The Dealing with the Dealer Process

I used James Bragg’s car buying process that he lays out over on the Clark Howard blog he posted. This is my experience with it. 

Again I made a new sheet. I created this two weeks before. I took Mr. Bragg’s process and guess what? Spreedsheet-ized it!

Sheet 5: Process

Every call I make saves another dollar.
First day	Call internet sales managers
	I am looking for Toyota Prius V Three, with no accessories. Any color will do except Blizzard Pearl (White).
	I am ready to buy by month-end, I am contacting limited number of dealers to get price proposals and I would like to get one from you.
	I will need both the price for the and an itemized out-the-door price by email by 11:00 AM tomorrow. I do not have a current Prius. I live in Orange County so you can calculate taxes accordingly.
	I will call/contact all responders the next afternoon to tell you the best out-the-door price I received and give you one shot to beat it.
Second day	Morning Call/contact those you have not heard from by 11am. Call and ask for missing information.
	Afternoon Call/Contact everyone that afternoon with best OTD.
	The best out-the-door price I received was $______. I am calling to give you one shot to beat it.
	Winner to confirm all numbers via email to _______ (no surprises)
	There will not be a third round.
	Make appt to sign papers and pick up the car.
Third day	Call/Contact other dealers to thank them for participating.

I would use this Sheet to focus myself before each call. This way I was sure each dealer had the same information to do their quote with. I also could note deviations from what I asked for.

The Math it Hurts so Good

The math didn’t click until I was talking to Dealers about getting proposals. This was the day before I was planning to buy. I was told 3 things in those conversations:

“Just add $500” “GAP is offered at $900, but I have a 25% off” “Dont worry about GAP only the car price.”

That’s IT!

This helped me fill in two of my spreadsheets.

First, when I was getting the proposals, some dealers give me the $1500 off price and others would give me both. I could use the “Just add $500” to each of the deal columns to get the price.

In my “Sheet 4: Call Dealers” I would have completed columns of:
OTD $1500
OTD 0% + $1500

I now had a list of my proposals from each of the Dealers they would give me with no negotiation.

Second, I could fill in my “Sheet 1: Interest Calc” spreadsheet with 2 columns:
Deal 1: 1.49% + $1500
Deal 2: 0% + $1000

	1.24% + $1,500	0%  + $1,000
Car OTD Price	$26,500	$27,000
Interest Paid	$1,015.82	0
GAP	$345	$900
Total Price	$27,861	$27,900

You can see the “Car Price” changes the exact amount if the Cashback by $500. The interest paid is accounted for. And my currently quoted GAP was also accounted for.

NOW with the “winning” Dealer, I could compare ONLY the financial deals with confidence. There was no noise of deal confusion, car price, or anything else.

This Dealer reminded me that even GAP insurance is negotiable! Thank you!

Having this, and fully understanding where all the numbers came from, made it exciting to get to the dealer with my offers.

I could SEE that there was only a $39 difference between the Financial deals. And as it stood the 0% was NOT the best offer I had.

Don’t walk in blind when you can see clearly.

Is it not Three Offers

Dealing with the manufacturing offers confused me. I have to admit I was not strong on the financials in comparing deals. I knew what I wanted but I was having trouble grasping exactly how I wanted to lay it out in a spreadsheet.

Toyota Financial had two deals going on. A cash back offer of $1500 if I pay cash/check. Or a finance offer of 0% with $1000 cash back.

The loan deal is “available to eligible customers”. I know I’m eligible, not just from the Credit Union offer, but also from my Credit Score on Credit Karma. No surprises.

At this point I put all this information on Sheet 1: Interest Calc. But it was not useful on a way I could use to negotiate with comfortably.

I left it as is.

Offers

My Credit Union was sending me pre-approved auto loan notices for a long time. I only actively pay attention last year when I thought I was going to buy a 2014.

The Credit Union pre-approval showed up every 3-4 months. I watched as the rate dropped. For about the last year it was 1.79%.

I went into my CU branch in May to see how the process worked. Since I was already pre-approved there would be no hard inquiry on my credit. They would issue me a blank check for the dealer and I would fill it out there. That’s it.

It was surprisingly simple process.

My husband and I talked about it. I came to the conclusion that I would be ready to buy in September. That was the month of my 40th birthday and I knew some extra money would be in by then.

Then the CU sent me an offer I just couldn’t refuse. The new Credit Union pre-approval showed up. It was for 1.49%. I know the difference was only 0.2%, but I needed something to push me over to buying a new car.

This was a little over two weeks before the end of the month. The timing worked out perfectly.

I went into the CU Branch to talk with another loan officer. We talked again about how it worked. I asked questions and he cut me a blank check.

The CU officer also went over the GAP and bumper-to-bumper warranty. Don’t chagrin information you think you don't need. Write it down. I used it!

The warranty was from the CU Third Party and not the Manufacturer. The numbers looked okay. I was not really excited about it. But I took the information with me.

They were doing a special offer on GAP Insurance for $345. I didn't know if that was good or bad, but in dealing with the Credit Union over the years I knew they would not gouge me. This gave me a talking point at the dealer.

