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Smart Shopper Purchasing Strategies - Questions & Success Stories
3884 messages, Last post on Apr 08, 2009 at 1:08 PM
You are in the Smart Shopper Forum. Your Hosts are kirstie_h & tidester
| Yeah, you have to set your budget first and then only look at cars that fall within it. Otherwise you're just teasing yourself. | |
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Replying to: bobst (Feb 17, 2005 12:31 pm) If you already have a number, why waste your own time. |
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| Maybe if you bought the car you really wanted you wouldn't need to get rid of it after only three years. | |
| I thought about it, and decided to hold out for the car I want. I really want the subaru legacy GT ltd; the mazda 6 would not satisfy me in the long run. If I can not afford the car I want, I will stick with the camry. Note that, when I bought the camry, it met my needs, but not my wants. However, money was really tight then and the car was cheap. | |
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1. Get your own low rate financing before you go shopping. 2. Test driver until you find what you want. 3. Get educated on the cost of what you want via sites like this. 4. Solicit bids via email or dealer websites for ITEMIZED out the door prices. 5. If you have trade get educated on that too. 6. Go to your dealer of choice, bring a printout of your lowest bid, and work it out. That is basically how we did it. We got a bad deal on our trade - but the best deal out there on it. We got a better rater from the dealer (by about 2% - they like a challenge), we got the best deal on our Honda Pilot. Based on time invested pre-dealer visit. We were in and out in under 2 hours. And it was without a doubt the best deal we ever got.
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Replying to: chuminthewater (Feb 20, 2005 1:32 pm)
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| is a waste of time, especially if you're trying to field blast faxes and e-mails to several dealers. | |
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Is it reasonable for an internet buyer to ask for an OTD price? For example, if I send out an Email specifying the exact kind of car I want and the exact options I want, is it reasonable to ask the dealer for an OTD price?
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in fact, in ANY conversation, you would want to compare OTD price, especially if you're shopping several dealers - getting down to the penny lets you know if one store has a higher doc fee or admin fee, in a way, letting you know what kind of store you're dealing with and preventing a runaround situation. A common trick with unscrupulous internet-savvy stores, like one in Hickory, NC, where I talked with a guy before buying my wife's new truck, is to shoot you an incredibly low price, then hit you on the backend with another $600-800 in fees, and of course, kill you on your trade. I was locked into buying a Dodge Ram 4x4 from them, and after a week of contact and MUCH communication, finally found out they were planning to add a $500 fee after giving me my price. Also, the guy made a second run at me on my trade, dropping $1500 from their initial offer..hmmm... |
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Replying to: driftracer (Feb 20, 2005 3:00 pm) maybe I'm the exception, but this week I emailed 14 different Honda dealers within a 25mile radius of my house asking for pricing on the EX-L v6 w/ nav and a few dealer installed things.....10 of them got back to me. After some back and forth with each to make sure we were all talking the same language/specifics, I got down to OTD prices based on MD T&T and found a range from $27,772 - $29,720. This afternoon I dropped by the Honda dealer closest to me (who I hadn't emailed) to check out color combos and give them the oppty to match my lowest price.....as it turned out, they had my number 1 choice in color and they beat my low price by another $72 for good measure. If I'm doing my math correctly to back into the "purchase price", email blasting got me ~$580 under invoice on a car that seems hard to come by in this area. Total email time was ~4hrs done at my convenience over a few days and total time spent in the dealer was ~2 and that included 20min test drive of the vehicle I was buying and getting good price on my trade. Based on my experience - the next time I'm buying a car, once I know which one I want, there is no reason to shop any other way. Rich
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