So why don't they add in fees that cover how everyone at the dealership is paid? We could have a phone answering fee, a photo copy fee, a mop the floor fee, etc. But we don't have those things, why? Because it's all wrapped up in the price of the car. That's why you should negotiate the out the door price. It does you no good to get a great price on the car but end up paying more because of all the fees they try to sneak past you.

I've been to dealerships w signs noting their doc fees, though I'm not sure how common that is. At least at those places, you can know what the fee is ahead of time. Personally, I'd rather negotiate the car price and then see/verify every fee since most other than sometimes the doc fee are not even negotiable. But they could easily make a mistake or "mistake" in one of those items so I feel it's imprtant to verify each fee.

This is my last post on the subject, because I don't really think you want to understand the truth, lol. The doc fees ARE junk fees, the people doing the paperwork (and cleaning the car, etc.) will get paid on the total purchase price whether they tack on those fees or not. The ONLY legitimate fees are taxes and state/local filing fees and those are legislature mandated.

The signs that are put up notifying you of (They are called Dealer and Handling in Colorado) whatever fee they are trying to add on are NOT required and are simply tacked on for profit. You should deal only on the total price of the car and not let them add these later.

Here is a link to one of hundreds of articles on the subject. Note that every fee that you are saying is legitimate is a junk fee.

http://autoresource.internetautoguid...loan-1232.html

Arguing with a person whose job is to argue is NOT the way to get the best deal on a car, especially in this day and age. I have bought hundreds of cars over the years and you should NEVER play the game they want you to play. Know what you are willing to pay, deal on the final price only (and I never trade in) and never argue, you should always keep the upper hand. (And yes, that is why I have a personal driver/mechanic, as you correctly guessed, I keep my money in my pocket and win when it comes to the deal.

This is 100% correct.

Ok, I see what you mean. I guess the doc fee is bull****.

But I just don't understand how they are sneaking fees past us? I'm assuming we have the ability to read and do simple math, right? So negotiate the price only, then when you see the doc fee, you say to him, "tylertwo told me this fee is about as legit as a phone answering fee, and it'll be a cold day in hell before I pay that bs." You see how easy that was? You won't get to do that if you negotiate out the door price. You also won't get to laugh in his face while you reject the vin etching fee that he tacked on there "mistakenly". This is the easiest part of the negotiation. Why shouldn't we take advantage of it?

Nowhere in that link does it say that a doc fee is illegitimate (to be fair, it also doesn't say that you should pay it). But it does say this:

And nowhere in the smk67's link to the Edmunds article does it say that you should refuse to pay the doc fee. So hopefully you can understand why I was mistaken. I do want to understand the truth.

Tylertwo and Didace,

This guy is doing it right.

hey i know it's really fun to debate hypothetical negotiating strategies but do any of you keyboard warriors have any advice on an actual car-buying scenario?

Everybody is correctly telling you that you're spreading misinformation. We're not sure whether you're a dealer, a salesman, a troll, or just a super-naive guy.

In any case, stop. Just stop.

I wanted to post after seeing someone pay $500 extra to have an alarm system turned on wtf?

Going to a dealership in a few hours as the fiancé needs a new vehicle. She stopped in earlier today and sat down with the general manager. The car is a 2015 Toyota Corolla and he offered $16,800. True car has factory invoice at $17,808 for the car, average paid $16,900.

What should I be on the lookout for when I go there today with her? I'm prepared to say no to all finance room options. Any and all advice is appreciated.

Just make sure the #'s line up. Price of car+ taxes + doc fee and w/e state fees there is (tire &wheel tax, for example)

Some of the finance extras are worth it so listen and ask questions. Those products are also negotiable.

Your state has a tire and wheel tax?

I live and sold cars n Maryland, it's true, there's a tire tax.

Be sure they don't include incentives you don't qualify for (, recent college grad or military) because it sounds like it's pretty low

Went there that night and the fiancé haggled additionally for $500 less or else we would go to the other dealership across town. Guy who was assisting with the paperwork was being fairly condescending the whole time and mentioned repeatedly that he wasn't making any commission on this and he thought all the negotiations were done. He took the proposal to the desk manager who declined so we walked.

Fiancé goes to dealership across town and they can't beat it and was going to value her trade-in lower, meanwhile dealership one calls back and throws in a couple extras mall perks it doesn't budge on price. We bought it that night. Final price was $18,600 with taxes before the trade in. Fiancé was pleased with this.

I was worried about the finance guy but he didn't offer or recommend a single add on. Dealership also gave me a 5 year loan at 0% interest. I have very good credit but I'm still not entirely sure how/why that happened.

Toyota financing offers 0% APR for up to 5 years on that model right now, so if you have the credit it's yours. Dealership just ran the paperwork but you can get pre-approved from home directly if you wanted.

Don't sweat any butthurt salespeople or F&I guys as some can get short like that when they spend time doing paperwork and aren't making any commission from it. It's not your fault they're still using that tired old sales model. And I'm sure they're more than fine with it when they squeeze $2.5k more out of some slob for the same model.

Went to the dealership today. Tried to follow everyone's advice on here and asked to see out the door pricing and below is the info I received. Is this a good deal? What should I be attempting to negotiate?

