Am I getting a good deal?

[Doolin-Dalton]

On 11/28/2019 at 7:22 AM, Thomcat said:

That is exactly how I calculate it..... to do otherwise is fooling yourself. Sales tax and registration fees is the only portion of the total that the dealer cannot eat. He can absorb the rest buried in dealer holdbacks, GM dealer cash placed on cars that sit, rebates, customer loyalty, finance kickbacks, and monkeying with the trade in allowance.

 

If I was to fake world back calculate my deal of $42000 for a $55600 MSRP and take "real numbers" into account the $42000 sale price was bogus because of how figures are buried in the line items. Eg. I wanted $30000 for my trade,,,,the most any other dealer offered was $28500 or actual KBlueBook (not Black Book).....my dealer wrote the trade for $32000 which he'll never get on his lot, but may be able to talk some sucker into who cannot get a new car loan,  if not lose out on wholesale......there's $900 in sales transfer differential tax buried in the $42K which is reduced because of the overinflated trade.........$50 in tag transfer and titling buried.........$399 in dealer prep buried.......extra $150 for mudguards after deal agreed to was buried........cost for lifetime warranty on drivertrain (any part that oil touches) buried. If I was to add all that crap back using the OP method of calculating my $55600 vehicle had a sales price of $40500 or 27% off MSRP which of course is bogus .........all line items are irrelevant and real percentage discount is nebulous the only thing that matters when buying a car is how much cash is ripped out of your wallet.......that's why I only deal in round bottom line numbers. Dealers profile you and hate my type because I have plenty of time and love to shop for cars.......bought over 3 dozen new ones for myself and family and that's not counting ones where I posed as the crazy uncle for women in the office to prevent dealers from taking advantage of single women (which they do!).  I will test ride a number of cars, switching deals and get prices on each and always deal in round numbers forcing them to absorb some costs. And always bite their a$$ before they bite yours.

Slightly off topic, but I've found some dealers vehicle  prices are outstanding, but then they make up for it in their service dept prices which are highly over priced fees.  Other dealers have terrible pricing on the vehicles, but the service dept prices are outstanding value based.  Its' hard to find a dealer that is truly outstanding at both.  It's like a unicorn.