It’s been a few years since I’ve gone new car shopping. While we don’t need to get one now, the oldest of the 2 cars my family has is getting (and acting) like it’s thinking about retiring soon.
So, wifey and I went out to look at cars. Test drove many of them, and picked which one we think we want…
So…
Things have changed…again.
ALL the car dealerships now have a ‘no haggle policy’.
The problem?
THEIR PRICES ARE TOO DAMNED HIGH! They are very close to MSRP. And when they say no haggle, they seem to mean it.
For example, they want $21,900 no haggle for a car. Edmunds says $17,800. I suspect that one needs to go the internet route in order to get close to the Edmunds price (and Edmunds has done good by me several times so far).
Has anyone done any new car haggling recently? What’s the Dope?
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As a side note - WTH?! The car dealers never seemed to have any cars! Last weekend we went to 2 Toyota dealers and they didn’t have a SINGLE FREAKIN MAtrix on the lot (my wife wanted to check them out). This was not unusual in our car search as they seemed to have only 1 or 2 vehicles on the lot of the type we were interested in.
Over half of every new car lot seemed to be used cars. Are new car lots dying? Is the Internet killing them off (and, if so, where do I go?)
Have you ordered a car report from Consumer Reports? That has the manufacturer’s cost and what you can expect to pay. Lists all the options too.
My mom just bought a new Toyota three weeks ago. She got it from a dealer about 200 miles away. They offered the best price and it was worth the drive to pick it up.
I just bought a new Prius a few weeks ago and based on Edmunds and a few other sites. I arrived at what I was willing to pay and pretty much told them that. They agreed in the end. I got about $1300 off of what they were listing.
I’d stick with the Edmunds price as being what you really should pay.
If they really are ‘no haggle’ on that price then demand must really be high for that vehicle for them to feel they can hang on to it until someone pays that.
I’d look at other dealers.
It’s been at several dealerships. I will try to haggle and they will be firm. They are no haggle.
However, I haven’t REALLY tried to haggle yet letting them know I will buy right now at x price. I also suspect that if I approach them through the Internet they may haggle.
Just not sure and would like to know what others have experienced recently.
Well they did here in Jersey at least. They had the Prius I wanted with a few extras. I wanted the car pretty fast and I got it pretty fast. The Prius fit me better then the other high gas mileage cars and the Insight drove like crap and was only about $2,000 less. I figured over just 100,000 miles the Prius would make up the price difference in gas and I ran my Ford Focus to 160,000.
It seems to vary around here by city. Charlottesville VA seems to be no-haggle and poor customer service. Like they’re doing you a favor to talk to you. However I’ve successfully haggled at 2 Midlothian VA dealerships. Richmond is somewhere in between.
The only thing I can think of is demand for that particular vehicle must be really high and supply really short. If they can move through their inventory quickly at their ‘no haggle’ prices more power to them.
I bought a Toyota FJ at the end of February and while they seemed to be in short supply there must not have been that great a demand for them. I got it at the edmunds price - auto show discount and they didn’t charge me for a couple add-ons (bug deflector & running boards).
I didn’t really have to haggle much either. I printed out the edmunds pages before hand and slid them accross the table and said I thought that was a fair price. He ran it past his manager and they pretty much said ‘OK’ to a really quick sale.
