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Main dealer haggling? ?


smellmycheese

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The salesman wants to make a sale. He is not going to let you walk out the door if he has more money to play with.

 

It's not an old wives' tale, the last day of the month is the best day for discounts at franchised dealers. Particularly if it's the last day of a financial quarter. Last day of the financial year is potentially even better. Your car could be the one that saves their quota or triggers a bonus, so discounts can be had.

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I (foolishly) imagined the basic on selling cars would be a grand a month then you ought to expect to double that with your bonus. That might give a wage commensurate with the stress and aggro. I'd be disappointed in a sales role with £70 for a sale on something like a £20k BMW.

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I work for a main dealer, parts not sales, but I know that the margins are nowhere near what many think they are.  Our "value brand" has about £300, where as even the main brand is only around a grand.  In parts, we have just been told that our margins are being squeezed again. Thing we used to get 40% are now 30%, many things are 15-20%, accessories are 8%! 

 

 I am not asking for sympathy, we still make money, just don't believe the nonsense some people will tell you. One customer asked for a 90% discount as that is what he supposedly gives trade. This for a £2 part we had to deliver 10 miles away, and would actually have lost  us money at full price! He was politely refused1

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Ive bought a few times from main dealers and apart from once where I paid full-screen price and ddnt haggle at all on the car ( because it was worth it and I wanted it and I got a damn good offer for the trade-in).

 

Normally its a case of if I offer the screen price would you give me "x" for mine, or can I give you mine and "x" for that. I dont (IMHO) take the piss and invariably have got the car for what I wanted. Im sure the salesman has made some commission and another car sold. If I think its overpriced and way out of my budget then the chances of getting it for what I think are slim, so I Wouldnt Offer anything ( and no, Im not offering DodgyTom £50 for that fupping Metro) and risk being insulting in their eyes or being given the bums rush.

 

 

Attitude is everything. Go in all guns blazing and you just get their back up and get nowhere. But be polite and you often can.

 

RIGHT WAY: 'I can only really afford to go to XXXX - can we go from there?....."

 

RONG WAY : 'I'm not paying more than....."

 

 

Car salesman often have a horrible job. They don't set the prices, remember. Working for Arnold Clark would be akin to manning the tills at Asda. Fucking misery.

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I fairlt recently (9 months ago) bought brand new from Arnold Clark, 1.4 SRi 3 door new model Corsa with metallic paint, as the model had just been introduced there were zero used models and not many pre reg, oddly the pre reg I did find were more than I ended up paying. List price was £12,665 Inc met paint, Arnold were doing them for £11,045 to start off with, wouldn't go any lower on price, offered me £2400 p/ex for my Sept 2009 '59' Clio 1.2 Dynamique 3 door. 54 months old, 54,000 miles on clock, very good condition but not excellent (blistered leather on steering wheel, all alloys needing a refurb and the usual door edge scratches and stone chipped front end) almost full Renner main dealer history however it was due a service, timing belt kit and water pump, an MOT, needed 2 tyres and some drop links and ball joints, hence why I was trading in early than I planned (4 months early as I'd just have paid for all the repairs, traded in and got the same p/ex value so wouldve cost me money) got them to offer £2700 for it, got the usual full tank of fuel and mats thrown in and 3.9% finance.

 

Not a great deal but I'm happy in the knowledge I got a deal I'm happy with. Certainly beat the deals on new Vauxhalls that Peter Vardy (they were relying on stuff like Vauxhall partners discount to beat Arnold's deals which I didn't qualify for) and Evans Halshaw (their price match couldnt) could do despite both claiming to beat any deal elsewhere.

 

I used to work for AC and the sales guys were on a basic of about £650 a month before commission, worked out about £2.83 an hour at the time, expected to work every Saturday 9-6 and Sunday 11-6, one day off during the week and 9 - 5.30 2 days a week, 9 - 8 the other 2 days, its gone up now so their basic is about £14.5k but they have huge targets, expected to shift 22-25 cars a month. They are also targeted on service plans, gap insurance, extended warranties, and supagard, obviously they make commission on these but get their collars felt for not making target on these too. As someone said above the ones who shift metal get promoted to sales managers, general managers and dealer principals despite having zero management experience as the thinking is "you can sell a lot of cars, if we make you a manager you'll make everyone else sell just as many" but it doesn't work and they end up back as a salesman and quite often shifted to another branch, the staff turnover in the sales dept and staff moving between branches is massive. Very unmotivated staff with low morale because the management are shocking. Against what people may think a lot of them are decent guys just trying to make a living and do their best by customers but get shafted by poor management, there are the odd few con artists, wideboys, fraudsters, rip off merchants and lazy bastards though.

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Best Discount I got was 17% off a new Fiat Panda.  Having joined the fiat motor club we get basically a "staff discount rate".

 

A lot of haggling went on over my trade in (which I sold privately anyway) but mats could only be had at cost.

 

I believe the dealer only makes a handling fee on these sales out of which he has to prep the car.

 

I try not to think about depreciation as I plan to keep it until either I or the car dies.

 

It's my first brand new car, I nearly bought an aygo new some years ago and was offered a deal about 2 grand of the list price, which I only turned down after reading some very negative press about the model and lack of fixes by dealers - plus the car offered was blue and not red.  :shock:

 

One bargaining technique I stumbled upon is to ask about a car at the other same group showroom you've seen online, they'd much rather sell from their stock as someone has to pay for the transfer, and does help them reach a better deal sooner.

