Our First Car Dealership Experience

It's relatively common knowledge that Reed and I managed to survive the car shopping experience and were rewarded with a cute 'new' car.  A 2007 Toyota Corolla with 63,500 miles on it is newer than anything I've ever owned so I consider him new.   (His name is Mr. Cody Wigglebottoms) Anyway, so Reed and I thought we would share some of the things we went through....especially the salesman negotiation experience. 

We have met a lot of salesmen in our time.  The one who sold us Mr. Wiggles was absolutely the LEAST honest we have ever met.  Hands down.  However, through research on car review sites, thorough independent inspection, car history checks, etc. we knew that we wanted this car so we strapped on our big...courage ( ;-) ) and called Lee (the car salesman) to negotiate.  I was at work and getting live feed of the drama from Reed.  Here's how it went down. 
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Reed:  Just so that you have it for tomorrow, our offer is $9,700 out the door (OTD) paying cash. If it's accepted, we'll want an email sent to reed******** that includes a statement of offer acceptance at $9,700 out the door, and the offer breakdown (Ex: car cost + taxes + any other fees = $9,700).

Dealer:  Ok, thanks

(Phone call where the dealer said the lowest they could possibly go is $10,245 and tried to convince Reed to head there for negotiations.  Reed refused to go in unless he had a written agreement of $9,700 OTD.)

Reed:  My wife and I have been down to one vehicle since May 20th, and we've been looking only at 2007 and 2008 Corollas. If you can make your 2007 Corolla work within our budget, we'll be happy to buy from you. Unfortunately, the price of $10,245 does not work for us.

Dealer:  Will you meet in the middle, $9995 out the Door total?

Reed:  I can't. Buying an AutoCheck subscription, paying a mechanic to inspect the car we were interested in, and the cost of gas for each of our trips to dealerships has chipped away our car buying budget down to $9,707.32.

Dealer:  My manager called the big boss, he said ok $9700.00 out the door. When will you be in?

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We'd been told by multiple people that you should always low ball your offer and then negotiate with the salesman to meet in between the ridiculously high and low offers on the table.  But the technique we discovered is that you pick one price, stick with it, and don't back down.  They can and will meet that offer!  You have to be certain that your offer is fair with the evidence to back it up.  We used Kelley Blue Book to determine base values and then factored in the condition of the car.   We also learned that you have to be willing to walk off the lot when your offer is refused....you'll probably receive a phone call within a day trying to renegotiate.

While we were in signing for the car I could tell that the salesman was not pleased with us.  He made snide remarks about us reading every word on every paper, not allowing him to swipe our debit card before the paper signing, and the fact that I sent him out of the room because he was being annoying and we needed quiet in order to complete the process.  To top it all off he whined about how he was only making minimum commission.

Don't feel bad negotiating a good price for yourself.  It's worth it and it feels good to get the better of a dishonest person.