Hey there;

Short version of the story:

I am in the midst of negotiating for a G37 Coupe Auto Sport. I am interested in what deals other people have been able to get.

I am not that good of a negotiator. My career has been built on being as transparent as possible, and unfortunately, that carries on into car negotiating.

Thus, I have not been able to "trick"/"strong arm" or otherwise bully the dealership into anything but a lukewarm deal at best. I can't even seem to wrestle the factor to dealer incentive out of them.

So, as it stands, I am being offered $48 680 Cnd with 1.9% financing over 3 years for a car that MSRPs at: $50 790, invoices at $46 659 before a $1500 F2D incentive.

Am I doing well (probably not), or am I being put through the wringer (probably)?

Thanks in advance

John

 

ya all they are doing is giving you the 1500 discount. go in ask them to split the differance between invoice and sticker them get the 1500 off of that. Go directly to the sales manager. do not talk to the sales man anymore. tell him that is your offer and if he will do that he has a deal. also tell him you want the winter mats throwen in for free. If they say no just tell him to give you a call when he is willing to accept your deal. And if he accepts write the numbdown and make sure that it includes all the filing fees. do not let them add on more crap after you settle on the price. Be willing to walk out. they will call you back in a day or 2. trust me they will.

 

Yep, that is what I am going to do. I am just going to leave him an email saying that I want the car for $47 225, all things included, except taxes of course. And they can throw in the winter mats....that seems fine.

Else, I will let them know, that I will just take the BMW 135 that I was actually loving before the G37 Sport showed me the way. They have until May 31 to decide.

I am not very happy with their methods anyhow. The sales manager did come out to me and showed me some print out (I am thinking it was an attempt at a boggus invoice) that showed the cost of the vehicle (roughly $46 800....not the $46 659 I have seen from carcostcanada) with other costs of business (I guess cars need to be inspected when they arrive in Canada) totalling $500. I have heard of this from multiple sources on multiple topics, so I was willing to accept that as legit. I think he was trying to throw numbers around trying to make the F2D disappear.

That was their response to me revealing that I knew the invoice and F2D incentive.

So, when I tried to consult another Infiniti dealership to see if they could match or better the offer; the other dealership said "that is an excellent offer you have there, you should take it". No skin off my nose, I understand that they should stick together, its good business.

But, then, that second dealership sent an email to the first dealership and someone carbon copied me. I don't care that they were talking to each other. However, the carbon copying to me, and the response of "we are aware of this person" seemed a little condescending.

I am not going to take it personally, though I haven't decided yet if I may act like I have taken it that way. However, it makes me wonder what their customer service will be like if and when I have an issue.

By the way, I don't have time to deal with regular vehicle faults the way I have heard BMW has....so I won't go BMW right now. But, I will be damned if I jump to throw money at Infiniti until they fix this.

Unfortunately, I don't know what my alternatives are........Lexus? No one else seems to hit this particular market at the same level.

 

What city are you guys in? I got way more than $1500 when I bought my G37S + tech three weeks ago. I'm in Vancouver.

 

Edmonton here

 

Market conditions change, because of this, it only matters what people who've recently bought the car paid. If someone buys a car when next year's model is already out, they likely got a better deal than someone buying at the start. You shouldn't negotiate each item separately, like the F2D incentive, just negotiate on final cost OTD. This prevents confusion.

1 of the big mistakes people make is only dealing with the sales manager. I used to work in sales at 2 different new car dealers, sales managers are very good at convincing you there's no better deal possible. Their closing ratio is insanely high, yet the truth is they don't give you a better price than the sales guy, because the bottom price they tell the sales guy is also usually the true bottom price the dealer is willing to sell at. The sales guy can just offer this bottom price from the start, but when they do this, people never believe them & think there must be much more room to haggle if that's just the sales guy's 1st offer. Even if I say "you can have it for $200 over invoice", they'd assume I was making tons of $ & insist on haggling much more. If I started from MSRP & allowed them to negotiate from there, they'd think it was a great deal, even if it ended up being much more than the $200 over invoice I offered the 1st guy.

When I was in sales, if I told someone "that is a good offer, you should take it", it meant that our dealership believed the person wasn't serious. In most cases, it had to do with guys claiming they got offered $10 K off on a car where the difference between MSRP & invoice was $5 K. It wasn't because of collusion between dealers, in this cut-throat economy, they want to steal sales from one another, not collude to help another dealer sell. This was the case in the GTA, where there are tons of Infiniti dealers. I believe in this case, it's possible the 2 dealers have the same owner, or that there's so few options in Edmonton that the 2 dealers are colluding to keep prices artificially high.

 

I know this is going to come as a shock, but the policy of making people haggle for a deal leads to much more sales. Whenever I readily offered the bottom price right off the bat, people assumed it was the starting point for negotiations & would leave frustrated when I insisted I already offered the lowest price, that it wasn't a starting point. They'd think they weren't getting a good deal. When they go to another dealer, even though the other dealer was only matching the deal but not beating it, they'd realize it actually was a great deal. By this time however, since the other dealer is matching the best price, there's no reason to drive all the way back when they could just get the same deal there. It's for that reason that so many dealers are reluctant to readily offer the best price, they lose so many sales that way via what I described above.