2015 Toyota Camry LE
MSRP: $24020
Internet Special: *$19,634
We have a coupon this week for an additional $500 off!: *$19,134
Destination: $825
Dealer Processing fee: $299
MD Tag & Title: $279
MD Tax: $1,275.48
Total MD on the Road Price with rebate: $21,812.48

I checked out the TrueCar pricing and it seems a local dealer has pricing about 1000 dollars less than this one's TrueCar price (19,233 on the website I believe--and this one was 20,233). I assume that is not inclusive of tax? Thanks (I am trying to be as informed as possible before negotiating).
Keith

coles: does a used car sale at a dealership net them $1500 on the buy and $1500 on the trade in? (before their expenses)

So I checked the average asking price (Canadian black book) for my vehicle, and it's $7300 (2007 Mazda 3). The same exact site quotes the trade in value for the same car as $4000 to $5800 depending on the condition. So do I infer from this that the aprox profit the dealer looks to make is about $1500 per car? I want to trade it in, but now wonder about selling it privately for closer to $7000 and then buying the other used car I want separately. Something doesn't sit right with me with giving it to the dealership at a trade in of $5500 (something I was offered today at Mazda). Am I looking at this wrong?

If they made $1000 on my trade in and $1000 on the one I'm getting from them, I'm good with $2000 for them in this scenario. $3000 I take issue with.

You'll always make more by selling it privately. Are you OK with
the hassle of doing so?

You get to save some tax on the new car you get from the dealership if you trade in (through reduced purchase price), so there's that.

Yea the dealership definitely needs to profit on both ends as it's much more work for them.

I think trading in is a bad idea generally if you own your current car and aren't mid-lease/finance. If you're trading in a leased/financed car with the same dealership they will usually forgive extra KMs, minor damage etc.

Keith,

Do you have a link to the specific car online? Depends on the option packages and what it's equipped with, plus what rebates are you getting. Are you financing with Toyota?

At a glance:

-Destination is standard but make sure not already included on the invoice (unlikely), you can look this up online.
-Dealer processing fee is $300 in MD, but again make sure it's not already included, also you're probably paying tax on this
-Tax & taxes LDO standard

-There's a $7 new tire fee in my state and it looks like MD has a small fee too. This may seem petty but a quote isn't complete until every single fee is accounted for. I don't want to try and figure out any other forgotten fees at the dealership. Ask them if it's been included and if not, if any other fees were left off. If nothing else they'll know you're paying close attention and nitty like that.

-Coupon and internet special are just salesman noise.

Your almost-quote on the base price there is $19,100 but as typical they've applied rebates without telling you which or for how much unless you've discussed them already. Most likely they've applied a bunch regardless of what you actually qualify for. Here.

So for starters, sort out how you're financing and whether you'll qualify for (or want) Toyota's 4-year financing offer at 0%. Then read the fine print and figure out which rebates you can get, some combinations don't work.

Then go back to the dealership telling them to break it down with the rebates and specify to only include those that apply to you (tell them which obviously), ensure all fees are listed. If you intend on Toyota financing may as well tell them. Then you'll have a quote.

After that it's basically rinse & repeat getting quotes elsewhere. Remember to account for the differences in equipment from car to car. Camrys are common but you'll probably find some with little things like floor mats, cargo nets and some without, esp if you have it narrowed down to specific color(s) and trim.

At long last you'll have a handful of quotes to work with, and can start calling around to see how much lower they'll go. Don't be surprised if some of those quotes are somewhat far apart to start with.

In my case I'm going used for used. I think I may just try used for a month to see if there are bites and go from there.

Out of curiosity were my minimum numbers about right? Dealership has to make about $1500 on each end (two used cars in the scenario)? Just wondering where my wiggle room is to negotiate on this.

You can't count the spread twice.

Bump, looking for some advice.

I have settled on a final, out the door price on a car that is 700 miles from me (a pretty specific model, so its the best I could do), contingent on a pre-purchase inspection and test drive.

Does anyone have experience/knowledge regarding PPI companies like Your Mechanic, Carchex, Alliance Inspection, Inspect My Ride, etc.? I'd obviously like to use the most thorough and reputable one so I can potentially avoid going all the way there if necessary.

Thanks.

Edit: I could use a local shop as well, but my fear would be them having relationships with some dealers and not necessarily getting the best/most honest inspection done.

If it's a later model car that would still be under both the bumper to bumper warranty and the powertrain I wouldn't be very worried about an inspection. Have the dealer send you a Carfax/Autocheck report and make sure the vehicle hasn't had any previous collision damage. I encourage customers to take my cars and have them inspected. Even to mechanic shops we do a lot of business with. But when they are still under factory warranties the inspection is more of a mute issue since any issue regarding mechanical items will be fixed for free by the dealer.

It's original warranty is expired, but I have the carfax which looks good, 1 owner, 41k miles, all clean. All maintenance done at the dealer.

Only odd thing is they did all the factory scheduled maintenances about 10k miles ahead of time, like they did the 45k mile maintenance at 32k miles, which seems odd, but maybe that's normal I have no idea.

Looks like the front brakes have been replaced, but no report available on the rear brakes, tires and belts, so that's my main concern for now.

Anyways, I hired a local mechanic that works with this type of vehicle and he's doing an inspection/test drive on it tomorrow, so hopefully all goes well.

I have already agreed verbally and via email, nothing signed, on a final out-the-door price with the dealer pending the inspection, but if anything major comes back on the inspection, I'm not sure how to go about re-negotiating.

If everything shows up clean, I am very happy with our price point as of now.