Hey,

Just FYI, my dealer offered me $3000 less then what I sold my 02 Mini for. But I did get free floor mats!!

 

I think most people don't have the luxury of walking away from the deal once their car is at the dealership. They are either getting out of another lease and can't wait another 2 months for a different car, or have already made plans to sell their current vehicle. Rather than getting slammed by the dealer when the car comes in and you're all excited to get it, why not just agree to a final price beforehand, sign the pricing sheet (and have the dealer sign it as well), and know that you are locked in to that price and nothing can be changed? It took me all of an hour to hammer out a deal through email and have a price sheet faxed to me locking in my price and finance rate. That seems much better than ordering, going to the dealer to pick it up, and having them throw in a 3% finance markup on me. I just don't get that logic.

 

Sure.

But the people who say they negotiated everything before ordering probably had to sign something saying that they are purchasing this car.

I signed nothing. And yes, I may have to do the walk of shame and pay for my floor mats and pay full MSRP for the car at the end of the day. But I also know that I have no legal obligation to buy the car. If for some fluke my wife and I both get laid off in the next month, then we can just walk away free and clear.

I'm just saying that making people feel dumb for not negotiating every detail two months prior to delivery is not needed. As long as they didn't sign anything their chances of getting the car and free goodies is as good as it was for you. The goodies are just the enticement to sign something.

 

+1 to Wizeguy9999

I don't want to commit to anything two months before I've even seen the vehicle. Not to mention, I don't want to be lock into their financing without researching the bank, credit union and insurance company that I'm already affiliated with. Plus, this gives me two extra months to see how much of a down payment I'll actually have ready when the deal is made.

 

If the finance rate gets better somewhere else you can always not sign for the loan and apply at the other place. You can also negotiate that the deposit be refundable, eliminating any risk you may have. Not that tough.

 

I negotiated a price in advance, but that did not include any kind of commitment for down payment, financing etc. At one point I did lock in to a rate with MINI FS, but I don't have to finance with them & in fact am not as I've since gotten a better rate elsewhere.

If I had waited until now to negotiate the price of my car I'd be paying at least $500 more.

 

I'll let you in on this. I used to sell cars on the weekends to make some extra cash to pay for my wedding. I loved people who had this mentality. You wanted the instant gratification of knowing you were getting your Mini and knowing you got a "deal". I loved when I could get someone to sign today, because "for today only" you get "the deal".

The person who is a pain in the salesperson's side is the one who knows exactly what they are willing to pay for the car, and won't sign anything until that price is agreed upon.

Let me clue you in... you could have waited to sign things, and they probably would have given you the $500 to get your John Hancock on the papers at delivery. You just have to be able to walk away from the deal and I guarentee that you will either get the car for the price you want, or you simply won't buy a car today. The Horror!

 

Most people assume the "doc" fee is pure profit, and in some ways it could be looked at that way - but the dealer does pay someone to prepare all the paper work and shepard the docs thru the DMV and banks etc, and that's how they pay those people. There is a cost to do this work; some dealers think it should come out of the profit from the sale of the car, others feel they should charge the customer for it, depends on the dealer - but nothing's free.........

This whole discussion about how much you should pay for a car and what your trade's worth shows just how nuts the business of buying and selling cars has become in this country - and most of it favors the consumer, not the dealer. But bear in mind, there's not a huge amount of profit in the sale of these cars, even at full sticker. The cost of running a dealership today is enormous, what with the cost of building and maintaining a nice facility, paying all those people who make it tick, the costs of the cars on the lot - what few there might be - the costs of parts inventory, service dept employees, warranty clerks, SA's, MA's, managers, delivery drivers, car washers and polishers, even the guy who mows the grass, not to mention payroll taxes, property taxes, income taxes, local and national EPA, OSHA and other safety regs, and loaner cars! If they make $3,000 a car, but only get 20 cars a month to sell, that's a grand total of $60k a month to run the whole store - that wouldn't even cover payroll! It's no wonder service dept labor's over $100 an hour...........so if you have a good dealer in your town, be glad of it, and if you can afford to buy the car in the first place, why nickel and dime over the deal? Either you can afford it and you think the car is worth the price - or you can't/don't.

 

I'll agree to disagree. It's a sellers market on MINIs right now, and in my book your having been a part time salesperson in the past doesn't make you a pundit.

 

I can guarantee you that if I hadn't worked something out in advance I would have never gotten $800 off, free floor mats, free sport stripes, and NO MARKUPS on the lease financing. They were the ONLY dealer who would give me the base finance rate without jacking it up $80/month. If I had just walked in there when it arrived there's not a chance in hell they'd have agreed to that.

 

have you ever sold MINIs? Or any other very high demand car where there are few to no cars sitting on the lot?

 

So why did they agree to it in the first place? Do they love people who negotiate early?

Remember, they could have just taken that allocation built it how they wanted and it would have sold. After all... it's a sellers market right now according to a prior post.

Or did they give you a discount because you had to sign something? Also remember, if you didn't sign anything... you have no proof of the deal.

 

Wow, your chance to negotiate was before placing order and paying deposit.

All you can do now is refuse the car and hope you can recover your deposit and your Dealer will know he's 'got' you.

