![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Sep. 2nd, 2006 09:14 pmLearned something a bit disconcerting today. Earlier in the week, we'd gotten a flier from a local car dealership trumpeting a $37 acquisition fee sale- basically, contingent upon financing, with the payment of $37, you can drive off in any car on the lot.
Figuring it wouldn't hurt to look, we visited, and heard that they were offering 0% financing on '06 models, so we got steered toward looking at those.
I've never owned a new car before, nor ever seriously been in the market for one. Should I have realized that the sticker price isn't what you should expect to pay for the vehicle? I've heard of negotiating prices before, but when they brought the details of the one which would have fit some of our needs and replaced one of our aging (and in need of work) Volvos, the price on their worksheet was about twenty percent higher than the sticker price.
Affording the payment on the price we'd seen would have been at the outer fringe of possible for us. Doing it on the 'real' price was an easy way to get us to walk away.
I don't understand why a business would do that. Maybe it's just never having dealt with that class of item before- but i can't think of anything else on which salespeople are paid on commission where the potential consumer gets shown one price and then buys the item at a higher cost. Doesn't it work the other way around usually- that cost and profit margin are worked into the price presented to the consumer, who then can negotiate down? Especially when there are other fees visibly added on to the factory pricing- destination charges, facility fees etc.- wouldn't it make more sense to write the overhead in there?
Figuring it wouldn't hurt to look, we visited, and heard that they were offering 0% financing on '06 models, so we got steered toward looking at those.
I've never owned a new car before, nor ever seriously been in the market for one. Should I have realized that the sticker price isn't what you should expect to pay for the vehicle? I've heard of negotiating prices before, but when they brought the details of the one which would have fit some of our needs and replaced one of our aging (and in need of work) Volvos, the price on their worksheet was about twenty percent higher than the sticker price.
Affording the payment on the price we'd seen would have been at the outer fringe of possible for us. Doing it on the 'real' price was an easy way to get us to walk away.
I don't understand why a business would do that. Maybe it's just never having dealt with that class of item before- but i can't think of anything else on which salespeople are paid on commission where the potential consumer gets shown one price and then buys the item at a higher cost. Doesn't it work the other way around usually- that cost and profit margin are worked into the price presented to the consumer, who then can negotiate down? Especially when there are other fees visibly added on to the factory pricing- destination charges, facility fees etc.- wouldn't it make more sense to write the overhead in there?