Dealers in each area actually do know the going prices of other dealers, they know if they're 'in line' with other transaction prices. At the time, our bottom price was as low as anyone else in the GTA.

When the 1st price you give someone is MSRP, & you negotiate from there, they end up thinking they got a great deal due to how much they can move from MSRP to the end price. If you start off at your lowest price, even if you explain to them it represents X discount, they think they're not getting a deal if you don't allow them to haggle further. Many people say they want a hassle-free experience, yet when you readily offer it, they don't believe it. Yet when you start off at a higher price, they believe they're getting a great deal at whatever end price they end up negotiating to.

 

At the same time, I must say that many sales guys don't readily offer the best price because they just don't want to. If they offer every car for $200 over invoice for example (or whatever the lowest poss price was), exactly how much would they earn in commission at the end of the month? Not much, not enough to make a living. Each sales guy just doesn't sell enough cars in a month to make a living selling every car at the lowest possible cost.

In every business, the goal is to maximize profit. Sales guys want to maximize profit, so they can make commission. I don't think it's fair that people hold them to a different standard from other businesses. In no other business do people expect to know what the dealer cost is, or accuse people of trying to maximize profit. In car sales, guys who try to maximize profit are villainized, even though it's their job.

Of course, it's fair to villainize them if they're attempting to maximize profit via lying & unethical means. About half of the sales staff I would say are not nice people, from getting to know them personally. There were actually quite a few people surprisingly who were willing to buy a car from me at full price if they really liked me, but I would leave my office & scribble on a good discount for them & then take it to the manager. In this sense, I did not make a good sales guy because I didn't maximize profit & my commission. For a decent amount of time, I delivered more cars than any of the other sales guys there, but I didn't like some of my co-workers whom I felt were being very unethical. I also didn't appreciate the pressure/anger from the manager, despite being a top seller. They would insist we keep calling back customers every single day, until that customer was willing to return to the dealer. It was harassment in my view, & I'd often ignore them on this issue.

 

Thanks for that insight.

My experience here though has been of a nice enough sales-person and what I recognized as a mildly-condescending sales-manager.

I genuinely feel bad that for the sales-person because he was young, didn't seem to have that killer's edge and really wanted to see how hard I could drive the car. Of course, I recognize that this could just be a great sales mechanism, but I don't think its a dishonest approach. I would never begrudge someone for "being friendly". He was a little soft on getting the sales manager involved, in the sense that he went and directly talked to him a little pre-emptively. That made me think that he was a junior sales person. No problem with that.

However, the sales manager, when he came out with the "invoice-like paper" telling me how he had to pay for the whole world before he could even put the car on the lot, I recognized someone who earned his living through making people feel uneducated in the car industry and somewhat over-entitled. That doesn't work for me.

As for the necessity to maintain a haggling mechanism to determine price, I agree that it is fairly unique to car purchasing. I wouldn't haggle on my groceries, clothing purchases, gas prices. But its not terribly unique. I will haggle on expensive quality furniture, and definitely on house prices. But, beyond that, I wonder why the industry would continue to maintain a haggling mechanism for individuals that come into the dealership already knowing the invoice and current F2D, F2Purchaser rebates etc. Why not just say: "Hey, we figure you are probably serious about buying this car. Recognizing that, lets get this sale out of the way fast enough that we can get back to selling cars to people that need to be convinced. Here, let us give you invoice, split the F2D and add $500 for our expenses." 46 409. I would have walked out of there with a car for that price, and they would be down one more vehicle with plenty on the lot to keep them busy for the rest of the month.

Maximizing profit = make the highest number of sales along with the greatest per-unit profit. But, it also means reduce your costs. Cars on lots cost money to the dealer.

If someone advertised: "Only $500 over invoice, and we split the secret discounts with you" I wonder if their would be a lineup outside the dealership

Oh well, that's just my lunatic rantings, I got to get back to work

 

I can tell you that I got more than double off MSRP than $1500 three weeks ago for my G37S 7AT + tech pkg + pearl white. It would not make a whole lot of sense for me to put exactly how much, since we're in different regions. I'm sure there are price differences/incentives, as well as internal pressures (high volume vs small dealerships), and who you're dealing with. A good friend was my salesperson, hence the good deal.

Good luck.

Edit... my tactic... deal numbers on a dealer demo, then tell them to give you the same deal on a new car! Worked for me hahah

 

I'm looking at buying a 2010 G37S coupe automatic this month. Anyone have the Car Cost report for this vehicle.

Also, anyone know the financing rate and incentives for this vehicle?

I think Canadian Car Prices: Canadian New & Used Car Prices - Car Quotes Canada list the financing rate at 1.9% for 36 months.

Thanks,
P