The car with your specs will sell quickly and your option would be to travel to another dealer and start over,
not even knowing if you could get a 'better' deal.

You will be 'stuck' with the dealers 'standard' prep fee as it is usually pre-printed on the 'bill-of-sale'.

Something you do still have control over would be that 'Finance' deal.

Dealership will be glad to do it for you as it can provide tham with a lot of additional 'profit' at your expense.

You need to (prior to delivery) shop around and find the best Finance Deal yourself.
This does not mean that you can't still take the Dealer's Finance offer, if it is to your advantage.

The other 'expense' that you still have control over would be the 'add-on's that will be offered with your delivery,
again pre-research on your part can protect you from being 'taken to the cleaners' in the Dealer's Closing Office.

Someone reported in here about $750 Nitrogen Tire Fill Fermin MINI just offered it to me (in Email) for $34.95 and that included Rotate.
Costco offers it for free though.

Here is one website you can access to arm yourself for your 'Closing', pay particular attention to the 'Extended Warranty' section (link)
as this is another area where they like to 'shake-you-down'.

 

Let me agree with some points people are making:

(1) Minis are in VERY high demand.
(2) Don't take dealer financing. You should have had the financing done before you shopped for a car in my opinion. (Financing and price are two seperate things that people love to lump together).
(3) The stuff sold in the finance office is always over-priced. You can shop around for most of this stuff afterwords if you REALLY have to have it.
(4) Trade-Ins at the dealer will never net you what you could get for it if you sold it yourself. Take care of that and treat your new car as it's own transaction.

But I don't see how anyone can disagree with the fact that dealers could take zero orders right now, and they'd almost certainly still sell all their allocation at full MSRP.

So why do they offer a discount to anyone at anytime?

Please don't lay into me unless you can answer that question.

 

I've purchased/leased 5 new/CPO cars previously. That's why I got MSRP and they erased their $500 "get ready" markup. I ordered a JCW. Soon after I had my signed sales order, the sales manager remarked how he could/should have sold it for $1k markup. Maybe he was serious, maybe not. If I had waited until now to negotiate price, that's likely what I would be paying. Why not? Were I to walk away now they could get that.

 

So you are saying that you got a discount because of your relationship due to prior purchases. That's great. Congrats on the discount. (Not being patronizing... truly I'm glad you got it).

Do you think they would they have stuck it to you if you had waited to negotiate? I'm guessing if you waited they would have said, "Well, we ordinarily wouldn't do this... but since we've worked with you before, we'll the $500 prep for free. I should charge you an extra $1k because I could probably get that for it later today. Haha!"

My only point is that if they know they can sell it for MSRP at a minimum, why would they give the discount to the person who negotiates two months earlier vs. the one negotiating today.

BTW. I'm not arguing against getting the deal done early. I'm only trying to point out that people who did not are not as stuck as others are making it seem.

 

Sorry. Didn't see this pop up. If you consider the Prius when it came out a high demand car, then yes.

 

I would think you signed their contract on ordering.
Nothing says you have to accept on delivery as previously stated. Just make sure you keep copies of everything.
My Mini arrived in my hands two weeks ago and we (The dealer) are still working out loose ends.
On delivery the first hiccup was trying to give me lower than what was promised at ordering. Not my MA's fault, but the Dealer Manager. They claimed to lower MSRP to fix issue, but then paid a "lower" amount to the payoff bank and keep the difference. If I had not contacted the bank for the actual payoff I would have missed this and hundreds of dollars.

 

Wow! We could argue this until the cows come home. And for what? A thousand bucks for (what is for most of us, including me) our dream car? Big deal. So after paying around 30k already, you get a few bucks in freebies or, on the flip side, you pay a little extra and walk away with nothing more than your poor sports car.

From my point of view, none of it matters because in a few weeks I'll be driving off the lot with the sweetest ride of my life!

 

Will you run for president? You found the one issue that we can all agree on. We may differ on how we get there... but we will all love our Mini's eventually.

 

I guess you'll just have to let us know how you come out in October (very well, I hope).

I don't know what my dealer would have done had I waited until later to settle on price. Probably not a $1K "market adjustment" but possibly the $500 get ready fee. None of us will ever know, so it's a moot point now.

 

Oddly enough I really didn't have to sign a single thing. My Mini dealer has been very good with working with me.

That sucks to hear about your trade in. As long as you have the paperwork that was final, you have what you need to clear it up. It just sucks to have to do that. Hopefully your Mini helps assuage your anger.

 

Haha, thanks! I already love mine and she's not even born yet.

One more small point: I recently negotiated a deal on a Mazda and the finance guy was a real patronizing pain in the ****. Currently, I'm working with the nicest MA in VA and ordering my car was easier than checking out of Walmart. I'll pay whatever it takes for that kind of service.

 

I'll let you know. My MA and I have talked since February about the JCW coming out, and the entire time I've made it clear that when I come to the table I'm not paying a dime over MSRP, and my MA has always assurred me that is fine.

So I may not get any discount. But I will walk away if it's over MSRP. I'll let you know how it goes.

 

Just FYI, Nitrogen tire fills are a rip off. Nitrogen does absolutely nothing for your ride, or your tires.

http://blogs.consumerreports.org/car...en-tires-.html