AIUI, the more you finance, the better the rate they’ll offer you. So, there must be incentive for them to get you to use the dealer finacing.
I suspect it has to do with your credit score.
We had a recent thread about basically this sort of price padding via fees:
My WAG is that it depends on whether the salesman feels like going for a ride or has other things he has to do.
We hadn’t reached that stage yet. I spoke to all 3 briefly about the car then asked to take a test drive.
That’s my experience overall aside from those 3 examples. About 1/3 of the time they’ll just hand you the keys and the rest of the time they want to come along.
Interesting.
My understanding (which may not be correct!) is that once the new model year cars are coming out, you may do better on the old model year. Our 1998 Civic, bought in December 1998 when the 1999s were out , for example.
Funnily enough, with no planning whatsoever (each was a matter of replacing a terminally ill predecessor), our last 3 car purchases have always been late in the model year (Dec, Oct, Nov). And each one has been white - while we see a lot of those on the road, either they don’t actually sell well, or the manufacturers just overproduce that color, but that time of year, that’s been all they have left.
Resort fees are common in the hotel business. I suspect the idea started at actual resort hotels but many non-resorts charge such fees, or they may call it something else. I stayed at a hotel in downtown Los Angeles that charged a destination fee credited against whatever you spent at the restaurants in the hotel. (I was traveling on business, so I really didn’t care about the fee.)
That is true, but right before Christmas is not a good time, Right after is good.
I think that is generally true, but the one new car I bought at a dealership was a big exception. I was looking for a VW GTI. The 2002s were out, and they had more power and the sticker price was less than the 2001s.
Went to one dealership that (I didn’t know it at the time) only had a single GTI, which was a 2001 VR6. They refused to adjust the price even though the 2002s were cheaper, because “it was the only one they had.” “You know there are other VW dealerships, right?” Anyway, didn’t buy from them.
Finally buying the car was also the normal dealership games. The salesman and I negotiated an out the door price that was acceptable to me, so I go back to financing, and they take the negotiated price and add a bunch of fees on top. The conversation went something like:
Me: that was the out the door price
Finance: we never negotiate the out the door price, it was the base price
Me: it says “OTD” right there on the salesman’s notes where he circled the price
Finance: that doesn’t mean “out the door”
Me: [getting up to leave] sorry to waste your time
Finance: wait, we can make it work
“Okay, but I am going “OTD”- bye!” 
I think your only mistake was apologizing for wasting their time. It was really your time that was being wasted.
They install that TruCoat right at the factory.
It’s pronounced “sorry” but is spelled f-u. I don’t know I’m cool enough to pull of making the meaning known, but that was certainly my intent.
Good point!
That Civic was bought in the week between Christmas and NY. “They say” that this can be a good time to buy, also, as the dealers want to close deals during that month / year. No clue whether that is true or not.
As I said, my wife at 19 went to the Acura dealer, they photocopied he license and gave her the keys to a shiny new RX and said to take for a test drive for the day.
So, who knows? I guess it depends on what sort of clientel usually wander in the door.
They can try to nickel-and-dime (and higher) with other fees, but to me, the advertised price is the advertised price.
This episode is a bit dated, but it’s not only incredibly entertaining, but pretty informative of how things used to work (and probably still do to some extent):
I did exactly this when I bought a new Toyota 4Runner years ago. But when I went to sign the purchase order, I saw that the salesman had tacked on a documentation fee and some other B.S. dealer fees. I had read up this before walking in the door in Consumer Reports, Edmunds.com, and cars.com, so I knew that these were pure dealer profit. They were also being added to my “out the door” price. I told the salesman I wasn’t paying them. “Everyone pays these at our dealership,” he told me. “Not me,” I told him, adding the if this was indeed the case then he should have included them in the “out the door” price we had agreed on.
He then told me that in all his time at the dealership, nobody had ever not paid these fees when buying a car. “Then I will be the first,” I replied. I made it clear that I was going to walk if they take them off the purchase agreement, which I was fully prepared to do. They then caved and took them off the purchase order.
I had also already secured my own financing from my credit union and refused to talk trade-in until we agreed on the purchase price of the new vehicle. After we had agreed on the purchase price of the new vehicle, I circled back to trading in my old vehicle. He was very frank. He said they couldn’t offer much because I had gotten such a good deal on the new vehicle. I asked them to give my an offer anyway, and it was a ridiculous lowball offer. So I sold it myself later for three times what the dealer had offered.
When I bought my current car fourteen years ago, I said I was going to come back with a bank check, so they needed to give me a real out-the-door total. (They wouldn’t let me charge the whole $21,000 on a credit card, though.) They did try adding the cost of the wheel locks and the car door edge guards after we had negotiated a price. I countered that my offer was on the car as shown, which included both of those, so they dropped the demand. (As it was, I used that dealership for regular maintenance for years, so they did make some money off me.)
When I bought my Accent the used car dealership told us up front they did not haggle; the price was the price, though they did try to talk me into rustproofing. I paid the price plus sales tax, title, etc. It was very painless. Plus I appreciated that the salesman talked to me and not dad (my ride there since my car was not trustworthy to make it there more than once).
With my Juke it was the height of Covid, and we got told they couldn’t afford to haggle since their inventory was so low. I’m not sure I believed that but Carfax said the price was a good deal.
It was probably mostly true. Because of the lockdowns in Asia, there was a huge microchip shortage so new cars weren’t getting completed leading to people depleting stock of used cars. There were stories of large parking lots full of new cars being stored, waiting on chips before they could be completed and taken to dealerships. I don’t know if the used market has completely recovered yet.
All that said, it doesn’t mean they didn’t leverage the real life situation for a few extra bucks on top like companies taking advantage of 50% higher shipping costs to goose the shipping percentage by 65% and blaming it on Covid.
I had to buy a used car last month~it hasn’t recovered. There aren’t many choices out there, the prices are still high and the sellers know they don’t have to bargain with you. My Civic was valued at several thousand more than I paid for it from a dealer 5 years ago. Even that was nowhere near enough to buy a comparable car in today’s market. Had to settle for an older car with lots more miles on it and had very few choices within a hundred miles.