The difference is that the car is a tangible object that will be the same whatever price you pay. If you screw the price down on a new roof, the roofer will find ways to cut costs. This will probably result in an inferior roof and end up costing you more in the long run.
Most no-haggle dealers have abandoned that policy. The problem is that you can get their price, and take it to a haggle dealer, and have them beat it. Since the haggle dealer has covered its fixed costs with sales where customers overpayed, it will always be worth it for a haggle dealer to undercut this way.
The Scion nameplate had the system I liked best. Toyota required each dealer to sell to all comers at the same price. However, dealers could compete with each other by offering limited time discounts, just like in normal U.S. retail.
I’ve read that the manufacturers do not like the haggling, because it leads to customer complaints.
I once bought a car from a dealer with a minimum haggle policy. The price they quoted up front, with no games yet, was thousands less than every other dealer tried. They would then go though the usual game but for lower stakes.
You can haggle on lots of big ticket items, like appliances, sporting goods (canoes, kayaks, skis), electronics, rugs. You just have to find the right people to negotiate with.
They’re looking at it like this - if they control the retail sale, the trade-in value, AND the financing section, they can make the first two slightly cheaper, and plan to make that money back in the financing.
Look at it this way- you have 3 inputs into the price of your car- the sale price(-), the trade-in value(+), and the cost to borrow the money to pay the sales price(-). They can make the sales price a bit lower, and the trade in value a bit higher, with the expectation that they’ll give you worse loan terms, and make more money on you in the long haul that way, than if they charged you more for the sale price and gave you less for the trade-in.
Also, by having it geared toward spur-of-the-moment buying, they tend to push people toward taking their financing options, as they often haven’t done the homework for the best loan, or even know they can shop around after the fact sometimes. They just see a great deal and swallow the financing hook when they bite.
I’ve mentioned this before, but here it is again: Talking to the sales manager is usually not a hustle. I sold RVs. Not many people try to haggle over an RV price for some reason, but whenever I got someone who made an offer, I had no choice but to go to the sales manager, as he was the only person on the sales staff who had access to all the numbers and who could agree on a negotiated price. It’s not just the sticker price; it’s also how long the vehicle has been sitting on the lot and other factors that are figured in to arrive at the bottom line and still make a profit.
As for the OP, I don’t like no-haggle dealers. They are not in the business of giving you the best deal. Their ads make it sound like they’re doing you a favor. They’re not. I’ve negotiated for every vehicle I’ve ever purchased and done well for myself.
Yes. That’s what they want–for you to be a sucker.
I thought this thread was about no-haggling dealers and by extension, how not to get ripped off by all the fancy salesperson BS.
I am saying that one should NEVER let the salespeople talk about financing and trade-in value when you are discussing the car price. Never. Never ever.
If you want to use ripoff dealership financing that’s your right but you will lose money. No matter what, you must divorce the car price from ANY talk about financing or trade-in value.
Don’t LET them push you toward their financing options. Ever.
Maybe I don’t understand the point of this thread?? You haggle over car price. The other stuff should always be separate.
If one goes to a “no-haggle” dealership where the car price is totally fair and with no haggling needed BUT they rip you off on financing then what’s the point? You’ve just haggled, essentially, and did so very poorly.
To relate this to the question in the OP: “No-haggle dealerships? Good or bad?”
I say: good–if there is truly no haggling and the price is a fair one. But, very bad if the price is fair but they haggle with you over rip-off financing or rip-off trade-in value.
Aren’t I just saying what anyone should already know about buying a car?
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Why would you ever do this? We could talk about that but wouldn’t that be a different thread? Wouldn’t this thread be of interest to people who already understand that you never use dealer financing?
That’s what I was responding to. I guess I didn’t understand how one can talk about “no-haggle dealerships” if they don’t understand that accepting rip-off dealer financing is haggling and very bad haggling at that. I guess I thought that would be already known and assumed to be the case by those participating.
I know everybody is different, but the last set of big ticket items I bought (a computer and a fridge) were bought online and delivered to me. No haggling at all. I can’t recall making a purchase of $1,000 in person but if I did, it would probably be something without haggling as well.
I can’t drive, but if I wanted to buy a new car I would definitely try to find a no-haggle place. I don’t know if no-haggle places exist for new cars though. I think the issue with cars is the expense: they’re so expensive (especially if new) that the majority of cars are purchased using financing, and the dealerships want some sweet interest. Houses are sort of the same: there’s no standard interest rate, and there’s no Blue Book equivalent.
Don’t underestimate how uninformed many people are. Even if people detest haggling, they may or many not understand that the “convenient” financing that a dealer offers may be a bad deal.
This is one of those things I have a hard time understanding about people. How can you make such a major purchase without at least a bit of research? I did use dealer financing once, but that was because it was a 24-month 0.9% promotional rate from the manufacturer. The dealer tried to upsell me to a longer loan with a higher rate “the payments will be very high, and only the best credit scores qualify,” but when I insisted the didn’t make any more fuss over it.
