We bought a new pickup – There’s a picture of it just to the left and I absolutely LOVE it!!! But can I be honest with you? I am not a fan of the car buying process. New or Used, it doesn’t matter. I have purchased both in my 52 trips around the sun, and I I’ve never driven away from a dealership thrilled. Oh, I love the new ride but typically, I’ve driven away feeling misled, manipulated, and taken advantage of at the dealership.

 I feel disadvantaged on the sales floor – with its cubicles and sales team running back and forth like ants serving the shadowy queen on the elevated platforms. I feel powerless in the negotiation game, being told the dealership is losing money on my offer when the ornate buildings and free refreshments tell me otherwise. And don’t even get me started about the finance guys who sits behind TWO monitors  – selling their bundles of protections by masterfully weaving together a narrative of vehiclular horrors that people on the sales floor, just moments ago, told me was so perfect….I cringe even typing it. It all feels so…. Dirty. But eventually, we find ourselves in a position where a different vehicle is again necessary, so back into the overwhelming swells of the car buying ocean we go.

There is SO much information out there about cars and car buying. The TV ads, the car sites, the review sites, the consumer advocate sites, the dealerships all swirl into a whirlpool of confusion. But in the midst of the maelstrom, I learned a few things that made this process different this time – still unpleasant and frustrating – but a little less so. And, if I may, I’d like to take our remaining moments together to share some of those so that hopefully you may find help when it’s your time to dive into these shark infested waters:

First, I’m already married – Or to say it another way, I was very intentional this time to not become emotionally bonded to a specific vehicle. This time, we listed out all of the features that were important (color, drive train, interior, exterior, etc.) and utilized an app called CoPilotSearch to do the comparison work for us. www.CoPilotSearch.com provided a feature-match percentage, pricing insights and, most importantly, told me which of my desired features the vehicle didn’t have. It regularly monitored the market within a specified distance of our zip-code and sent emails on inventory or pricing changes. The “.com” websites do this too, but many make their money from dealership referrals so be aware of this if you use those sites.

I control me, not the dealer – This was the game changer for me. One of the things I learned in my research is that dealership sales teams are well trained to control the process from start to finish. Their desire is to pull potential leads into their stores so they can wield this control and get you to buy from them. One of the ways we were able to overcome this was to shop multiple vehicles and locations via email and only agree to go to the store once we had an agreeable deal. Not surprisingly, dealers didn’t follow our request for an email. Even when we specifically asked to communicate this way, they insisted on talking on the phone (again, they wanted to control me by controlling the process). We overcame this by dividing the communications. My wife took the phone calls and I communicated by text and email. This way, we too had a “manager” we had to talk to before a deal could be accepted and any attempts to coerce control were always met with, “I need to talk with my spouse.”

Cars are expensive – The bottom line is that cars cost a boatload of money and all of the research that I’ve done indicates that dealers don’t make a lot of money on the cars themselves (Don’t get me wrong, they still make money, just not as much as I thought). One friend in the business explained it to me this way, “The internet has changed everything. We have to price our cars aggressively or people simply won’t call us. They’ll go somewhere else.” But logic dictates that money is being made in the car business and in some cases lots of it. So where do dealerships make their money? I found it’s a combination of things: First, Volume – Some dealerships sell lots of cars. More cars sold at even lower margin = more money. Also, there seems to be unadvertised factory-to-dealer incentives that that dealerships can make for selling more new cars, providing excellent service, etc. Financing is another piece of the puzzle – Banks pay handsomely for originating loans and dealerships masterfully work this system to extract the best interest rates for the lenders that they can. It seems that it’s best to secure your financing with a lender beforehand but also be willing to look at dealership financing as a bidding competition. Finally, Bundled Extras – When you’re in the business office, they offer bundled extras like extended warranties, gap coverage, glass repair, etc. masterfully presented to coax you into buying more. To combat this, learn three simple words – No Thank You.

Assemble a Team that’s on YOUR side – All of this was enough to convince me that the car buying PROCESS, like that of a casino, is stacked against you and simultaneously designed to  convince that you have a chance a great deal – you don’t. Our only ally in the process was the application of knowledge. The more we knew, and the more we used that knowledge, the better our chance of finding a fair price. We found several allies as we worked through this process: Time – Cars are depreciating assets and the more time that passes between when a dealership purchases and sells that car, the greater risk that their asset depreciates. Waiting can be a powerful ally once you find a vehicle because the longer that vehicle sits on the lot, the more likely that dealer will want to convert it to cash.  Flexibility – Knowing what we wanted but being flexible enough to shift between options helped us isolate the non-negotiable (4×4 for example) and the desired options (Blue, but Red would work if the right deal came along). Finally, that knowledge was refined by multiple websites, two of which deserve special note. First, is www.CoPilotSearch.com noted above. The second is www.yourautoadvocate.com. This father-son team collectively has over 45 years in the business and they share it via their website and YouTube channel. They also provide 10 free insight reports per month on specific VIN’s that tell you into how long the vehicle has been for sale and their suggested price for making an offer. The information gleaned here is well worth the time it will take to learn.

We bought a new pickup recently. It was an interesting, but less frustrating, journey for us and in the end we have a vehicle that works well for our family at one of the best out the door prices we could find. By sharing this with you, I sincerely hope that it will help you when it’s time for you to jump into those waters. And, if I can assist in any way, please feel free to reach out. I will do my best to help.