thx for the info, I figured the paper was held by some other company and she was stuck, hoping you might have a trick up your sleeve.

Great thread, thanks for taking the time to do it

One other follow up question.

What about if we want to buy the car at the end. Are we stuck paying the residual price or is there a way to negotiate that number?

Does VW credit (this is who did the lease) own the car if we don't buy it or does it go back to the dealership?

There is no negotiation on the residual price. Like I said- there's basically no wiggle room in leases. Which is completely fine from your perspective. If you want to know your options for getting out of your lease I'd literally just call VW and explore your options.

thx bro, sorry for the 20 questions

LOL that's fine. It's just that everything is basically agreed upon when you sign the lease.

Yeah, it's weird. It's not clear what you mean. Are you buying new appliances/fixtures? Hiring trades to completely renovate, etc.?

Seriously great and very entertaining thread so far, I had to jump in with a few questions if you don't mind.

You mentioned Gunn Honda in San Antonio earlier, I was actually checking cars there as I go to school at UTSA and it seemed like a close, decent place to start. I found a car I'm interested in, but I figure I should ask these questions while you're available.

When they say no haggle price is it firmly no haggling, or can you still work them a bit on new car price/trade in value? (I assume it's firm, but I know other places say the same to stop people before they come in, yet work with you if you attempt)

Also I believe I read earlier that you said you end up paying more for a car at a no haggle dealership, how much more would a no haggle dealership ask than a place you can negotiate with, in general?

which leads me to my last question

The car I would be trading in is a Honda, would I get more in trade for it at a Honda dealership, or would it be a pretty similar value everywhere?

Thanks in advance
Ethan

Don't trade it in, sell it on your own.

I want you to critique this negotiation scenario from a salesperson's view.

A young girl from a foreign country was newly hired at my work, and she asked me to help her buy a new honda civic. She had great credit and a good job, so I said if she wanted to, I would negotiate it for her. She agreed. We hopped in my car after work and went to the dealership and I told her to keep her mouth shut and just follow my lead.

We walked into the dealership and immediately a guy came up to us. I then proceeded to tell him that this girl was a good friend of mine but her english isn't so good, so I'm hammering out the deal for her. He seemed ok with this and we started talking. I told him we don't need to test drive the car (it was new), she had great credit and a good job, and that if the price was right we'd buy the car right then and there.

He went through his thing, and then I mentioned I have a friend down at the Honda dealership by the airport (we were in west chester), but I didn't want to do business with friends, even though he told me to bring her in (which he didn't, because I really don't know anyone at airport honda, lol). He then offered his price, with a special they had on financing that month, something like 2%. We sat there and looked over the numbers (they actually were really good, the price was good, the financing was good, everything was pretty decent). Then I pulled the trigger and said "well, thanks for your time, I'm going to give my friend a call at airport honda and take a ride down there and see what he can offer us, because she really wants a car today". He then said "wait wait, let me talk to my manager" and hurriedly got up, went to the back and pretended like he was doing something important. I sat there with her and joked and told her to just stay quiet and speak very broken english. He came back and lowered the price by like another 500 bucks or 1,000 or something. I asked him for a moment to talk with her, pulled her outside and I asked her if she was ok with it. She couldn't have been happier, and said she would sign right then and there. We walked back in, shook hands and she signed.

I thought I approached it pretty well. As a salesperson, what do you think of the way we approached this?

Some salespeople take things like that personally. Some salespeople believe you when you say things like that. I'm neither of those people.

I would do exactly what the salesperson did though. I'd probably think you were either a) a ****ty friend or b) lying to me-- and I wouldn't care which one it was. I'd do the damn deal right then.

Personally I don't think there is anything wrong with lying to a car dealership. It kinda irks me that many salespeople lie constantly and yet expect the customers to be 100% honest. It also irks me that customers lie substantially more than car dealerships yet somehow think that car salesmen are the scum.

Seriously do you know how standard it is for people to lie to salespeople?

It was kind of a lie. I mean, it WAS a lie, but it was more like "Listen, give me a good price and we buy the car within 40 minutes, you want the deal or not?"

I thought it was a good approach, but like anything I thought I did well, I have the thought of "could I have done that better?"

Yeah it's a good approach. Tbh you could have done just as well by just demanding 500$ under invoice and pretending to stick to your guns. Lots of ways to get to this result honestly-- none of them particularly nice to the car dealership.

If I were you I'd feel fine about my approach, how it worked out, and its likelihood of working in the future.

I hate you for your ability to eat Las Pallapas whenever you want.

You might be able to get a marginally better deal somewhere else- but from the amount of bitching I heard from Honda salespeople at stores other than Gunn about them "whoring out" cars I'm guessing it wouldn't be that much cheaper.

Gunn is 100% deadly serious about not negotiating on the trade or on the price of the car. They'll appraise your car and basically agree to buy your car for that price for a week or something whether you buy from them or not.