Next car I bought was no haggle. I clicked on some stuff on my phone and made a deposit. Two years later I clicked on some more stuff and ordered the car for a fixed, no-haggle price. Two months later I got an email saying it was ready, clicked a bit to ACH over some money, and then I went to pick it up.
Whether the price was fair or a ripoff is going to depend entirely on your opinion of the car, as that was the only way the manufacturer sells them.
Never make absolute statements. 
I do agree that you negotiate the price separately from any other issues, but it’s not always true that dealer financing is a ripoff. (I also agree that you should never even mention a trade-in until you have set the price on the car.)
I was shopping for a specific car model in 2015. I found one at a dealer in my area. I researched the pricing (Edmunds, Kelley, etc.), and I got pre-approved by my bank for financing for 4 years at 2.00%. I went into the dealer on New Year’s Day 2016 and made what I thought was a low but realistic offer. They said they would accept my offer if they could do the financing. I showed them the letter from my bank showing the financing terms. They came back with 4 years at 1.99%. Why would I not do that?
I ended up feeling very satisfied with the deal I got. Could I have negotiated harder and saved more? In hindsight, maybe, but based on all the information I had, I was getting a good deal. The dealership probably felt they were getting a good deal and also selling a car that had been on the lot at least a year. Isn’t that the definition of a successful negotiation, if both sides feel they did well?
If you had a no-haggle price, and a separate discussion about financing, trade-in, etc., you could have saved yourself the hassle, the week of work, the anxiety. Everything else in our capitalist society is pretty much no-haggle: the price is the price, and you’re wasting your time trying to get the salesman to move off his price. The way for companies to get an edge on competitors is traditionally to provide more convenient locations, a better shopping experience, but mostly more competitive prices. Why are car dealers the exceptions?
Because what they sell is much more expensive than nearly everything else we buy, except for houses, and we haggle for those too.
True, but:
My house sells for more than 10X what my car sells for, and my car sells for a few multiples (fewer than 10) more than anything else I own, so we can examine what no-haggle dealerships can do for us. Home ownership is completely different, not only because of the huge purchase price but mainly because of the wide number of potential sellers, usually hundreds in your area at any given time. Seems to me dealerships thrive on a few bad hagglers, and break even on the good hagglers, which is a business model that no other business I know of uses. Homes are inherently non-comparable in that each home is different, and differnt homes are worth more to different buyers, while cars are all the same (assuming same model, year, extras)–it’s pretty clear-cut what you’re getting for your bucks, and the price difference is mainly in your negotiating skills, your willingness to play chicken, your available time to dicker etc.
Both in Japan and Taiwan the amount of negotiable is minimal. They have a set price and you can get a minimal discount if you try hard, but it’s not much.
Car buying is still unpleasant, but less so in the days of readily available info on new car and trade-in prices online. Before that you were really flying blind.
The last few times I’ve gone in with a single offer in mind (new car minus trade value) and if there’s no reasonable comeback I walk. I’m not sure how much better a no-haggle experience could be, assuming someone’s found a consistent way to price trade-ins.
It’d be nice (sort of) if negotiating was more accepted with purchase of other items, but the culture hasn’t caught up to the idea yet. Used furniture, garage sales, it’s expected, but otherwise? I still carry scars 
from the experience of trying to haggle at the going out of business sale of a national chain (made an offer on a potted fruit tree), only to have the saleswoman act as though I’d insulted her mother.
Yeah, that the fun of flea markets, the haggling. Though a friend of mine makes a few hundred bucks every weekend selling stuff he buys (for pennies, with coupons) for dollars, and he refuses to haggle, though he’s selling stuff (toothpaste, deodorant, etc.) that he’d make a profit on if he sold it for one-tenth his price. He gets pissed off when someone offers him 3 bucks for an item he’s priced at 3-for-10.
I don’t know of any buying experience that’s even close to car-buying for unpleasantness. Even buying a house at 10x the price, you know it’s an investment that will most likely hold its value over time, where with a car you know you’re losing money from the jump.
The no-haggle price probably would have been higher than what I offered (which was at least $5K below MSRP and a hair above dealer invoice, I don’t have a record of the details), the discussion about financing was separate, I spent about an hour preparing, I had no anxiety whatsoever.
Dealers that offer no-haggle pricing are not doing it out of altruism to give you the best price. It’s good for their bottom line or they wouldn’t do it.
Dealers that offer haggle pricing are not doing it out of altruism to give you the best price. It’s good for their bottom line or they wouldn’t do it.
I don’t know that this is a hard and fast rule. I had gone to my bank ahead of time to get pre-approved for a car loan. Then when I went and picked out my car (I probably didn’t get as good a rate as I could have, as I suck at haggling), they offered me a loan that was slightly lower interest. I think 2.75 vs 2.5. I went ahead and went with that, as it was already there, and it was lower.
Depends on why it is good for their bottom line. Is it because they are charging you more, or is it because they have less overhead in not having a bunch of sales people around to haggle prices with?