QOTD: How Do You Beat the Dealer?

by Tim Healey

Published: September 3rd, 2024

Last week our podcast covered car-buying tips.

So, naturally, I am interested in what tips and tricks you use when you car shop.

Do you do some of what Lauren Fix and I discussed? Do you have other tips and tricks you like that we didn't cover?

This is a pretty straightforward one and you know what to do.

Sound off below.

[Image: ViDI Studio/Shutterstock.com]

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Tim Healey

Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.

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6 of 45 comments

Slavuta on Sep 04, 2024
One thing is easy - conceal the real condition of your trade car. This is when you bring your car to a dealer because you don't want to sell it to a private party and screw them up. Dealer checks the car, finds nothing, his issue. For buying, good deals are where slow sales, on the special days like labor day, when dealer will do everything for you to drive away. Talk about OOTD price. What they include into it - their issue. But you calculate how much of that holdback you leave to a dealer. My last 2 cars were $6K under MSRP. Probably means nothing but better than "invoice price"

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- Slavuta on Sep 04, 2024
  ^^ with that said, not likely dealer will lose any money. It just means they get even more incentives to move it.
  
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- Lou_BC on Sep 04, 2024
  Yeah, fraud works every time. 0_o
  
  1
- Slavuta on Sep 06, 2024
  And when dealer sell you a lemon?? What is the difference that I bring a car that burns a lot of oil and not tell dealer vs dealer sells me a car that burns a lot of oil 50k miles down the road?
  
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Bpscarguy on Sep 06, 2024
Do your research and be willing to travel to get what you want, and what is the best deal. What good is it if you get your vehicle 5 miles from home if you overpay and its not what you want? Just to say you got it down the street? Most of us keep them quite awhile so better to get the best deal possible (wherever that may be) even if it means travelling for a day to go get it. 4 of my last 5 vehicles have been from out of state which required a day of travel (in some cases a one way flight) and then a day of driving home. Totally worth a day of travel for a good deal and exactly what I was looking for.

1 Reply
- Ravenchris on Sep 07, 2024
  Very good advice.
  
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