I'm in the process of buying my next family vehicle (No, a sidecar doesn't qualify as a family vehicle. Yes, I tried.) since the lease on my current rig is up in a couple of months. I started my shopping early because I wanted a couple of months to really research the purchase and potentially have a car built to my specs. Part of this process had me at two local car dealers, where the act of trying to get educated about models invariably leads to the salesman hounding one with,
"What do I have to do to sell you a car today?!"
The fact is, I'm not really looking to buy a car today. I know it's the end of the month and the end of the year, and the dealers are motivated to move inventory. If I had sense a spectacular deal, I would have bought a car right now. But there weren't spectacular deals. I wound up wasting hours at one dealership haggling about prices that were inflated by thousands. Even when you start with a vehicle's invoice price, there are so many factory holdbacks, wholesale financial reserves, and other ways of hiding money that it's near impossible to tell what a good deal looks like while you're sitting at the dealership.
One would think that the advent of the Internet would have changed how cars are priced and sold. It has, in some ways, as more aspects (like invoices) are available and customers can exchange information about what they paid. But it seems like every bit of transparency that the Internet enables is accompanied by more deceptive pricing practices, leaving us to haggle at dealerships exactly the way people did 50 years ago. It's positively infuriating, and I've decided that I'll refuse to play that game.
There are services that people can pay for that will find a specific model of car at the best possible price by leveraging established relationships with networks of dealerships. They usually engage directly with fleet or internet sales managers, and operate by faxing or emailing a vehicle specification out and soliciting the lowest offer from all dealerships within a given distance. My friends who have used these services report good success; they wind up saving thousands of dollars on the vehicle purchase by letting dealers compete for their business and by getting access to fleet sales managers who typically have better pricing abilities due to their volume. Even in these cases, though, there's money changing hands that needn't:
- Customers are paying the locator/bidding service for pretty mechanical work, and
- The dealerships pay a "finder's fee" to the service for bringing the buyer to the dealership
Both of those costs should be saved off the purchase of the new vehicle, so I decided to put this year's purchase of a new 2010 vehicle out for bid. I basically did the same thing the services do: I found the fleet sales manager or an Internet sales rep at dealers for the make of vehicle that I want, and offered them 72 hours to submit a bid. I included most dealers in WA, a few in the Portland OR area, and one in western ID (I bought a car in ID in the late 90s and saved a bundle).
Via emails and faxes, I gave each dealership the exact specifications of what I want built, details about how I'm paying for it, and a clear message that I want email bids back - no offers of close-match existing inventory. The results were kind of interesting, so I figured I'd share a summary:
The best deal that I was able to work out while sitting with a salesperson at one of my nearby dealerships was the same as the highest bid, so by spending an hour collecting contact info online and blasting out bid requests, I've saved myself over $3500. The low bid is significantly under invoice and the salesman was transparent about the factory holdback and wholesale financial reserve. As promised, I've called the low bidding dealership contact to put a deposit on a new build order and my new vehicle should arrive in about 8-10 weeks.
I'm intentionally omitting specific bid amounts and dealership names, because I promised to not "shop" bids. To shop bids is to get a low figure in, and then go back to other bidders with one more opportunity to beat it. That's not a good business practice because it's unfair to the dealership that played by the rules and got their low bid in on time. Those 8 contacts above listed as "I won't lose this deal over a few hundred dollars," had each specifically asked that I contact them at the end of the process and give them a chance to beat the best deal. I won't do it. They had their chance, and they didn't come in low.
I will, however, name the winning dealership and shower some internet praise on them when the new car arrives if it goes smoothly. If they deliver the car as specified, for the price they quoted, they deserver referral business. They'll get plenty from me. More on that in late February or early March when the new rig arrives.
Until then, here are a few choice quotes from some of the responding salespeople...
"...we have no interest in selling a vehicle for under dealer invoice."
Fortunately, several other dealerships were interested in doing just that.
"they will build it when they have enough odd ball orders to shut down the line for them."
Note: having my specifications, straight from the brochure, called "odd ball" did not entice me to buy from this dealer. Plus, they were one of the highest bids.
"I apologize my manager couldn't find the other half to the email"
And I'm supposed to trust them to order a specific vehicle and monitor its assembly and delivery to me?
"We decline due to availability."
It's a build order. But okay, you can avoid any sales you want to avoid.
"Hey Jeff I know I emailed and said that we won't participate because we don't sell cars under invoice, and I know your email said you don't want any different colors or dealer demos, but I have a truck on the lot that has the same exterior color but a different interior color and it has 1200 miles on it because we've used it as a dealer demo so I can get you in this truck today if you want. Call me right away please!"
Fortunately, for each of these dealerships there was one or more that responded quickly and efficiently with a very competitive price. Once we're close to delivery, I'll share the dealership that earned the business.
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