Receiving the lowest price is not your only goal when buying a new car. There are several areas a dealer can attempt to make an excessive profit from you when selling you a car.
- The list price of the vehicle.
- Low balling or undervaluing you trade.
- Adding points to your interest rate.
- Insurance and maintenance packages.
- Additional fees or phony charges.
- Dealer added options.
- Extended warranties.
- Manipulating money down.
A dealer can secretly manipulate one or more of these areas during the negotiating process. For example, if you focus on one area such as the “list price” of the car. The dealer may lower it and increase his profit in a different area such as “undervaluing your trade” or “adding points” to your interest rate. Dealers are experts at this game and have fine tuned their skills with decades of experience.
As you move on to other areas, the dealer will play “cat and mouse” with you until you get tired and make a costly mistake. This is why dealers and their salespeople drag out the car buying process in the hopes of wearing you down.
Read more on how to negotiate a new car’s price here.