How I bought my new car, and which dealers played ball (Chapter 3)

Reference Chapter 1 and Chapter 2.

Most people will tell you I'm a great talker. I'm a volume talker, much to the chagrin of many people I'm close to. :) But I'm not a skilled negotiator, and I don't like being put into those situations. I don't look forward to negotiating a price on a new car. I've read several books with lots of dealer/salesman tricks, so I think I know how things work. But still, it's not a fun situation for me.

So once I had test-driven a Pilot and decided to buy it, I decided to try doing the rest of the business via e-mail.

I searched the 10 local Honda dealerships for the specific car I wanted to buy. I found a 2WD Pilot in blue at Bankston Honda in Lewisville - the same place we had visited before. We struck up an e-mail conversation with a rep who had initially replied to our inquiry via their website several days earlier. After he confirmed the vehicle was on the lot, he sent me a VIN, and I sent him the offer for $29,100. (See the previous entry for how we came up with the price.) Since we were going in so low, we thought we might have to come up $500 to meet the dealer, but we were surprised by the Bankston's response.

Just to let you know that we put what is called a protection package (wheel locks, mud guards and cargo tray) which cost the dealership $419 on all of our EX models. Add that to our $500 loss on the vehicle itself and we will be lossing $919 on your offer. I would like to earn your business but we are a profit making organization and therefore will have to respectifully decline your offer. If you decide you can offer an amount that will give us a fair profit, then please contact me.

Ah, so now you tell me about your add-ons - despite our previous e-mail exchanges there was nothing mentioned about additional equipment I had to buy. Ugh. And what's even more strange, there was no counter-offer by the dealership. I couldn't have been that far off -- of course not.

I find a similar 2WD at John Eagle Honda in Dallas. After a couple of preliminary e-mail exchanges, I offer $29,250 -- a slightly higher price, but still in the ballpark, I figured. A similar response this time, mentioning extra equipment (backup sensors, window tinting and several other items), and this is what they said.

Thank you for the offer. This particular Pilot have backup sensors, window tint and Honda protection package added i.e. mud guards, wheel locks and trunk tray. The best I can do is $30,588.81+ TT&L. If you are interested please let me know and I will secure this vehicle for you.

Hmm. In both cases, I e-mailed the dealers to request VIN numbers, so I could make a specific offer. In both cases, the dealers neglected to say they had added extra stuff to the vehicle. Why not mention it up front? Anyway, we were about $1,300 apart, and I don't want all the additional equipment. I'll keep looking.

Huggins Honda in North Richland Hills has a car with the right specs. I send an e-mail through their website and got an immediate auto-reply that said someone would call soon. I waited a couple of days, but no personal response followed. Instead, I got a couple of advertising e-mails from Huggins, with generic pitches for cars I didn't want. I replied to one of them imploring them to provide a personal reply to my inquiry, but I never ever heard from them.

Still another vehicle (this one an All-Wheel-Drive) showed up on a search at Lute Riley Honda in Richardson. After my initial e-mail inquiry, I got this nice response from Marla on their Internet sales team:

Chip,
I do have the 2006 Pilot, EX-L AWD w/DVD in Steel Blue Metallic in stock! It only has Propack added which includes wheel locks, mudflaps, cargo tray and a handpainted pinstripe. I would not expect you to pay for any of these additional items if you do not want them.

Wow, that's promising! After having my first two offers rejected, I decide to raise my offer to $30,700 (remember we're adding an extra $1,000 to go from 2WD to AWD). It's a straight invoice *minus* $1,000 deal. I leave the holdback in place. Moments later, I get this from Marla.

I will be happy to accept the numbers you are offering on the below mentioned Pilot.

Victory! We gave her a $500 credit card deposit over the phone since we had to wait a few days for a pre-scheduled business trip. When we visited the dealership on the agreed-upon date, we test-drove the car and signed all the paperwork.

Nice job, Lute Riley Honda. Thanks for making a fast and fair deal without a lot of hassle, and thanks for letting me do all the hard work via e-mail. I like e-mail because it gets everything "on the record", and it removes all the pressure from in-store negotiations. Whether you can get a better deal for yourself (either via e-mail or at the dealership) is entirely up to your own negotiation skills, current market conditions and the dealer's appetite for moving inventory that day. Compared to what I saw on Edmunds, I think I did pretty good. I suppose I could have offered $200 or $300 less (and dipped back in the holdback), but I'm happy they said "yes" on the first try.

What *local* car-buying experiences do you have? What advice can you share? Post a comment here -- you'll help us all be better car shoppers.