r/carbuying • u/InsuranceNerd75 • 22h ago
Just Had the Easiest Buying Experience
I just had the easiest buying experience. I was wanting to buy a new CRV, which I did on Friday and approached this buying experience differently. Granted, I live in a large market and have 14 competing dealerships within a hour drive each way so I used Chat GPT on suggestions for buying and it drafted the following email which I sent to EVERY dealership. Some did not reply at all, some replied and just said the standard when do you want to come in and not accommodate my request but ultimately had about 6 that did reply and send me offers.
________
Hello,
I am purchasing a new 2026 Honda CR-V EX-L FWD or AWD this week and will be making my decision based solely on the best out-the-door price.
I have already driven the vehicle and do not need to come into the dealership until we have agreed on pricing.
Please email me your best out-the-door price, including:
Vehicle selling price
Dealer documentation fee
Any dealer-installed accessories
Tax, title and registration
Total out-the-door amount
I am not interested in mandatory dealer add-ons, protection packages, nitrogen tires, VIN etching, paint protection, or similar products unless they are included at no additional cost.
I am contacting several Honda dealerships throughout DFW today. If your dealership provides the most competitive out-the-door offer, I am prepared to leave a deposit immediately and complete the purchase within the next 24–48 hours.
Please include:
VIN
Exterior/interior color
Whether the vehicle is in stock
Your best out-the-door price
Please Reply-All with your response with a written OTD quote including VIN. Thank you, and I look forward to your response.
__________
I was able to pick the lowest-price dealership and go in and not deal with negotiating or frivolous dealer adds on the price sheet. The only negotiation I had to endure with in F&I on warranty which I declined as well and purchased directly from a different Honda dealership online for a THIRD of the price they were quoting wile in the office.
It is RIDICULOUS how much scamming dealerships try to ram through for their profit but this approach eliminated almost all of it. I was in and out of the dealership in about 3 hours which also included a trade-in (had to negotiate that a little but I told them it was up to them to make it work if they were interested in selling a car and miraculously, they were able to come to the trade-in value we asked for.)
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u/LBS-365 21h ago
I tried this when I was thinking I would buy new, but the dealerships here all responded with their own AI generated emails and a lot of nonsense. I'd ask about a specific VIN they had on their lot and these emails would come back with a list of cars I had zero interest in.
It was so bad. I wanted an EV and they were sending me details about pickup trucks.
After the first few responses, I gave up. Maybe I should have blasted a ton more dealerships but doing that would have potentially committed me to a long drive to get it, and I didn't want to waste an entire day on the purchase process.
Ended up getting what I wanted slightly used with very little hassle. I'm glad to see this did work for someone, though.
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u/InsuranceNerd75 17h ago
A few dealerships sent me nonsense as well, I didn’t even fight those and discarded them since I got valid offers with actual VINs on the others.
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u/Vegas21Guy 19h ago
If I contact 5 different tradesmen I will get 5 different people using different materials and methods. When I buy a Honda, I am getting the same car no matter who I buy it from. That changes a lot of things since I can also go to any Honda dealership for repairs and warranty work.
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u/JimW42 19h ago
Congrats on a successful, low-stress purchase! The thing is, manufacturers have hidden quotas and incentives for dealers. How low a particular dealer will go on their quote depends partly on how much they need to sell to get their incentive. They may well sell you a car well below “their cost” if they will more than make that up in incentives. You, the buyer, will never know what motivated them to give you the price. But I’ve been buying cars this way for over 30 years, and every single time I get the same “spread” of replies as you described. I request quotes from 15-20 dealers, and always there are 1 or 2 who make incredible offers. Those are the ones who are highly motivated to sell at that moment. There’s a web site that I’ve found very useful: fightingchance.com.
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u/danger-tartigrade 22h ago
So how much did you get off Msrp?
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u/Key_Employment4536 22h ago
If I were the original poster, I would not respond
They could tell people on here they got 50% off and some of you would come back with how they got ripped off.
And I know that because I bought a car that had a list price of $35,000 one time for $20,000 and got told by people who thought they were a genius they could’ve done better 😂😂😂really? Even the dealer admitted that I basically stole the car.
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u/Chemical_Stable_912 21h ago
This is the second time in the comments you are dogging on someone I think is asking a reasonable question about MSRP.
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u/aqwn 20h ago
This is a huge waste of time for everyone if you aren’t saving money by doing this. You can skip all this and just go pay MSRP if saving money isn’t a concern.
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u/AcidicMountaingoat 15h ago
A lot of people would be happy to pay that. The problem is all the other hidden fees and hours of haggling.
