Car salesperson

Oh I do all the "tricks" that are listed on the Prius forums, but the most I get is 48-49 just close enough to be annoying. soooo close Soooo very close

Of course my poor Prius has to haul my big butt around so I am sure that affects the MPG

 

Not to further the tangent, but if you're a costco member they have (at least they used to) a car buying service. A lot of credit unions do, too. You tell them what you want, what you want on it, then they tell you the bottom line price and which dealer to go to. You walk in, deal is done, no haggling, you just sign the papers. That's how I bought my last two cars. Check to see if you have access to any of these types of services through banks, memberships, etc.

 

Our purchase at Nissan Sterling was pretty easy in and out in 45 minutes.

Albeit we already had a negotiated price and financing set up via USAA.

Our neighbor works for Nissan Corp and she was able to get us true employee pricing, which allowed us to purchase a fully loaded Murano and saved $8500 off the price. If my memory serves me correctly, 8% below ACTUAL dealer invoice, ZERO S & H charge and what ever rebates Nissan had also applied.

If you want PM me and I can ask my neighbor if she can provide some assistance (she has done this for several friends of mine). Its a pretty simple process, she loads your information into her Corporate profile and Nissan/Infiniti provides you a VVSP # and you give that # to the salesman.

I checked with USAA's & Cosco's car program, needless to say the savings was jaw dropping, so we went with the Nissan Corp program.

 

I also had a bad experience there, I blamed it on the fact that they thought they could stomp all over a woman. I ended up having to feed them their stomping shoe and teach them differently ... but supposedly the week after I purchased my car the ownership of the dealership changed.

I did get my car there, and I made them stick to the deal they had originally promised me. I could tell that they were crying in the backrooms, especially since they had gone ahead and sold my car twice and had to get the same car from another dealership and probably made even less money on it, but hey ... they still made money on it.

Marianne

 

AAA also has a buying plan like Costco does. It used to be a lot better than it is today. In one of my best deals I found the AAA price on a car and then went to a rival dealership and told the salesman that if he could beat the AAA price by $200 I'd buy from him. He and the manager and I negotiated a bit but the bottom line was that they beat the AAA price.

--- John B.

 

i've bought my last three cars---one jeep and two honda's for the wife--using "cars.com". It's wonderful...you build the car you want...and then type in your zip code when you have all the options selected---and it'll give you a list of the dealerships around here. You select three of them that you want to send you a quote--and they should email you a quote--no haggling.

You can compare the quotes they send...pin them against each other if you want to get into that...and then just show up with your quote in hand, test drive if you want----and go straight to telling them you don't want any of the options. It's so much better to do it this way....i'll never buy another car another way! We've always gotten a price at or a little below INVOICE. Nowadays..you can probably do even better.

 

Crappy dealerships must be a widespread problem for Nissan. 6 years ago I bought a car at the Gaithersburg, MD dealership and it was not an enjoyable experience at all. I recommend going with the cars.com or Costco approach or picking a different auto manufacturer.

For what’s it worth, Consumer Reports offers a car price report where they claim to offer true dealer cost plus incentives available to the dealer. I bought a report several years ago before purchasing my car and I found it to be helpful.

 

you can also go to www.kbb.com for pricing info. www.autotrader.com is another used car "Webmall" with thousands of listings. and of course- say it with me- www.carfax.com click on "find a car" for FREE Carfax reports in our area!

 

While costco does offer the service, it did not turn out to be beneficial when I was shopping around for a Honda Odyssey. The quote I got thro this service was over the eventual price I paid. Full Disclosure: I ended up buying from Leesburg Honda, having communicated with them mostly thro email.

However, in fairness I did get a courtesy call from the Costco Service a few weeks later, and when I told them that I didnt go with their service because the price quote i got was higher, they made a note of it and said that they'll work on it... this tells me that at least they work on "improving" the service, and the value it provides... or so one would hope.

 

I bought the Consumer Reports new car pricing guide when we were looking for our Prius. I paid $14.99 or so. The information was good and helpful but I found that the same information and pricing was available for free from Edmunds.com.

We ultimately purchased the Prius from Miller Toyota in Manassas through the Costco buying program. Costco's program is pretty simple: they give you a pre-arranged price that some dealerships choose to participate in. The price was a good one but if you don't mind negotiating with dealerships you might be able to get a lower one. We were not in a position to negotiate on the Prius because they were in very high demand at the time and not cutting deals on them. However, if you are buying the average car (i.e., not a hybrid or specialty sports car) negotiating is an option.