lol doncuments
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Come on man you see all the white collar crime that is done out in the open and no one gives a fuck about it, live a little and commit some light fraud
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Cuse’s Financial Redistribution, Inc
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@Surf, here’s what you do. Figure out how far you’re willing to drive to get your CRV. Then send basically this letter to every Honda dealership within that area. Adjust it to your needs. Then do the deal over email or the phone and it’s about 30 minutes of paperwork at the dealership. When we did this it was 2014 and the Forester was in super high demand. Basically all dealerships came back within a few hundred of each other except for one that was like $2,000 less, so we bought from them.
Hello.
My wife and I want to purchase a 2014 Subaru Forester. The options we want are:
Model: 2.5i Premium
Options: All weather package
Transmission: Automatic CVT
Color: Our preference is Gray, but black is acceptable as well.
We understand that these vehicles are in demand; we’re willing to wait up to a month for you get it in inventory, provided that we lock in the price.
This message is going out to multiple Subaru dealers. Please send me your best price, including tax, license, and any fees you include. Assume no trade, and we can finance in-house or out.
We’ll be purchasing from the dealer who sends the best price.
Thank you for you time,
Surf
ETA: Generally you can only email the dealerships directly from their websites through their form, so just copy and paste it into each website.
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OK, so let’s stipulate that it’s fraud.
What do you think the happens to tenants who lie about their occupation on their applications, but pay rent on time and are generally problem-free tenants?
Even if they find out at any point in the process, has anyone ever been prosecuted for lying about a job on a rental application (and nothing else)?
What exactly are you afraid of, if you commit this fraud? Jail time? Something else?
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I allowed my local dealers within 20 miles or so to compete with the low price but they couldn’t touch it. I prefer to keep the money local when I can, I was even willing to pay a few hundred more but they were pretty far off.
I think it’s important to let the dealers know that they’re competing against other dealers in the letter, in case you didn’t do that.
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Really? I’m sure it doesn’t hurt, but who wouldn’t automatically assume that.
They see it as leaving money on the table if the first offer isn’t inflated. They would rather take a 20% chance of $1000 profit than a 60% chance of $300.
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Yup, that’s pretty much what I did when we bought our most recent car. E-mailed the dealerships what we wanted and told them we were e-mailing everybody (if I could, I found the direct e-mail addresses of the person in charge of internet sales). They sent me their offers and I gave them a chance to beat the lowest one.
It turned out the lowest one was so low that it was the obvious choice. One dealer even told me to take it because it was that good. I actually asked the dealer who offered it why it was so low, as I was skeptical, but he gave me an answer that made perfect sense.
I, personally, wouldn’t go to nuts with negotiating after one more round of “can you beat this price.” If the price seems reasonable to you - I’m assuming you have researched what the range of prices should be - and you feel good about the car and dealer, just go for it. Even if you maybe could’ve gotten another $100, it’s not necessarily worth the time and effort to try to squeeze every penny out of a deal (I mean, maybe it is, it’s up to you).
Have you considered getting a Certified Preowned? A new car loses a lot of value the second you drive it off the lot, like a ton (like 10-15% as soon as you leave the lot, 15-20% first year, maybe a little more). A used car probably has the best EV, but you may not want the hassle of possible maintenance issues. A CPO is in between - you pay a little extra for the CPO status and warranty, but you have less risk than a used car and also don’t lose as much value right off the bat.
From there it depends how hard you want to negotiate, but if you want to play the game and go the right time of month, do your homework, etc, you can probably save several hundred if not a little more. Depends on what your time is worth and/or whether you enjoy that whole game or hate it. If you want to get more into that side of it, let us know and I’m sure a few of us can contribute advice.
If you’re happy getting fairly close to best price, take @Fatboy8’s advice, then take like the 2nd and 3rd best offers - especially if they’re closer to you - and say something like, “Thank you for getting back to me with your price, which was competitive, but not the lowest. I’ve heard good things about your customer service and your location is more convenient for me, but how can I pay almost $2,000 more? I can agree to pay $24,962 including all fees and taxes. If that’s acceptable, let me know and we can finalize this right away.”
If you do that with a few and none can beat the lowest offer you already have, it’s probably pretty close to the best you could get anyway. I might still try to get them down slightly, and see what happens. Worst case is you end up with it for $25,480, but I’d be surprised if you can’t at least get them down to $24,9xx.
When I bought my current car (CPO 2016 Mazda 6), I pointed out a few things I did like about it, and a few things I didn’t. I let them know it was my #1 choice but it was close, and I was happy with either and would go with the best price/value. I think we went back and forth on the price at least three times, with him doing the whole, “Let me check with my manager,” game… Each time it was the best they could do, yada yada yada, each time they beat it. When he wouldn’t go back to his manager again and I was willing to pay that price, I took it. Obviously that was a little different since it was a used car and it was pre-COVID so it was all in person.
