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Prices Paid: Buying & Leasing Experiences Nissan Altima Hybrid Prices Paid and Buying Experience
447 messages, Last post on Nov 25, 2009 at 7:44 PM
You are in the Prices Paid: Buying & Leasing Experiences Forum. Your Hosts are car_man & kyfdx
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Replying to: divewreck (Nov 28, 2007 1:32 pm) At the time we bought the car, you couldn't find them for any price and people in this area were paying as much as 3K over MSRP to get them at other dealerships. It seems like everyone is calming down now, and people are getting some pretty good deals, especially when you consider that gasoline is headed full-tilt to $4.00 a gallon soon. We have no regrets, though. The car is a fine car, and in the land where Priuses travel in packs (San Francisco area) it's nice to have a hybrid that's NOT a Prius (at least on the outside). The car is comfortable, has enough buttons and knobs to sate the techo-geek in me, performs well, and looks good (and I don't feel like a total tree-hugging, tofu slurping, hemp-clothed geek when I drive it.) My wife DID try to sneak a "Hillary 08" sticker onto the bumper, to complete the package, but I replaced it with a National Rifle Association "They'll get my gun when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers" stickr and a Nader 08 sticker under that. Neither currently visible sticker reflects my politics particularly; I just like to give people something to ponder when they're behind us in traffic. I'm expecting new stickers to appear very soon....
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Replying to: hiwayman (Nov 29, 2007 3:10 pm)
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Replying to: langjie (Nov 30, 2007 6:34 am) Each company is a bit different in the way they handle this. Some companies, like Isuzu, for instance, have a set up where the factory owns the vehicle until it's sold. Their dealerships aren't as motivated to move cars and you may not get as good a deal. For dealerships that have to buy their inventory from the factory, the motivations to move hardware are much higher. But then, like I said, there's all kinds of incentive shenanigans going on in the background that put buyers at a disadvantage in the negotiations, without them every realizing it. Next time a dealer puts "their invoice" under your nose, just smile and say, "OK, now let's talk REAL money." 
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Replying to: hiwayman (Nov 30, 2007 8:56 am) but anyways, i understand all of that. for nissan's, there is a 3% holdback so the actual cost for your 30000 invoice car is actually 29100. you can't factor in how much the dealer is making from incentives and stuff, they need to make their money somehow. but i think that paying that close to invoice on a car that is pretty hard to find isn't that bad. it's not about how low you can get the numbers, but more like not getting ripped off.
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Replying to: langjie (Nov 30, 2007 2:19 pm) For instance, one way to sweeten the deal is to take financing from the dealer, even if it's higher than what you can get at your bank or credit union. The dealer always gets a cut of the action (a point or two, which is significant on a 30K car) on the loan. Just make sure there's no pre-payment penalty. Then go to your own lender for the better deal, and pay off the dealer's loan. |
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Replying to: emgr (Nov 28, 2007 12:33 pm)  yahoo.com. Thanks. Chris
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Replying to: malttese33 (Dec 05, 2007 8:37 pm) Jack |
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Thanks everyone for sharing your buying experience (and EMGR for providing me with his salesperson and dealership but unfortunately I could not put it to good use, see below). I have done a lot of studying the past month or so on the Nissan hybrid. Lots of people have suggested that I consider a Toyota or a Honda but because of the Federal tax credit of $2350 and styling preference, I've had my mind set on a Nissan for the longest time. Earlier in the week I had sent out quote requests to numerous local NY dealers as well MA dealers. One stood out in particular b/c he had quoted me with $29,410 for a tech package which I found quite unbelievable since it even beats out carsdirect.com. So after pretty much daily correspondence with this salesperson I had made an appointment with him on Saturday for a test drive. Guess what, when I got there, he sat us down and kept trying to sell me a regular Altima. After insisting on test driving a hybrid he then pretended to check on the car and came back telling us that they had sold all the hybrids already. I was fuming, this is clearly bait and switch tactic. They clearly did not have the hybrids but tried to lure customers in by quoting them low ball numbers but what good are the numbers if they don't even have the cars. (I'm considering reporting them to BBB though they already have unsatisfactory rating with them)!! I then contacted another dealership nearby.. they appear to be the only BBB participant on Long Island. To make the long story short they had one available to test drive. The salesperson told us they had just sold one earlier and this is the very last one available. I called to test drive and that's why he held the key to make sure no one else could get into it (lots of BS but whatever).. this is the fully loaded version, so there's really nothing not to like  I don't need the NAV system (love my Garmin) but really wanted the power consumption display. Anyhoo, I still haven't figured out my AMT vs. reg. tax liability yet so I wanted to do that first before deciding to buy in 07 or 08 (I had made a career change so it would have mattered some what) We went back inside after the test drive. The salesperson (let's call him X) asked about my situation. I said I'll put half down and finance the rest. He then went and came back with some number like $600/M for 48 months + $15,000 down. I have excellent credit and considered this utterly ridiculous. X seemed clueless with all the numbers and appeared to be simply a messenger. I wrote down $$300/M for 48 months + 15k down + tax. X came back with ~$450/M for 60 months + $15,000. I was like, are you kidding me, you decreased the monthly payment and increased the number of months, how's that better than the numbers from b4.  So X went back in again and at that point I was like they're playing the numbers as if we don't know Sh*t, let's get out of here. As mentioned previously, I wanted to calculate my tax liability first b4 deciding when to buy the car so walking out was not a problem. As soon as we started walking, some one yelled out to X and both X and guess his manager quickly came by to stop us. The mgr was like "Oh how you doing" and I was almost screaming you're trying to sell us a $30k car for $40k. He said maybe we made a mistake, see (showed me a paper) we make offers based on the car number (guess their stock #) on this sheet. Maybe the stock number got mixed up and we're quoting you a number that was really for a Pathfinder or something that's over $40k. He said give us another chance just please wait another minute. I stayed mainly b/c I was curious whether they would really accept my offer which would make the car $294k (not considering finance chg). After a short while, the mgr came over and asked me straight out, if we agree to your terms are you willing to take delivery today? To tell you the truth, I hesitated and got a bit scared of making such a big commitment w/o first finding out about my tax liab. But I went ahead and shook his hand and made the deal. All in all I was at that dealership for about 4 hours b/c they later tried to sell me an extended warranty (guess they're trying to make SOME money out of this deal somehow) which I declined. The Finance Mgr got frustrated at one point and was shuffling his papers around and jamming them into an envelope. I felt bad but I did not plan on taking on additional liability, even though the warranty might be good for all the tech stuff. I love the car, was at one point unsure which color to get, but the fact they only had one to choose from really makes my life a whole lot simpler. Even if I don't get the full Fed tax credit I think I'll still be very happy with the purchase!! 
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Replying to: malttese33 (Dec 09, 2007 8:42 am) |
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Replying to: malttese33 (Dec 09, 2007 8:42 am) yeah, they call them stealerships for a reason
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