Call whatever initials you want, I said it is possible to negotiate a better bottom line price than X Plan, and you can do even better when doing a trade in.

I don't know what I could have gotten your truck for, I only know what I will pay for one I decide to negotiate on. I also know that anybody who goes in and accepts the X Plan price and doesn't negotiate a lower price pays more than a person who walks in and negotiates a non-X Plan price.

Why do you think the dealer ~loves~ X Plan, Red Tag Sale or any other plan or promotion where there is no negotiation? Because he knows his cost and how much money he'll make on the deal. No matter how smart the buyer is by going to Edmunds or some other website and getting costs, trying to figure out how much the dealer has in a vehicle, three things will always remain true:

1. No dealer is going to give you a better price and then screw the oterh guy to make up for it, because he doesn't have to. He'll screw both of you.

2. No matter what you think you know about cost on the vehicle, every dealership in the world has a different arrangement with their manufacturer for floor plan, financing, "advertising funds", and other financial dealing that you'll never be able to know the details of unless you hire some out of work CIA spy to bug the phones and offices of the dealership.

3. When you offer a trade in, you give the dealer a way to write off some of the loss of the deal. You also are giving him the ability to screw you even more, so unless you know the wholesale value of your vehicle and exactly what he has out of pocket on every one and all of his used inventory, you have no idea if you're getting a good deal on the trade in.

Then throw in one more Universal Truth: only one out of 3 or 4 hundred people to walk on his lot this sales period are going to work as hard as I am to knock the price down. My daddy had me negotiating sales and purchases in his livestock business when I was 14 years old, and I love to negotiate.

99.999999% of the people he sees aren't willing to walk away from their efforts and negotiating the way I will.

****er...you bet. You and I can ****er on the price, then the owner and I will ****er on the price, and if we still don't agree on the price, bring in the owners wife and I'll ****er some more....

 

I agree, no matter what you think you know, you don't know jack (unless of course you work for dealership). There are more pieces to the puzzle then meets the eye. The only thing that is certain is that after you sign the papers, the dealer is getting his money, either on the front end or more then likely on the backend.

I was shopping around a year ago armed with X-Plan pricing which on my truck (at the time) was about $5000 under MSRP. I ended striking a deak without X-plan, and getting $7000 off MSRP. Did the dealer make money on the deal? You bet he did. Did he tell me he was "giving away" the truck; he mentioned more then once. Am I a tough negotiator? Not really. Just did my homework.

If you saw the dealers wife where I bought my truck, you wouldn't :-P