So I'm beginning to look at my options for buying the wife her minivan to be ready for child #3 in August.

What we have pretty much come down to are:

1. Honda Odyssey
2. Toyota Sienna
3. Dodge Grand Caravan
4. Chrysler Voyager (it's the Pacifica)

Looking at loan rates for used, which is what we planned to do, they don't seem great even for people like us with excellent credit. I'm talking like 5% and 6% and higher which doesn't seem great.

I started investigating employee discounts that I'm eligible for through my employer and I found that we can buy a NEW Chrysler vehicle at the "Preferred Price" (1% below factory invoice) and the financing deals our local Chrysler dealer has right now are much better than the rates for used vehicles (which I know is usually always the case) at like 0.9% and 1.9% for example.

Has anyone bought a vehicle this way? You aren't still expected to play games and barter back and forth, are you? I HATE that crap. If I can walk into a dealership with something that says I pay price $XYZ, and I think it's fair, then I want to look further at this.

Yes I did a few years ago and with minimal hassle we were able to hammer out the deal and drive off the lot that afternoon.
I would call them first to verify that they honor the employee pricing as some dealerships don’t.

We just bought a New Honda Odyssey through the Costco program and had a good experience with it.

In some cases when you add in the higher interest it's better to buy new, warranty and all than used.

Only one number matters and that's how much is coming out of your pocket. It's the only real number. MSRP, invoice, dealer fees, market adjustment, advertising fee, etc. are made up numbers. Any number based on those, like 1% below invoice, are also made up.

I would use whatever number your employee discount gets you as a starting point and ask a few dealers in your area if they can beat it. It'll take you less than an hour and I would bet you save at least $500 off the Preferred pricing.

It is my thing, But other than a Ram I would not buy a Dodge, Chrysler or Jeep product. There are way better choices and I would not want the headaches and low resale value.
If buying new and do not want the experience Costco is the way to go as JohnV mentioned.

Nope, I want every last penny squeezed out of the deal and I want to wear down the sales associate to within an inch of his life.

A deal that they can offer across the board, means that there's plenty of profit padded in there.

I want the dealership and sales associate to lose money on the sales price on my particular deal. They may make money elsewhere on my deal through financing or hitting sales goals or sales tiers, whatever, but I want a price that's so low that is literally $1 from ruining the deal.

A perceived fair price has nothing to do with it.

Buy year or two old van, there should be a crap load of year old Caravans. Get pre approved from a credit union, no reason it should be more than about 2.5%

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
Nope, I want every last penny squeezed out of the deal and I want to wear down the sales associate to within an inch of his life.

A deal that they can offer across the board, means that there's plenty of profit padded in there.

I want the dealership and sales associate to lose money on the sales price on my particular deal. They may make money elsewhere on my deal through financing or hitting sales goals or sales tiers, whatever, but I want a price that's so low that is literally $1 from ruining the deal.

A perceived fair price has nothing to do with it.

YOU may like playing those games, but there are plenty of us who hate it, are not good at it, don't want anything to do with it.

You don't haggle and go back and forth when buying a new fridge or a steak, why do we still have to play this stupid game with cars?

Your post is EXACTLY why I want to only go to CarMax type car sellers.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:

You don't haggle and go back and forth when buying a new fridge or a steak, why do we still have to play this stupid game with cars?

Your post is EXACTLY why I want to only go to CarMax type car sellers.

I don't make the rules, I just play the game.

The dealers all sell the exact same vehicles, but none have price transparency. What price they are willing to sell a vehicle for varies from day to day and hour to hour. So, you have to go to the dealer and haggle a price.

You roll in with a coupon for 1% below invoice. If that makes you feel good about the price, sure, pay that price. But you *know* they will accept 1% below invoice right off the bat. Why not just ask for 2% below invoice, or 3%, or 5%, and suggest that you might take your business elsewhere if you can't get better than 1% off...

Also, the dealers pay a referral fee to the referring partner. Perhaps call the dealer before you go to see if they can beat the referring deal (and now that they aren't paying the referral fee, they'll have some price flexibility).

I bought a new diesel truck 1.5 years ago. The Costco price was better than what was available locally. However I called around to dealers more in the outback, and did much better.

Made the deal over the telephone and online. Ordered exactly what I wanted and saved $4,000 over the Costco price. Total was $12,500 less than list price. Got a ride to the town 5 hours away, and drove it home the same day.