Would I go with another deal? Of course!

If the dealer would beat the math then I had no problem going with someone other than the CU. But I knew that I had a great deal in hand and I only needed to focus on car price in negotiating with the dealer.

This was my true power.

Willing to Drive Where?

I used James Bragg’s car buying process that he lays out over on the Clark Howard blog he posted. This is my experience with it.

I created this two weeks before.

I live in Southern California. There are a lot of dealers here. I knew the price I wanted and was willing to drive to get it.

I went straight to the Toyota.com Find a Dealer page.

Sheet 3: All Dealers

I made a line item for each dealer. Listing their Link to their inventory of Prius Threes in stock and the actual number in stock. I made a column of the lowest price on the site posted. Also grabbed the Address and Sales Phone number. My headers ended up looking like this:

Relative Distance

City

Link

Threes in stock as of 7/18

Threes in stock as of 7/26

Diff in Wk

Site Price posted Lowest

Internet Sales manager

address

phone

email

Every call I make saves another dollar.

Bold headers came from information from the car dealer sites.

The Toyota.com site listed dealers closest to you to farthest to you in a circle. I added “Relative Distance” to give me an idea how far I would drive to said dealer. Dealer that was a 21 was WAY farther then a 4.

Using Mapquest I calculated that the furthest dealer I had listed was about $15 in gas. So the deal would have to be $30 or better to get me to drive there and drag someone along with me to pick up my new car.

The City helped me refer to the dealers in my head.

You can see I listed 2 different dealer stock dates. I had the links set up already, it was easy to go through again the weekend before buying that James Bragg recommends.

This was no joke in a time commitment. I think I spent 3 hours plus looking at dealer sites, collecting information, and looking at cars.

This was my car shopping time.

There was 40 closest dealers listed on the Toyota.com site. Of those there were 32 dealers that had cars that met my criteria. For a total of 166 cars I was willing to consider to buy.

I next sorted the list by “Threes in stock”. The top 13 dealers had 6 or more cars available. Those 13 dealer are the ones I chose to contact.

From Sheet 3 I copied over just the 13 dealers I was going to call. Creating:

Sheet 4: Call Dealers

I dont know if limiting to just the most cars in stock was a good choice. But it was the arbitrary way I chose to narrow down dealers to a more reasonable list. Even crazy me has limits.

A week before I was planning to buy I updated Sheet 4: Call Dealers in my spreadsheet with the current stock. This is why I ended up with 2 columns of in stock. Wanted to see what actually changed and keep with Mr. Bragg’s process as much as I could.

There was 112 cars on that list and one of them was going to be mine. At this point I fantasized about my car sitting in a car lot waiting to be born into my life.

Singing was involved.

What's the Deal?

I used James Bragg’s car buying process that he lays out over on the Clark Howard blog he posted. This is my experience with it.

I created this two weeks before.

Sheet 2: Car Want

I placed the car I wanted right at the top. This was what I would tell every dealer so they would be working with the same information.

Toyota Prius V Three

Not BLIZZARD PEARL

No Accessories

I didn’t want White. Then I found out there was a premium for the “Pearl” paint. And heck no.

I went to Toyota, Edmunds.com, KBB, and NADA to figure out a starting point for the car. Then I reread James Bragg’s car buying process and made a big note:

“James Bragg said to ignore all this.” 

But I had it already and it was nice to refer to while I was getting proposals.

KBB gave me the best itemized list for an Out-the-door price. I put it in my spreadsheet and was again happy to have it as a guide of types of things to expect.

My plan was to not spend more than $27,700 out-the-door for my new car. It worked within our budget and it was less than all the sites said. Also, it was not that far off from what I have been quoted in the past. Never once in this process did I tell anyone this price.

This was a simple sheet of information to refer too.

The Fun Part

Spreadsheet time!

Now it was time to build my ammo for buying this car. I created this months before. Assessing how much car I wanted and could afford.

Sheet 1: Interest Calc

There are a lot of auto loan calculators out there. But this is about my familiarity of the system. And who wants to be pulling up a site with a bunch of ads while talking to the Financial person at a dealer?

I made my own calculator in Google Docs that I could access on my phone:

Total Price	$27,700.00
Int rate	1.49%
# of payments	60
Monthly Payment	$479.36
Total paid on Loan	$28,761.82
Interest paid	$1,061.82

There are a lot of ways to calculate these numbers, I used a teaching lesson.  I compared it to the Auto Loan Calculators on other sites. I felt comfortable with the numbers it was giving me.

Next to it I had to make a calculation for 0% interest: (Since dividing by zero is bad.)

Total Price	$27,000.00
Int rate	0%
# of payments	60
Monthly Payment	$450.00
Total paid on Loan	$27,000.00
Interest paid	$0.00

Do this for yourself.

It seems so simple but every part you can put yourself on a familiar footing helps in the process. I had my sheet to look at with numbers in a format I was familiar with, and in dealing with Finance, it helped.