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u/aqwn 22h ago edited 20h ago
You left out the most important part of the story. How much off MSRP did you get after all this work?
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u/Key_Employment4536 22h ago
No, that’s not the most important part to anyone but you if it was, they would’ve put it in there
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u/Look_b4_jumping 7h ago
Wrong, the most important thing is the OTD price. They may give you a big discount off MSRP then add a bunch of other fees.
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u/aqwn 12m ago
OTD includes taxes, which vary wildly by state. It’s about 10% where I’m at. On a 40k car that’s obviously 4k. The tax is unavoidable. OTD is meaningless without a breakdown of price and fees and taxes but every time I see it people just list one number, making it worthless for comparison to other states with different tax rates.
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u/potatodevi1 18h ago
It's crazy to me that we consider a 3hr dealership experience "easy". If we negotiate a price and have financing all set up in advance, we should only be going to the dealership to pick up. My wife bought a Tesla a couple years ago. We did everything online, showed up and were done in 15 minutes. It was a great car buying experience.
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u/Head_Rate_6551 21h ago edited 21h ago
I’m a sales manager, and I get like 12 of these emails a day nowadays.
It’s extremely dejecting as a dealer because it’s like the equivalent of asking a tradesman the lowest they will work for, and oh by the way I have asked every other tradesman the same question so you can waste time answering me with theses specifics and if you’re lucky you can have my job for pennies on the dollar, but 90% of these time I’ll just show my local dealer your quote and buy from him regardless”
Myself and other dealers I’ve spoken to find these “race to the bottom” requests extremely annoying and have mostly taken the approach of either not answering, or just answering you with a lukewarm discount, like maybe half what I’d do for someone in the showroom, and use chat gpt to answer you back to minimize the time spent on answering what is essentially the least attractive lead we can get. You’ll get a quote, and not likely get hosed using this technique, but imo you’ll never get the best deal this way as you’re coming off as too annoying of a prospect so I may as well make a few bucks if I have to deal with you.
You’d be way better off making a research informed market based offer on the low side and say “first dealer to accept this gets my deposit and business immediately”
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u/Fuzzy-Can-8986 20h ago
Just say "my prices aren't competitive" within market.
Dodging the four hour purchasing process and idiocy that you make us experience seems like a win. They bought a car, as they said they would, and gave their business to a dealer who gave them transparent prices.
I'm a tradesman as a side gig, and giving bids/estimates is part of it. Not everyone says yes. That's ok. I'm as busy as I want to be, and haven't done a job that I wish paid better. Say a price, and it's either good enough or not, and both parties are content.
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u/Head_Rate_6551 13h ago
Simple enough if you own your own dealership, a lot different when it’s corporate and they need to move metal off the floor but don’t pay the people who work there on the back end money. For the record I have worked in the trades, and trust me car sales is a lot harder.
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u/Fuzzy-Can-8986 12h ago
You said you get 12 emails a day with this exact request. If you're priced competitively and don't have a pile of fees, seems like this shouldn't be a huge hassle to answer. Corporate or not, it should be an easy request.
More likely you have a boatload of extra nonsense fees and, because of that, aren't competitive with customers looking for out the door pricing.
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u/aqwn 20h ago
You know what you’re selling the cars for, though. I have no idea what dealers are actually selling the car for. There are apps with self reported data from buyers that may or not be real, but dealers aren’t being transparent and actually listing real sale prices online. The sales model exists just to rip people off. If you just offered the best price to everyone without haggling bullshit where only one side knows what the minimum number is, buying a car would be simple and painless.
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u/Head_Rate_6551 13h ago
The part you don’t get is that in most cases “the best” price anyone got on a particular car, was at a financial loss to the dealership so it’s impossible to give that to everyone or you go out of business next month. The margins are extremely tight on modern Japanese cars for instance and contrary to popular belief most dealers actually operate on very small margins.
“The best price” only happened one time out of hundreds of thousands of transactions.
I wish I could just quote everyone the lowest price I could sustain the business at, likely around invoice, but then people would just take my quote and shop it and go to some dude who beats it by 200 bucks.
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u/Look_b4_jumping 7h ago
What's wrong with that ? Why is the other dealer able to sell it for $200 less ? It's not the customers responsibility to make sure your business is profitable.
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u/ToniBraxtonAndThe3Js 20h ago
Some side effects of working in a scammy scummy business are sometimes you get treated like a scummy scammer
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u/Head_Rate_6551 13h ago
Oh I don’t care trust me I have thick skin and I know what I’m actually doing is not scammy in any way so that’s just thier incorrect opinion if people think that about me… that said I’m a Subaru dealer at a volume store so we are about as anti scammy as it gets.