Do some research, you might do very well with a little driving.

I haggle on appliances, but I understand not everyone wants to. My goal is to keep as much money in my pocket as I can. I don't feel bad about it one bit. That doesn't mean I'm cheap mind you. I tip well, I treat people that work for me or do work for me right, etc. On projects I can't do or don't want to do, I get bids, I ask questions, I try to pick what's best for me.

Buying a car is no different. You want to know if the Preferred Pricing is fair, but you'll have to do a little work to find out. Find out what the out the door price is with Preferred Pricing and send it off to a couple dealers and see what they say their out the door price is.

I don't have any experience going through any programs like that, but wanted to add that you should be able to get better financing rates than that by shopping around a bit before you buy from the dealer (and ask the dealer to beat the rate).


We just went through this at the end of the year when my fiancee bought a new car. At that time Think Mutual had one of the best rates we could find. She "pre-qualified" before we went in to sign the papers and it was < 3%. Super easy and very little time invested to do it that way.

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:

You don't haggle and go back and forth when buying a new fridge or a steak, why do we still have to play this stupid game with cars?

Your post is EXACTLY why I want to only go to CarMax type car sellers.

I don't make the rules, I just play the game.

The dealers all sell the exact same vehicles, but none have price transparency. What price they are willing to sell a vehicle for varies from day to day and hour to hour. So, you have to go to the dealer and haggle a price.

You roll in with a coupon for 1% below invoice. If that makes you feel good about the price, sure, pay that price. But you *know* they will accept 1% below invoice right off the bat. Why not just ask for 2% below invoice, or 3%, or 5%, and suggest that you might take your business elsewhere if you can't get better than 1% off...

Also, the dealers pay a referral fee to the referring partner. Perhaps call the dealer before you go to see if they can beat the referring deal (and now that they aren't paying the referral fee, they'll have some price flexibility).

This is my approach. I have never bought a car when I needed to have it at that moment. Last one I played two dealers off each other for nearly a month, finally on last day of the month one caved and gave me the price AND trade in value I wanted, financing was out of the equation since I used USAA.

They may have only made a few bucks on the car, but it may have put the salesman, manager, or lot over a threshold to get a better bonus, so they were willing to take tiny margin for the bonuses.

Coincidentally as I was heading to dealer #2 to sign paperwork and get the car, dealer #1 called and said he was desperate to make a deal, I told him to beat dealer #2 by $500 and I would turn around and head there immediately, he could not.

Honda & Toyota yes, in that order.
Chrysler/Dodge, no way.

When I bought my 2018 Accord, it was new on the market so discounts were hard to come by.
I looked into Costco.
I went to True Car, put in what I was looking for. I got a text message from one dealer with a great deal; took it to another dealer who had the car I wanted and showed them the text; they matched the price, about $3,000 off MSRP IIRC.
I got a few more e-mails and texts after that but it wasn’t anything like the endless messages from Lending Tree when looking for home loans.

I found a vehicle I was interested in with the right miles, condition, extra's I liked, etc. Sent them a message via their chat feature. Was contacted by a sales person. Started a conversation about it and my trade in. Told them what I wanted to do. Haggled back a forth for bit. End up $1500 apart. That ended the conversation. A week went by. I looked at a couple other rigs. Came back to this one. They still had. I made another proposal and we agreed. I am going to them soon to look and have them look at my trade in. We have a deal in place if all checks out. Pretty painless and not a ton of time invested. The deal is pretty good so I am hopeful. Point is do not go until you have the frame work of a deal in place. At least that is my take.

Well with the markets tanking and the Fed likely to try and step in, it's looking like there will be LOTS of deals to be had soon!

The invoice used to be what the dealer paid for the car or close to it. That is no longer the case. As stated earlier, it is now a made-up number to make you think, "Wow, I only paid $100 more than what the dealer paid". Yeah, right.

quote:

Originally posted by NK402:
The invoice used to be what the dealer paid for the car or close to it. That is no longer the case. As stated earlier, it is now a made-up number to make you think, "Wow, I only paid $100 more than what the dealer paid". Yeah, right.

I don’t think there really is a way to find out what a dealer pays. They probably don’t even know. You can research holdbacks but the dealership isn’t going to tell a consumer about a bonus on selling so many units in a particular time frame. I don’t Think the salesmen are privy to that information.

I do enjoy reading about car buying experiences, it’s pure comedy.