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Car Buying

Bought a car over the last two weekends, and it was surprisingly painless. Here’s the 4-step process:

  1. 2 weekends ago we set aside Sunday afternoon to see what make/model/color/options we wanted. We knew we weren’t going to buy anything that weekend, just see exactly what we wanted.
  2. Having decided on a Civic, we compiled a list of all the Honda dealers in our area, with their email addresses. Most dealerships have “Internet Sales” department which are supposedly “no haggle”, but are really just “less haggle”. They won’t barter directly, but are happy to match/beat . Emailed all of them with a very simple/direct message (here’s exactly what we want, what’s your final out-the-door price including all your damn bogus fees, and how soon will you have it in stock?). Emailed about 15 dealerships by simple copy-pasting. By Saturday night 4/5 of them had replied. The best price was offered by a dealership 1.5 hours away—a good price ($100 below invoice), but much too far away. Basically, just good for bartering.
  3. Saturday night took the best of the quotes and emailed everybody else back. “Dear XX dealer, Here’s the best price we were able to get, but of course we’d rather buy from YOU”. All of the nearby dealerships but two said “that’s impossibly low, we can’t do that”. We called the closest “yes” dealership, had him fax over an official offer, warned him we’d walk out if there was any bait-and-switch.
  4. Sunday afternoon drove to the dealership, brought the fax, they honored the price, we paid in cash, and walked out with a new car. Pretty painless.

Things I learned

  • The best part about this process was that we were able to buy on our own terms, our own time frame, and without any manipulative sales tactics on the part of the dealerships. I was able to fit the emailing/waiting for replies from the dealerships into my normal Saturday schedule, so there was effectively no time wasted.
  • It was really imported to ask everyone for their post-tax, post-fees, out-the-door price. The “invoice price” that the dealerships quote a highly variable thing (we found it ranged $1000 depending on who we asked), and has nothing to do with what they actually paid Honda for the car in the first place. And most all the other fees that the dealerships will tack on (“destination fee”, “advertisement fee”, etc) are really just another word for “profit”. The only exception to this are the document and registration fees. By asking for the out-the-door price we were able to compare apples to apples.