Buying a new (2012) F150 and having trouble getting beyond the MSRP less incentives

[Addy]

We live in a smaller town about 2 hrs outside Ottawa. We buy a new vehicle every 15/16 years. It's time for a new one.

I have emailed a few dealers, went for a test drive and said we were flexible on certain options in hopes of getting a better deal than MSRP. They won't budge other than the Ford incentives. Am I going about this the wrong way? Should I simply state what I want and email a bunch of dealers around and see what they come back with? I have the cash, ready to buy today if I get a good enough price.

[OptsyEagle]

The problem in the car sales business is the salesmen/women that you have to deal with. Their sole purpose in the process is to get you to overpay for a car. If they do, they get a nice fat commission. If they don't, they don't get a commission and hence they are as well off in this last scenerio as they are in you not buying a car at all. Actually they are probably better off since they don't have to explain to their bosses why they are such bad negotiators.

I doubt many are going to send you a better price in an email that you can simply take to another dealer and give them the benefit of pretending to beat it. You are probably going to have to go down to the lot and start the process in person. I doubt there is any one dealer that can or cannot offer any price another dealer can offer. You could offer to finance the purchase through them as a sweetener. Only offer this at the last point of negotiation, when you are stuck on a price difference. You can always pay off the loan once you leave the parking lot, however, since the dealer gets a commission on the loans, they may drop the price by some amount of that commission. I doubt it would be more then a couple hundred dollars though. Investigate if their is a pre-payment fee within the loan before you attempt this.

Other then that. Good luck.

[Addy]

Thanks OptsyEagle, you have a good point. We've been to the (one) Ford dealer in town, but are heading to Ottawa Thursday to see a few other dealers. Hopefully that will get us a better price. I'm not very impressed with what I was offered by the local salesperson (MSRP less Ford and the $1000 off for being a Costco member incentives).

There is a dealer in Toronto who will probably give us a better price but the customer service is so awful and they will only give me a verbal quote (which is bad at that "yes we can get you that truck for around $31K). I would be worried about getting there and having them try and tack on a bunch of charges once they have us there (6 hr drive one way from where we live).

[OptsyEagle]

They may even just lie to you directly (not in writing though). When you call them on it they will just look at you smiling. The best way I have determined that the salesmen is unethical is if he is still selling cars. lol. All the ethical ones were fired by the dealerships a long time ago.

Someday Walmart will take over this business and those salespeople can slither on to other crimes. As I said before, there really is no need for the car salesman except to get the customer to overpay, so someday a retailer like Walmart will identify this opportunity and put them all out of business. Until then, we pretty much don't have much choice but to assume the position and prepare to receive. Once the last ethical salesman was fired, you and I do not have many other choices ... and unfortuneately, they know it.

[rd_aaron]

Isn't there somewhere online you can find out the invoice price? Make sure you don't pay more than a couple percent over invoice as even if they sell it at the invoice price, they're still making money. Shop around for sure. Considering they are trying to get rid of all their 2012 inventory now that the 2013s are coming in, they should be willing to negotiate a lot lower than MSRP. I also wouldn't mention the Costco thing up front unless they ask. If they know they're already giving up $1000 before they start negotiating, they'll probably be harder to deal down.

Have you considered popping down into the US to buy your truck? There are lots of guides online of how to do this, and it could save you thousands.

[iherald]

Try CarcostCanada.com My Mom used that site, it says what the actual cost of the vehicle is to the dealer as well as all dealer incentives (the ones they don't tell you about.) I thin it costs liek $40, and it saved my Mom about $5,000 more than they had originally offered her.

[Potato]

(MSRP less Ford and the $1000 off for being a Costco member incentives).

How good a deal do you expect to be able to pull? The Costco price doesn't look too bad on the surface: you can get the CCC invoice to say for sure, but there's probably a ~5-6% markup, so if it's a $31k truck, that's ~$1500-1900 in markup, and you managed to capture most of it without a lot of painful haggling... I might try offering MSRP less the factory incentives less $1500 and see if they'll take that, but I don't know how much more you can realistically squeeze out of them...

[Addy]

Got a 2013 F150 Platinum for 43K Pays to shop around and negotiate! Potato the invoice price is meaningless, too many people get scammed by this "pay only the invoice price" or "below invoice"

[Four Pillars]

Got a 2013 F150 Platinum for 43K Pays to shop around and negotiate! Potato the invoice price is meaningless, too many people get scammed by this "pay only the invoice price" or "below invoice"

Can you share more info on how you got this deal? What do you mean by "invoice price is meaningless"? How do you value the car?

[Darisha]

Got a 2013 F150 Platinum for 43K Pays to shop around and negotiate! Potato the invoice price is meaningless, too many people get scammed by this "pay only the invoice price" or "below invoice"

Are you sure that's not a typo? That's below the dealer cost and for 2013's there's no incentives out yet. Maybe you meant 2012? I could see a 2012 going for that much, dealer cost is under 50K for most platinums, less the incentives would put you in around low 40's.