Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Buying a Car

It is an interesting process. So much psychology involved, or so it seems. I have been looking up some articles online about the best way to negotiate a good price on a car you want. Most of the websites I have found will say, no matter what happens, don't be afraid to walk away from a car. As soon as the dealer knows that you want a car REALLY bad, they will use it to their advantage. Do not become emotionally attached to a vehicle that you want.

That is what I am telling myself tonight. I found a car I REALLY like today. It has low mileage on it, not a bad price (a bit higher than we were hoping to spend), and it felt very nice today on the test drive. I took Jay back tonight to show him the car, and he agreed that it is a nice looking car. We are hoping to go back to the dealership tomorrow evening and hopefully hammer out a deal that is to our liking. That is the part that scares me. Maybe not scares me, but intimidates me. I am pretty sure if I wasn't married and wanting to buy a car I would find a trusted male friend/family member to take along and do the haggling for me. I have never been good at dickering. Even when I go to a garage sale, I see a price tag on something and expect to pay that price. I know that car dealerships expect people to dicker. I know that the asking price is the most they expect to get for the car. It is not actually the value of the car. Of course they need to make some money on the deal, but I believe they have a lot more wiggle room than they like us to believe.

One of my coworkers was telling me the other day that she has gone as far as to take a car for a test drive and drive it on to a different car lot and tell the sales man there that the other guys would give her this car for $xxxx, how much are you willing to drop your price on a comparable car? I think that takes more guts than I have. One of the tactics that I read about for negotiating was shopping around at other lots and finding comparable cars with lower prices. The problem I am having is that most cars I have found while shopping have significantly higher kms than this one does or fewer options. It is hard to find something entirely comparable with a lower price than what this car is set at. The other thing they said is to make sure you find out what the actual value of the vehicle is. I managed to find a site called VMR Canadian Used Car Prices. When I entered the particular car I am looking at, with the features that it has, it was only about $700 more at the dealership than that website said it should be worth at this point. So I hope we are able to talk them down a little bit at least. I don't want to walk away from this car, but it is just a car, and there are other cars.

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