Lol first quote was $10k for trade in. Gotta keep up appearances, say I need $2k more (pretend to be seriously negotiating) and want the car for a day or two to see how it holds up. No attempt to negotiate on sale price of the bimmer, she must be drooling. "Talking to manager" now, will see.

Isn't there something weird with sales tax, where if you sell a car privately you have to pay sales tax on it, but when you trade a car in they treat it as one transaction/a reduction in price, so (depending on state) there could be a pretty significant difference in equal value prices for private sale vs dealer trade in?

Without knowing a lot more about used car pricing, I can't make myself believe this is worth the time. The amount of depreciation your car actually sees (plus any marginal cost of gas) during the couple hundred extra miles shouldn't be knocking down the sale price of your car that much. Also, if you are driving that much for work each day, are you getting mileage/tax reductions that you will forfeit if you're not using your own car?

You're talking about 2.5ish scams at 1hr-ish per scam (I'm guessing not counting any probability of failure, or commute time, and honestly an underestimate of time in general), so something let's say around 3 hours of your time a week to pull this off. Even assuming the finances in the last paragraph made this make sense, I can't see how, if you value your time, this would be worth it, unless you actually just enjoy the process.

edit: clock's ticking! looks like you've already been in this dealership for at least 40 minutes!

Clock is def ticking.

Salesperson got her manager, he was reluctant to do it but seems enticed. He's now talking to his boss. First time it's escalated to this level, makes me slightly uncomfortable but I'm not sure why it does. Think it's because this car is significantly better than other cars I've done this with.

TBH the sales process is fun for me (esp when the stress is completely removed), as is the satisfaction of ****ing with generally scummy people, as is driving a cool different car for a few days.

Holy **** it's happening, general sales manager approved it until tomorrow evening...getting dealer plates on it now...

cit,

I don't see how you get 1hr-ish per scam. 45min-1.5h per scam at dealership, plus transit time to/from and I imagine a little time talking to the salesperson at the end, too. Seems like easily 2-3 hours per scam.

I just got quoted $10k for a car I almost sold today for $16k. I could probably get that up to $13.5k with an hour or two of negotiating, but no tax incentives on this car can justify the 15-20% price difference.

**** blown. Guy demanded I sign a contract with a 75 mile limit agreement, among other stipulations I wasn't concerned with. Said I was worried about incidental damage and I didn't want a rock ding to cost me $1000 and he wouldn't budge, needed the signature. I obv didn't care about that, just didn't want the mileage limit but couldn't think of a way to target that without raising serious eyebrows.

He outright said if I were to have asked for a used Focus that I "could keep it for a week," but that a car like this normally never leaves the lot unless it gets sold or put on a test drive. Said he would make an exception because, "I looked like a nice young man." Privilege FTW.

So back to used focuses or civics, think anything north of $15k isn't going to pay off enough to be +EV for me. Time investment is much less than what this required (over an hr) and success rate is nearly 100%.

Lol, if you looked like a dude that should be looking at that car, they'd let you have it; you just ran against someone that isn't clueless and you even bought his bs line about being a nice young man (that was code for, your ass ain't buying so I'm going to throw the hammer down and see what shakes out).

Don't think you've been following along. He was going to let me have it, just after signing a release. And I don't know how much better fit I'd have to appear; well spoken well dressed blue eyed guy.

This is entirely possible. You're kind of overly verbose and tedious to read, so think of the adult figures from the Peanuts cartoon transposed to words, rather than voice, and that's your posting style.

Just after signing a release? That's kind of like you were going to get some pussy, just after hitting a Vegas wedding chapel.

Question for 27. I see a non-OOT mod put my name in bold in the Worst OOT Poster Thread. Don't know if he meant to place it here (which is the only thread you stated in bold means contained). Do non-OOT mods have authority to contain in OOT?

I mean, feel free to pay attention if you care to have a strongly worded opinion while not looking foolish.

Pretty sure you're not contained. He was just pointing out you're a bad poster. Don't look too much into it.

Well, you know me. I'm a stickler for rules, and I'll kindly remind the police of the rules when the situation calls for it.

I did pay attention to that post, and you had zero chance. He's just trying not to call you out directly and give you a chance to save face. They were laughing their asses off when you drove off the lot.

Zero chance of what?! I sign the paper and get a free 335i rental for the day. I just needed a longer leash than 75 miles, something which I didn't know how to ask for without exposing my stupid scam.

Next time I'll go back to more economical options. I'll still get to **** with used car salespeople, still will get free gas and access to a free car, and will not have to worry about how many miles I put on it.

Getting a rental. He was onto you, hence the stipulation. His job is to qualify people. You lost.

I still don't get your deal... waste all your time to drive around in different cars for a few days?

Think of it as DiB doing the equivalent of using the false promise of a future long-term commitment to test-drive different vaginas when he plans to keep his (wife's) current vagina just because he wants save a little wear and tear on his current model and have the novelty of trying out an upgrade for free.

This seems like a lot more trouble than it's worth.

fixed

Isn't DIB the one who said that performance sports car people laughed at people with luxury sports cars? Now he's spending hours trying to test drive a 335i for a day?

Yes.

You can even have the dealership cut you a check for your trade-in and finance the car you're buying, but will still only pay tax on the purchased car minus the trade-in.

you are supposed to pay tax when you sell a car privately? oops :/

DiB,

I won't lie, I'm kinda looking forward to your next test drive trip report. I think they are pretty interesting/entertaining.

I'm afraid it will be quite boring as it doesn't seem that the EV of big game hunting will work out in my favor. More specifically, the potential benefit of taking down an M3 wouldn't justify the significant increase in time investment and chance of failure. While I do thoroughly enjoy emotionally removing myself from the sales process and trolling scummy sales people, the primary goal is to land free gas and a car I can drive the **** out of guilt free. I'm hoping to save a few thousand miles on my odometer and a few hundred bucks on gas over 2-3 months. While this alone isn't enough to justify the exercise it's definitely of primary importance; the trolling and enjoyment of sampling different cars is just gravy.

That said, I'm gonna need to keep working on reducing the total time investment. For instance this Civic I'm driving I'm going to return and not go through the "I'm gonna try to sell my car privately first..." bit. Instead I'll just ask for my keys and bounce. I'm hoping to get the total time investment (driving back and forth, all negotiating, etc) to under 40 minutes per transaction and total rental time to 60 hours over the course of 3 "deals." It's ambitious but I think I can do it.

Unfortunately I think I have to try to negotiate at least with one counter offer to be taken seriously, and the "Let me talk to my manager..." BS always takes at least 10 minutes. Kills my efficiency. Might try to skip this altogether next time by taking 2-5 minutes to ID a car that had been for sale for a long time which they would not miss and would be happy to have a shot at selling. Might then be able to skip the 10 minute ice and get a 72+ hour keep. The more I write the more I think this is a good idea...