 over the price of other similar cars in the region. I’d only consider CarMax if I didn’t have a decent mechanic available to pre check a used car for me.
I see what you mean, I could see there was a runaround going on. Either way I got the price I wanted, so all’s well.
Never buy a car from a Toyota dealer. You will be ripped off. Nice cars, worst sales on the planet.
They have “brokers” who will procure the car for you, and it’s often cheaper.
Saturn dealers are no-pressure.
My local Volvo dealer was very low pressure.
New cars are now often a better deal than used. You can get 0% and/or a rebate on new, and the interest on a used is much higher.
Those are good point, Dr Deth–I’ll keep them in mind. I’m ignoring the whole thing and hoping it will go away, frankly. Not the most mature approach, but it’s working for me now…
Our experience with Toyota was actually pretty good (granted, we did skip the whole browsing and haggling stages). They were kind, never tried to upsell us on anything, let us drive the car off the lot even though financing didn’t go through that day (it was a Saturday), and the finance guy got us down to a 7.8% financing, from the 18% he was quoting us at first (note: we have noooo credit history). Even though he’d had to add on more than we’d agreed to because it was our first new car, our payments wound up significantly lower than they originally were, on what was a guaranteed sale.
Cat Shakespeare: Evolve, Dammit!
Like, grow prehensile thumbs or something, so you can write plays and not just dictate them in kitty-language, mroow prrrr brrbl breeeow?
It’s been a long day.
Our last car buying experience was a little different. The sales droid was a great guy - no pressure, answered all our questions, put us in the car we wanted. Then they did something new - turned us over to the finance department to do the actual paperwork. That’s where the high-pressure fun began. All the upselling was for warranties, additional insurance, extra maintenance contracts, etc. I’m an accountant of many years who worked in insurance for while, so I had about an hour of fun re-crunching their numbers and countering scare tactics before they called in the manager to try and conter my counters. After a while of that my husband got fed up and said screw it, we didn’t want the car that badly. Then they finally, grudgingly let us actually sign the papers and take our vehicle. Our sales rep was pretty unhappy - apparently this was a new company policy and the reps were losing sales. He’d been great, we’d had good experiences at this place before, and the finance weasels afforded me some amusement or we would have dropped the deal. As it is, we probably won’t go back and we made sure they knew why.
I can has Yorick? 
But why? They have a game to play, you know what you will pay … let them make their moves.
Let them play it with someone else. I want to give them money. The least they could do is graciously take it.
As long as I’m here, I’ll add my two cents to this whole thing – I cannot stand buying a new car because it’s about the only place where (in most cases, not including Saturn, for instance) not only is the price negotiable, it’s a different negotiation for each person.
If I go to Sears and want to buy a refrigerator, this model costs $999. It costs me $999, and it will cost YOU $999. If I go to buy a car, it might cost me $25,000, and that exact same car might cost you either $24,000, $26,000, or some other arbitrary number. WHY? Just makes no sense. I expect you to make money on the sale, so you can stay in business, just like I expect Sears to stay in business so they can sell me the next fridge. Why is this so difficult to accomplish?
And BTW, j666, this isn’t a beef with you. Your post just got me to stop shutting up 
THE SAGA HATH COME TO AN END!
We are now the proud owners of a zippy little Suzuki hatchback (32 mpg!) I got it down to two 'zuki dealers and the first one reptiled out: they fucked around with my trade-in value a hundred dollars at a time when I had made it clear what my bottom line was and then they chased me out into the parking lot to argue more. By the time I returned home they had left a message agreeing to my trade-in price, but it was too late.
Second guy was calm, no-pressure, pumped up my trade-in value a few hundred, etc. We ended up buying a slightly more expensive car from him.
Now, if my X-terra will just last another four years we won’t have to do this again soon.
WAHOO! Jenn
Another nice evolving that is happening for some is the use of web pages to show what cars they have. I was looking for a very specific used car and was trying to use the web pages for local (within 100 miles) Subaru dealer. Bozeman kept up their page. Missoula kept up their page. My local dealership updated their page EVERY THREE MONTHS! And the Butte dealer? No used car web page at all. They told me I should call and ask them every day if they had that car in stock or drive down and take a look (120 miles round-trip) They wouldn’t even agree to take my name and call me if one came in.
I bought the car from a small independent dealer in Missoula who updated their page whenever their inventory changes.
There are more and more people like me who turn to the web as their first source of information. If you don’t have a web presence and your competitor does, I won’t be your customer.
Not necessarily, a lot of people don’t know it, but appliance prices are negotiable too. Talk to a salesman or have him talk to his boss.
Huh- our Toyota guy was great- of course, we only use the fleet manager, not the schlubs on the lot. I was pleasantly surprised that Toyota is hurting so badly that they are actually offering low financing and cash back- years ago, when my husband’s family was buying a dozen or so Toyotas, they never needed incentives like that.
We took the 0% financing and $1000 cash, but were thinking of just taking the $5400 cash back with 5.9% or less. Frankly, it was close to equal, especially since we don’t plan on making payments for the full 60 months.
Because it’s 25 times as worth it for people to bargain on a $25K purchase as a $1000 purchase. You could probably bargain for that refrigerator if sales were slow. But is it worth a few hours of your time to knock $50 off the price? It sure is to the salesman, since he knows what things are worth, and how sales are doing. And if there are plenty of customers, he can just refuse to budge.
You can, of course, go to the places that have “no haggle” policies. But I’d rather not. I figure their profit margins are about the same as the other place, and I’d rather take a shot at getting a good deal for myself.
My Saturn dealer was great, I went in, told them what I was looking for (small vehicle with good fuel mileage, reliable, and most importantly a MANUAL transmission, do not waste my time showing me sludgeboxes), the salesman checked his inventory, excused himself, and left his desk, a few minutes later, walking back in the front door, asking me to come outside
there sat an '07 Saturn Ion Level 2, manual transmission, antilock brakes, front and side airbags, we took it for a test drive, and I liked the way it performed (I had rented a sludgebox Ion a while back and was not impressed with it’s lack of performance), we came back in, ran the numbers, but I told him I needed to sleep on the decision and I’d call him the next day with an answer
the numbers looked good, so the next day, I called them to confirm that I’d take it, went in to do the paperwork, and when I got there, found that the agreed-upon monthly payments were not what I had agreed to…
they were a dollar less per month than I was quoted, and 0% interest, so I took delivery of the car
the salesperson was great, but the finance guy tried pushing warranties and add ons, I told him point-blank that all I wanted was the car, and if he insisted on pushing warranties he’d lose the sale, he backed off, and I was back on the road in twenty minutes in my new car