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Originally Posted by War_Wagon
That dealership is into that thing for nothing, plus I like the $480 "doc fee" they charge.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Mechanic
They dream on that Metro.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MetroMPG
Yeah, that price is shocking.
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The asking price frames the negotiation. If you want $X, ask for $Y and act like it's actually worth more. A $4k car looks cheap if it's parked on a Lexus lot no matter what it is- then the victim (
er, savvy customer) walks in and says "$4k? That's too much, I'll give you $2500 for it, and not a penny more!" And the Lexus dealer still gets several times what it's worth.
I had the Albatross (02 XTerra, 217k miles) parked in the backyard. The wife eventually said she wanted it gone, and wanted to get $400 for it. Me? I'd have dropped it at a scrap yard right after I bought the Fit, except it was blatantly illegal, scarily unsafe, unacceptably unreliable and I'd have needed to coordinate a ride home if I even made it to the scrapyard without it stopping or getting stopped. I didn't want to bother calling and seeing about having the scrappers pick it up, and it wasn't costing me anything sitting out there.
So I put it on CL describing its main issues and saying $600 firm. When I got a bite I emptied our stuff from it, put a couple gallons from our lawnmower gas can into it to shut off the empty light and charged the battery. Then I cranked it (took some doing) and managed to get it to the end of the driveway. The guy and a friend (a tech) came about 80 miles to look at it and it was in worse shape than when I parked it: the alternator and compressor were siezed and had shredded their belts while I was driving it across the yard. They gave a spiel about going home, buying parts, then coming back to fix it in my yard.
Throwing all those expenses at me, they asked how much I'd be willing to change the price. I offered to go down to exactly the price my wife wanted. They must have giggled inside over beating me up for a third off the price when they were just going to slap in a used alternator. I actually got money for something so rusted out that even selling it for scrap would feel like cheating- draining the fluids and dropping it overboard for one of those artificial reef projects is reeally all that thing was good for.
They got it back to Mass and cleaned it up. They probably band-aided the exhaust, put a couple used tires on it and somehow got the knock sensor to stop throwing the CEL and asked $4k for it. I'll bet someone talked them down to $2500 and thought they got a deal. If it had been parked next to a Lexus, the victim might not have even tried to haggle.