Most products in America sell for a predetermined price. Even if the manufacturer’s recommended price is discounted through sales or, less frequently, increased due to market conditions, those adjusted prices are publicly known and easily compared by checking a few websites.
This is modern free-market competition in action, benefiting consumers of food, clothing, and almost anything else. If the offered price is too high relative to other suppliers, you go elsewhere to make your purchase. It’s a simple, dignified system that works for most products. But cross a certain price threshold into the realm of boats and cars, and all of a sudden you’re negotiating like you’re at a Turkish bazaar.
I don’t mind negotiations if they’re relatively quick and easy. But in my experience, the only way to make a new car negotiation quick and easy is to pay too much (A.K.A. “let the dealer win”). The closest I came to an ideal buying experience was purchasing my previous car; I had information from several websites on a fair price, which I forwarded to every dealer within an hour’s ride. Then I waited for them to make their best offer—by e-mail, which avoided awkwardness and kept every offer in writing. Now, in 2023, I needed a new minivan and the process wouldn’t be as painless to navigate. The auto market’s pandemic-born craziness was still in full swing, with most minivans out of stock and many dealers charging scarcity premiums for the vehicles they did have.
Honda’s minivan might be available within six months, and the wait for a Kia Carnival, an early favorite of my wife’s based on the opportunity to say “Here comes the Carnival,” every time I drove up, was at least a month. Chrysler Pacificas were readily available at several dealers, but I felt I needed to see the car’s unique seat-folding system in person before buying one. So off we went to a dealership.
Anyone who’s worked in sales or seen Glengarry Glen Ross knows that many managers break the sales process down to its crudest bottom-line credo: ABC (Always Be Closing). Since I have an aversion to wasting time and being fed scripted lines, however, I’ve developed my own credo, which I follow whenever entering a potentially heavy-handed sales situation: ABL (Always Be Leaving).
Utilizing ABL, we arrived at the dealer’s lot and instantly regurgitated several rehearsed excuses for a quick exit, even as I shook the salesman’s hand. “I don’t even need to test drive the car,” I told him, “I just want to see how the seats fold down. You can just unlock the car remotely for us. We only have 10 minutes.”
Despite my protests, the salesman insisted on escorting us to the vehicle, after taking my name and contact information. I probably should have offered a fake name or phone number—Rusty Carr or Otto Mobile would have served nicely—and have you met my wife Mercedes? Instead, I gave my real name and for the next 10 minutes, got to hear it shoehorned into the classic salesman’s spiel: “We have some great deals, Peter.“ “How much are you looking to spend, Peter?” “Peter, when would you be looking to take delivery?”
In what might have been record time, I inspected the interior and seat mechanisms, then politely extricated myself from the dealership, adrenaline pumping like I’d escaped a prison camp. Now that I had a car model to pursue, I put the word out via email to half a dozen car dealers that I was on the lookout—give me your best price via text or email, but please don’t call me.
Of course, my phone was overwhelmed with calls over the next 24 hours, none of which I answered. Several times, I was contacted by multiple people from the same dealership. I redirected them to text conversations, and after some back and forth, the field was narrowed to a few local dealers, including the one I’d visited (Dealer #1). They all had the car I wanted, but now I had to sort through the sleight-of-hand and figure out how much it would actually cost me.
One dealer (Dealer #2) offered me a better price than Dealer #1. Dealer #1 pooh-poohed this as a scam, citing “hidden fees” that would be added back later. Another dealer (Dealer #3) had sent a detailed breakdown of all associated fees and costs, but the overall price was much higher than #1 or #2. I forwarded that worksheet to Dealers #1 and #2, asking them to use it as a template and fill in their own numbers for easy comparison.
Dealer #1 apparently didn’t read my text carefully, because they responded with a worksheet than beat Dealer #3’s higher quote by $100 and acted as if they’d won the game. But Dealer #1’s new price was higher than what they had previously offered, and significantly more expensive than Dealer #2’s total. Dealer #1 had picked the wrong price to undercut.
When I pointed this out, I received a series of desperate text messages from the salesman at Dealer #1. Frenzied, he began asking questions like “Did I not do a good job showing you the vehicle?” and “Was I not polite? Why would you not want to work with me?” The texts were aggressive enough to dispel any illusions of actual self-doubt or emotional wounding; I pictured a flood of alligator tears running down his cheeks.
He went on to make a curious comparison of his dealership to a restaurant : “If you took your wife out to dinner and your wife and you each got a NY strip and you both loved your meal and the service was excellent, and the drinks were great and you loved the ambiance, but the next day you saw another restaurant you knew nothing about that charged 50 cents less for the same NY strip, would you go to the other place you knew nothing about or go back to the place you both loved[..]?”
He had created a vivid picture in my mind, but apparently not vivid enough, because he continued, adding, “Maybe they charged less because their steak had more fat and grissel [sic] on it.”
Fighting an intense craving for steak, I pointed out that this was about buying an identical product, not an experience, and that his 10-minute walk out to the lot didn’t merit my paying $1,000 more than I needed to. I forwarded him the detailed breakdown from Dealer #2, and he responded by again insisting that this competitor would charge additional fees, though he wasn’t able to elaborate on what those would be. After several unmet requests for a better offer, I thanked him for his help and set up a meeting with Dealer #2.
A little wary, I warned Dealer #2 via text that if there were any discrepancies from what we’d agreed upon in the breakdown, I would leave immediately. He assured me everything was copacetic. When I arrived, he greeted me and said, “This was both the toughest and easiest sale I’ve had in a long time,” a statement that, lacking further elaboration, I decided to take as a compliment.
The paperwork was signed and I drove off in my new car, adjusting on-the-fly to 15 years of automotive technology advancements. Some features, like a rear camera, heated seats, and mirrors that light up with lane-changing warnings, were immediately appreciated. Others, like occasional brief blackouts of the car’s LCD screen menu when rebooting, were (and still are) bothersome.
People I knew, and barely knew, offered me congratulations on my new purchase. This custom has always seemed strange to me—as far as personal finance is concerned, spending a large sum on a depreciating asset is cause for reproach, not celebration, and the coins some folks pitch into the back seat of a new car out of superstition, tradition, or simple goodwill doesn’t do a lot to mitigate that cost. But with any luck, this car will have a long life, like its predecessor. If so, maybe I can look forward to another 15 years before I’m forced to endure the car-buying process all over again.
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