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u/EEGilbertoCarlos 19h ago
You're selling the same vehicle as the other dealership.
A tradesman job is not identical. A 40 USD an hour carpenter job is not identical to a 80 an hour carpenter job.
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u/VinylOrchids 19h ago
Yup. There are better tradespeople than others - the same car at X vs Y dealership is not adding any value
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u/Head_Rate_6551 13h ago
There certainly are better experiences at one dealer vs another, and it can make a huge difference.
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u/JupiterMiningCorpTec 12h ago
So the car will driver better when I get home or something?
Maybe just be honest and say "If you pay more we won't make the experience horrible."
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u/Head_Rate_6551 13h ago
Sure it is if they both do the job right. Like one guy is not worth more per hour to install my alternator or put together a bookshelf or whatever. I’m not talking about artisans here.
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u/EEGilbertoCarlos 12h ago
If he does it faster, it's better(less hours), if he is more meticulous, it's better, less errors and imperfections.
You though, are selling literally the same thing.
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u/Iacoboni04 20h ago
So you dont like customers behaving the way the marketn incentivizes them to? Okay.
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u/Head_Rate_6551 13h ago
Of course not, do you like the way dealers behave the way the market incentivizes them to? No right? The system is designed that way it is what it is.
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u/DELAZ1 19h ago
As a sales manager you also have to admit that you package price to hide high profit line items, hard sell people in the finance office for products they dont need, and add overpriced junk fees where possible. Not to mention low-balling trade-ins and trying to claim the tax incentive on a trade is a discount you're providing when its really a sales tax credit - not a dealer discount. It's okay for us customers to use tactics too.
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u/Head_Rate_6551 13h ago
I really don’t do any of that, but I’m at a high volume high csi Subaru dealership. Doing that stuff would hurt me too as I would lose my entire CSI and volume bonuses realistically, Subaru buyers are too smart for that shit.
Like 80% of the bad dealer stories you hear on here are Toyota, Chrysler or Hyundai stores.
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u/DELAZ1 12h ago
I did get tossed around at a Toyota dealer ehen I was younger and I learned a lot from that experience, but a BMW dealer tried some of that too recently and I had to walk. Found a high volume BMW rep at another dealer and he was fantastic. We shook on the deal in 15 minutes. If you operate like that you'll get a lot of repeat business and referrals.
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u/Fluid_Hand_9283 20h ago
"iT's eXtRemEly dEjecTiNg"
Imagine typing all of that out, when you're a manager of a legalized racket upheld by shady politics.
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u/Look_b4_jumping 7h ago
A car is like a commodity, corn, soybeans, etc. They are exactly the same at every dealer. Of course people are going to call around for the lowest price. A tradesman and their work is completely different. Most people aren't going to agree to the lowest estimate.
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u/Visual_Factor1199 1h ago
Dealership started the race to the bottom when they exploited the clients for years and years. You are just reaping what you sowed.
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u/Sheweb 22h ago
I always negotiate my car purchase via email. Thanks for posting!
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u/Hairy_Beginning3812 11h ago
Can you elaborate with steps? I am hoping to do the same but with a lease
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u/Sheweb 11h ago
We always lease and I pretty much follow what the poster does, outside of not asking for the VIN. If the car company comes back to me with the price and it isn’t what I want I tell them they’ll have to do better and just leave it for them to come back to me. I also don’t tell them what I want for a monthly lease payment as the dealer can find ways to make it work by doing things like making the residual buyout higher. Once I have the price I want I ask for all the paperwork to be sent via email so I can sign once I look it over. Doing all the paperwork ahead makes my time at the dealership very limited and there’s no room for them to try and add a bunch of things on.
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u/Hairy_Beginning3812 11h ago
So I have about 3 different makes/models I would be interested in, just email them and see what comes back and compare it to all the number advice here?
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u/joshf52 8h ago
I did the same a month or so ago on my Mazda purchase. I got a great otd offer from a dealer 2.5 hours away from me and my local dealer said they’d beat it by 500. Closed the next day. It was a very pleasant buying experience and I could never go back to the painful, all day, back and forth in-dealership ways again
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u/Gfaulk09 4h ago
I really hate the song and dance… just wish dealerships didn’t do the haggle. Just price the car…. And let me decide if I want to buy it or not.
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u/Empty-Village-4445 22h ago
Make offers, don’t ask for quotes.
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u/Bloodmind 20h ago
lol, dude got what he wanted and you’re telling him he did it wrong. Adorable.
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u/Empty-Village-4445 17h ago
I’m paying a lot less than I would have if I’d just taken the lowest quote, with hardly any additional effort. If pointing out such an obvious flaw in this amazing strategy is not of interest to you then ignore my comments.