Just curious to know this in case it’s information that’s useful next time I’m buying a car. What was the reason?
Almost certainly nothing. But I’m a problem-free tenant who pays his rent on time and lived through a nightmare with my current management company and almost had to take them to court. Had I lied on my rental application, that would have been an issue if I had to be deposed to the extent that I probably could not have pursued legal action.
I highly doubt it.
I’m not afraid of anything in particular, I just don’t want to have a piece of paper/digital record floating around that proves I committed a crime with a 7-year statute of limitations. I understand that the odds of something bad actually happening as a result are like a million to 1 or even crazier than that… But the reward doesn’t seem to be anywhere near worth creating criminal liability.
Update: My #1 choice has asked me for two years of tax returns, records for this year, and has Googled me and apparently found my Hendon Mob or other similar sites.
If he found my social media, I hope he’s liberal lol… I was tweeting a lot about the convention and the protesters last night. He’s Indian-American and lives in a district that went about 65/35 for the Dem in 2018, so the odds are in my favor in that regard.
WAT? Using anything approaching realistic probabilities, it’s clearly +EV.
Either that, or getting a desirable place without hiding your occupation may not be as hard as you have made it seem.
The out-the-door price of the one we bought was just under $19,000. The next lowest was about $20,300. The others were all over $21,000.
The car we bought was the old model year, the ones they were trying to clear out. There was a manufacturer discount on them, but it was about to expire, so the dealership tacked on its own, additional discount to make the price more attractive. The salesman said that if they didn’t do that, once the manufacturer’s discount was done, the price would be the same as the new model year cars and nobody would buy that one. Thus, they priced it to move.
He took us out for a final test drive before signing the papers (my wife wasn’t able to drive the specific car we bought during her initial test drive) and he actually noticed something wrong. Turned out it was just a tire inflation imbalance, but I appreciated that he was honest and made sure the shop took care of it before we signed anything.
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I think you would be surprised at how little you can save between certified preowned and new with Honda vehicles. I always just end up buying new.
Have you looked into how much the invoice is on the cars you’re looking at? The best advice is to do the research on the cars, know what options they have, etc. Part of the price is the dealer destination fee which is anywhere from $600-900 depending on the car (haven’t researched CR-Vs). That destination fee is locked, there’s nothing you can do about it and it’s on top of any car prices you see.
CR-Vs tend to be fairly popular, which means you’re less likely to get a ‘good’ deal on one, though Honda may push down a little bit. Your general goal should be finding out the invoice price and finding out MSRP for the car with the options you’re interested in or that are on the car you’re being presented. Once you’ve done that, you’re in the negotiating position. In an absolute best case scenario, you can get in a little under invoice (I’ve done this on a few cars but always at the end of the model year after the new model is already in stock buying the previous year unchanged model). You’re not in a prime spot because new cars are coming in September for many manufacturers, though there might be some good Labor Day deals to be found. Sometimes you might only pay a little over invoice, but probably not with this car. My guess is the sweet spot for your vehicle will probably be pretty close to in between invoice and MSRP. There was a car site (someone might know what it is) that gave something called True Value Pricing, which was basically a range of what people tended to pay in your area. It gives you an idea of what a good deal or bad deal is and what right in the middle is.
You started generally where I do on car deals, which is saying give me your best out the door price deal (I know how much the car is supposed to cost before this as maybe one difference). If I find it unacceptable, I move on. If it’s acceptable, I start going from there. Most major manufacturers have a way of you looking at inventory all over the country. I would try to find the car that has what you’re looking for in inventory somewhere. For my current car, I knew I wanted basically just the base model with one additional option and a particular trim color (color and interior color not negotiable). I found this car at a number of dealerships not in the state but ones in state did not have it. The negotiation was a nightmare and I’m fairly sure they charged me for getting one here from out of state but I got the car I wanted and it was definitely a few grand under MSRP. I could have probably gotten it close to invoice if it had been in state.
My biggest suggestions are to know what you want, try to find it first, try to find out the price range of what you want very accurately, and then make decisions based on that. Fatboy’s advice is good, too, but he’s taking it from a different perspective than how I typically buy cars. I do the research to make the transaction go fast.
It’s been hard, but the inability to work with a realtor on this would cost me a ton of EV in the situation right off the bat if I went that route, the embarrassment of getting caught would be pretty bad, and the likelihood of being asked for proof/references and being unable to provide them and just having to back out all together would be pretty high.
It is absolutely ridiculous that the car buying process is so time consuming and full of scams in 2020. There is absolutely zero reason to not allow me to buy a car directly from General Motors, lol franchise laws, lol state legislatures, lol america.
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