Have you ever made a dealership keep a promise?

[Xist]

I saw an ad for Peoria Ford and they promise that if they cannot beat any quote by $500 they will pay you $1,000. I have heard of different strategies for getting the best price on a new car, but can you imagine a scenario where they say "We cannot afford to make that deal, have $1,000?"

Do you think they would just weasel out of it (or try to trick you into hidden charges)?

They are rated 2/5 on Yelp, so probably the latter.

[Gasoline Fumes]

Pay another dealer $100 to write an absurdly low quote!

[Xist]

What I have heard a couple of times is that you reach out to every dealership within a couple of hours of driving and tell them exactly what you want, and what is their best price out the door. Then take the lowest quote and see if anyone else would beat it. If I brought Peoria the absolute best quote that I could get, I very well might end up with yet another quote for a Ford.

Who wants that?!

[Fat Charlie]

Telling them on the phone what another dealer offered you isn't a quote that will get you $1000. Do you think you're going to get another dealer to give you an actual written offer to sell an identical car just so you can take it there?

The hidden charges aren't hidden. If you can walk in to a new car dealership and not need financing and a trade to make the deal, then you probably didn't get pulled into the dealership by that ad.

I did the "call around" back in 05. I told the factory website what I wanted and got emails from 9 dealers. Only 3 were offers for the car I wanted, the rest were "come on in and see our lineup". I called the two with higher offers and told them I had been quoted X, and they both said to take it.

No muss, no fuss, no waiting around. My third call was to the dealer that had given me the good offer, and I bought the car. The really funny bit was they had to swap or it with one of the other 2 stores, whose ad tagline at the time was "we will not be undersold!"

[Xist]

In the words of my first Guard unit when I told them the salesman recruiter told me that I would have on-the-job training and not need to go to school: "You believed that?!"

I cannot find any details, but I once read about iPhone buyers suing Apple because they made promises they didn't keep, and a judge ruled reasonable people would not have believed Apple.

That is kind of the point of the thread, do you expect them to keep a promise?

As for quotes, the way that I heard it, you e-mail each dealership, and then you can forward the best quote to the other dealerships.

[freebeard]

The last time I bought a car off of a sales lot it was a 1946 Ford they had priced at $100. I went to the priest in charge of the Dallas OR Red Cross, who'd put it on the lot, and talked him down to $60 and then went back to the salesman. Sorta went over his head.

[redpoint5]

For you to hold a dealership to that offer would require you to sue them in court. There's all kinds of ways to get out of it by saying you need the price to beat to be advertised, like in a newspaper, and that it has to be for exactly the same vehicle (color, options, etc).

I've always laughed at that way of advertising, as if it's cheaper to pay cash to someone for nothing than to just sell a product for less than they wanted to. Then, there would be an unlimited number of people that the cash offer would apply to, so you could recruit everyone you know to demand the cash too.

I did hold a salesman to the price I agreed to the 1 time I bought from a dealership. When I got there he had added $100 to the agreed price, and I lost it. He responded by saying "it's only $100. Are you going to let the deal fall through for a lousy $100". I responded "right back atcha". Then I refused to deal with that guy any longer and they gave me a respectable older salesman that was no nonsense.