 

Another salesman told me they aim to make at least a thousand across any second hand vehicle on the pitch.

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If your mate wants a 27k car for 23, he'd be better off visiting vw

You'd think so wouldn't you? But my local VW dealer won't even get into a discussion about discount on a new Golf GTi I was looking at, even though a brand new, pre-reg one at a car supermarket was £6k off list price.

 

Bonkers.

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I don't think dealers have a lot of leeway on new stuff.

 

When I was in fleet we got 25% on mondeo and lwb transit at manufacturer level and a little bit more from the dealer. Vauxhall gave more and Renault were nearly at bogof..........it is very much a game as % drops on new models and resumes a it gets older.

 

The manufacturer bit came as cash back.........cheap money for corporates as you lease the whole cost but then get 25% back. One of the companies I worked for was in deep shit so this was a cheap way to get cash. On the last day of March one year I ordered enough Transits to generate a million quid of 'support' because we need it for year end results..........

 

I've only ever had one car from a dealer and got the deal I wanted by focusing on the amount of money required to change (I had a buggered car to px) rather than pushing to get more for mine or give less for his. The whole thing was surprisingly painless

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SRSLY?

 

If this is a main dealer they'll probably have about three grand across it.

 

This. Then minus 20% of that for the VAT man, then minus any workshop / paint spend. The internet basically sets prices these days, so margins are slimmer in an attempt to remain competitive. But asking how much should he get off is ridiculous without knowing facts - If it's the cheapest of its type on Autotrader in the country, expect nothing off. If it's £2000 too dear your mate probably wouldn't be sniffing around it. If it's been in stock 3 days good luck, if it's been there since November haggle hard. But FFS do your research and be realistic, bowling in asking for £3000 off will lose you all credibility. If the dealer makes £1500 after tax they'll be pleased, which isn't much of a gain on a £24000 gamble.

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You'd think so wouldn't you? But my local VW dealer won't even get into a discussion about discount on a new Golf GTi I was looking at, even though a brand new, pre-reg one at a car supermarket was £6k off list price.

 

Bonkers.

 

You only have to give discount if it's not going to sell without it.

People are climbing over themselves to get a Golf GTI, they're never going to be tough to shift, so discounts are hard to come by.

 

Also, there's the idea that the offer of a discount devalues the product - some of the electronics manufacturers I work with would be horrified at the offer of a discount on their top of the range products. VAG are very comfortable with their place in the premium automobile club and I'm not sure slashing prices via franchised dealers is the image they want to offer.

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There was a recent radio ad for the local VW dealer where they were slashing a few grand off, diesels were getting mahoosive discounts off list. They have said VW group sales as a whole have slumped by as much as 25% on this period last year

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I bet they are working on a minimum of 30-40% margin so I would be looking at 24k tops, ideally 22 - 23k.

 

Good 'internet advice' this, specially seeing as we don't know the age, trim, mileage, condition, fuel or anything else about the flippin car! just walk into the dealer, hand them a printout of this and watch them bow to your superior knowledge.

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My cousin who used to work for Mitsubishi many years ago said once you've decided what you want, the actual price of it doesn't matter, the trade-in value doesn't matter, it's only the difference between them or the price-to-change that matters in reality. You can either afford it or you can't, it's simple. 

Going into negotiations with a 'I want £x for my car' is missing the point and will annoy the sales Johnny which you may not care about but you want him on your side. The better approach is to say roughly what you've got on top of the trade-in value - whatever that will be, that effectively determines what money is available to change from one to another without trying to dictate either your trade-in demands and the price of the other car. 

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a friend has splashed £1270 on a 'new' (2 or 3 years old) motor last weekend, they managed to get a total of 170 quid off the price, and they had to work hard for that, and knowing his family they would have worked at the deal. the dealer couldn't do anything about the last 70 quid as this was some admin charge or something. total discount was less than 2%

 

people watch to much crap American TV where someone is asking 40k for a 15k car and they then settle on 12k, fuck off. if I'm selling something it's normally for a fair price and or what I would expect to pay for said item.

 

anyway hopefully your mate is happy with his 6, I woz disappointed with the 3litre,

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While, as I have said, margins are often a lot slimmer than people may think, attitude is very important. As a parts man, treating me like a human being instead of scum makes any discount a lot more likely. Often I don't have a lot of room to negotiate, but if you come in with the "give me the part number so I can buy it cheaper elsewhere" mentality, you are getting nothing (and definitely not a part number!) However, talk to me about old crappy cars, or as if I might not actually be out to rob you and suddenly there might be some discount!  Not the official line, hence why I didn't say what dealer, but I am certainly not alone in this.

 

 Incidentally, if you are going to claim that you get trade discount on parts, at least have the brains to know what garage you supposedly work for! We are not going to check, but appreciate the effort! One guy today claimed he gets trade as he is a dentist!  He didn't.

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Just spoke to said friend and he's part x his civic, last mot he had two advisorys for his tytrs, which he replaced with some crap Chinese Wong turn or something. The dealer asked if he'd had these done. As it would affect his PX price, checky bastard. I've told him to check his new car as apparently it only has 6 months mot and make sure the advisories, if any, have been done.

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