Professional negotiators

[mattbell]

What is it about selling cars that attracts the most pathetic and obnoxious salespeople on the planet?  Their attempts to kiss up to me and dissuade me from buying cheaper cars are so transparent it's laughable. 

It turns out that you can hire an independent negotiator who knows all the ins and outs of the car sales process to handle the purchase for you.  They call 5 dealers, and get them all negotiating against each other.  While I could do this myself, they know exactly how to work the system because they do it thousands of times per year.  I, on the other hand, have done it zero times.  The service is $190, but I figure they can probably do at least $190 better than I can on price even if I follow their techniques, and it will save me several hours. 

http://www.checkbook.org/auto/carbarg.cfm

I'm yet to find any unhappy reviews of them. 

At this point the finalists are:
Scion xB
VW Rabbit
Toyota Matrix

Comments

[littlecorrie.livejournal.com]

Supposedly AAA has a car buying service too. Might be cheaper if you're already a member? I only know about it from people at work but it comes with their recommendation.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

Thanks -- I'll check it out.

[xleste.livejournal.com]

How has this been working for you? Did you go with AAA or the Consumers Checkbook one?
I'm considering buying a new car too, a Toyota Camry Hybrid, and car negotiations are really something I know nothing about.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

I haven't made my final car decision. That's probably a week away. However, I looked into AAA's service. While free, it is an opaque service in that they tell you to go to a particular dealer and buy the car there. The dealers have paid money to AAA to be part of their program, so it's a bit of a biased deal. Thus it eliminates the negotiation, but you don't know if you are getting a good deal.

In contrast, the Consumers Checkbook one costs you $190 up front, but they are independent of the dealers and will call several dealerships to see who will give you the best deal. You can even choose what dealers you have them call or not call. (You wouldn't necessarily want to buy your car from an asinine dealer even if it's the best deal!)

Checkbook basically implements the strategy Patri used of getting the dealers to negotiate against each other and handling all discussions over the phone instead of in person so that they can't use pressure tactics.

You can check out dealer reviews on yelp.com, and it will give you a sense of which dealers will be friendly and helpful vs pushy and incompetent. (The guy at Melody Toyota in San Bruno was good)

Also, cars.com and yahoo autos are good for information.

Brain dump over. Hope this helps!

(ps Julie just walked in and said that the AAA car buying service is not good.)

[radiantsun.livejournal.com]

That's pretty awesome.

Scion has Pure Pricing

[(Anonymous)]

If you're talking about new cars, you're wasting your money on this service in regards to Scion sales. They have what they call "Pure Pricing", the price on the website is the price you will get. No-haggle, straight-forward. The guy before you and after will be getting the same price.

Re: Scion has Pure Pricing

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

Good to know. thanks.