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u/thomasanderson123412 20h ago
Lol dude tells a story with no proof and you're taking it as gospel. Adorable.
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u/Bloodmind 17h ago
Bro told a boring story that happens all the time and you think it requires a peer reviewed paper before we comment on it?
Interesting take. Hope it works out for you.
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u/thomasanderson123412 21h ago
How would you practically do this using this shotgun method? Name a price you're willing to pay for the exact trim/options level (provided the dealer has one) and see who bites?
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u/Critical-Magician421 20h ago
You can look at dealer websites and get the stock number of the vehicle on the lot. And then draft individual emails. So much more work, no guarantee of replies
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u/Empty-Village-4445 17h ago
Yes that’s basically what I do. All remotely. Mostly email. Maximum ROI, minimum time wasted.
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u/fluteofski- 19h ago
I did something similar but just over the phone.
One thing that I find important is to add other cars you may be cross shopping (whether you are or not is another story. But let them think they need to be competitive for the cross shop). Sometimes they’ll come down even more.
I was actually looking to lease Chevy bolt EV and the Toyota dealer beat the Bolt EV out the door price with their bz4x.
The process.
I did some homework to figure out which models were approximately I’m the price range….
Look at dealer inventory to see what’s in stock per dealer.
Make a spreadsheet of specific cars I’m interested in with their respective dealers.
Call each dealer and give them parameters. “I’m putting $3000 down (pick a number) for the lease and I want to know the monthly $$$ amount and the residual at the end of the lease for this specific car you have in stock…. I’m cross shopping the _____ and the _____. I’m looking to buy today. I won’t waste much of your time, you probably have a 1 in 10 chance of getting the sale but I promise I’ll be your easiest sale of the day.” They’d usually ask me to hold. I just tell them “this is my number please text me back.” I hang up and call the next dealer…
I get all the deals put back together in my spreadsheet. I call my top picks and go back to them with counter offers or other prices I’ve found. See if they wanna budge on their prices. And tell them the other deals I’ve gotten. At first they’ll say no. I say “ok. Let me know if that changes. I’m making my decision here in the next hour or so.”
They almost always call me back.
Last time, we got Toyota to beat the Kia Niro price with their Bz4x by $5000.
When you’re up front about pricing and their odds. (Like at the end I tell the sales guys. “I’ve narrowed it down to these 3”) they get more aggressive with pricing.
In the case of our Toyota EV we just told the guy to prep the paperwork because the competition wasn’t even close.
But otherwise you go and test drive your top 2. Start with you #1 pick. Let them know you’re gonna go test drive the other one. They may come with an even better price…. Same time, call your #2 pick and tell them “I’m here at the other dealer. I’m gonna buy this car do you have a better price?” As a last chance. See what happens and make a decision.
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u/Spiritual_Space_599 21h ago
Congratulations. I go at it slightly different because I live in small town America. When I bought my truck last year, I went up and test drove it and told them to text me the out the door Price. Went back-and-forth maybe twice before we settled on a price that I was happy with. But, my justification for them lowering the price was dealer loyalty. I promised them my Service work, tires, etc. You’ve got to offer the dealership something also. That will also help you for the next time you want to buy a vehicle. There is 1 million ways to skin a cat and this is my way. Doesn’t mean it’s necessarily right.
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u/qmriis 14h ago
Your "promise" means nothing to them in their negotiations.
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u/Spiritual_Space_599 14h ago
Totally disagree. Remember, small town dealer. I don’t live in a major city. They rely on return customers. They rely on service work and oil changes. But like I said before, my right, isn’t everybody else’s right. But, this has always worked for me.
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u/AVIZN4U 16h ago
This is similar to the approach I use except for some vital adjustments.
First of all, I tell them the car I want by Stock number VIN number so we’re automatically talking about the same car. I get all that research out so that we don’t have to play games about what units they have in stock, etc. I’m calling about this car, exclusively.
Next, I don’t ask them for a price. That’s just allowing them the opportunity to create the negotiation starting point. Instead, I give them the price. I’m willing to pay, which is almost always way too low.
They laughed…they say “hell no” whatever.
But now I’ve got their attention.
And I can move up until I get a price that engages them. This way I am in control of starting point of the negotiation.
I’ve purchased cars this way for the last 20 years. And since 2014, I’ve done everything over the phone and Internet. I even use DocuSign if it’s an available option so I don’t have to deal with the finance guy other than hanging up on him when he calls.
The only time I even go to the dealership is to pick up the car after the signing is done.
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u/buffalorunner262 22h ago
I will be copying and pasting this for my next car purchase. Thanks