Your car is a commodity. Its true value to every sales manager in the world is what it will fetch at auction. Not a penny more and not a penny less.

Hah, I've never eaten there, but I'll sure have to try it out now!

Thanks for answering the questions, much appreciated and definitely a big help.

I'd like to stop here and say that all of my information about the san antonio car business is dated december 2006 at the latest. It's been a while. Obviously lots could and probably has changed about dealership price structures.

Hi.

We are currently in the process of developing a patented idea to a company in the gaming industry. In our opinion, we believe our idea will help generate much more turnover for any company willing to employ our system. We do not have software, as it should fit in relatively seamlessly with current systems in place.

Back to the topic of negotiations....

How do you negotiate a deal, with very limited knowledge.

Basically all we know is what the company turns over each year.

What would your advice be based on this fact, and/or other key factors currently unknown.

We are completely new at this, and this is part of our research before we take our product to sale.

Cheers..

Mitch.

I have no idea what you have or what it's worth. It sounds like neither do you-- I'd strongly suggest you figure out the answer to that question ASAP through some kind of research.

Let's say you have an idea that allows a poker site to push more h/hr. You need to figure out how many more h/hr it will allow them to push-- and try to value that.

That gives you some idea of where to start. Not knowing anything is simply not going to work negotiation wise.

I'm looking at moving into a very nice suburban apartment building. All kind of amenities (concierge, etc.) and looks to be about 100 units. Looks like about 10% of the total becomes available on a monthly basis, but I don't know what kind of vacancy numbers they have (probably not a heck of a lot). Professionally owned and managed.

I saw an ad on craigslist a week ago that was $1660/month which is within what I'd be willing to move for. I called the broker and he said that unit is no longer available, but he has a $1770 one available for the same time frame. These prices are near the top of the rental range for the area. $1750 is the absolute max I'd give my current apt up for now, but obviously I'd like to pay as little as possible.

Do I have any hope of negotiating down here? If so, what would be your strategy? I am not looking to move urgently, am a tenant at will, and would only move for an upgrade like this. A+ thread btw!

I don't honestly know in your spot. I'd probably say "No thanks... I'm afraid that 1660 was pushing it"... And wait on a response. You'll really regret spending the extra 100$ a month... And something WILL come free at a later date.

Question: I recently purchased a used car from a dealership and traded in my old piece of **** Saturn (2001 model with a bunch of problems and ~130k miles on it). I blue booked it prior to negotiations and according to KBB, with the # of miles I had and the fact that it was in "poor / fair condition", they thought it was worth ~$400

Nevertheless, during the negotiations for the new car, one of the sales guys asked me how much I was hoping to go for it. I said I thought I could get $1,000 for it and they quickly accepted my offer (and note that no deal had been arrived at for the car, so I doubt they were overpaying for the clunker on the basis of screwing me on the car I was purchasing.) What do dealerships do with cars after they buy them, assuming that they can't sell them? Are they typically willing to pay more for clunkers with limited resale value than private parties?

Very interesting thread btw, thanks for posting.

I bought a new car a few weeks ago and we ended up going through about 6 rounds of negotiation including him "going to check with the manager", having his manager then come out to discuss, and then finally him jumping out of his chair and running after me as I walked out.

1. When he "checks with the manager" is he actually checking with the manager, or putting on a show similar to the Seinfeld episode. I noticed they were unusually animated and loud in their discussion and my wife and I were laughing at it.

2. Why send a higher up out to negotiate? I personally took offense to that.

3. How high of a risk is walking out when you are secretly hoping they did exactly what my guy did and chase you out the door?

For me the whole routine was hilarious and my wife and I still laugh about it.

If you think you're the stronger person metally/negotiating, I'd make sure I discussed it in person. People get nervous in person and don't want to sound awkward or cheap and you kinda want to put it to them.

Emailing gives the villain (lol poker terminology) the chance to take their time, think about it and negotiate back at you. I think that's bad and -ev for you.

Your right... I really have no idea of what it is worth. It is an idea which we believe all parties will agree it will increase turnover, but by how much is unknown. We are unsure of what we should be looking for, as we have no idea what it is worth. Our only thought atm is getting a % of turnover, plus a once off licencing fee, to pay for further patent costs, etc.

I would really like to hear some of your thoughts on this matter, as i am completely in the dark, and definitely don't want to get screwed over.

Cheers.

Mitch.

Yeah your car wasn't worth 1k. The dealership internally decides what a car is worth. If they pay more than that it counts as a loss towards the deal-- if they pay less it's profit towards the deal. At the dealership I used to work at they usually 'hit' (appraised) cars like your clunker at $500. We'd sometimes give a customer $1k for a car to humor them.

Tbh this sounds like negotiating fail on their part. They clearly could have gotten you down to 500$. The decision to be ok with that cost the salesperson ~$125.

Then you need to find a way to test it irl. It may not even work. If it does you'll get a LOT more money for it than if it's untested. No one is going to be overjoyed to give you money for something that might or might not work.