My inspiration: How to buy a new car, FWF style I am on the East Coast of Florida (Central Florida) so I wanted to set a radius to capture some of the larger markets. I choose 150 miles from my zip code. I used dealerrater.com to create the list of Toyota dealers within 150 miles. They don't offer a 150 mile increment but it you choose a mileage other than the standard you can change the mileage in the URL (address bar). This gave me 40 which is too many so I set dealerships with at least a average rating of 4 out of 5. I created a excel sheet with these 30 dealerships with the following columns for sorting: # (chronological rating order from dealerrater.com), Dealership (name of dealership), Website (hyperlinked), Location (city and state), Distance (from me), Date/Time (email request sent). Most the dealerships do not offer a direct email address to make initial contact they use web forms instead. I downloaded RoboForms to make the web forms as painless as possible. It took 1 hour to configure RoboForms and message all 30 dealerships. The text below is what I included with the initial contact. I created a disposbe gmail account just for this process. I created a sub folder for each dealer to organize their emails. I also create a disposable phone number for this purpose, some of the dealers web forms required a phone number. The disposable phone number was set to go straight to voice mail. About half the dealers replied via email with a price the other half called. I listen to the first few messages and they were bs tactics to get you into a sales pitch on the phone, I never listen to any more after the first few. I never called any dealerships except the one that won my business. All dealerships that provided a real bid I emailed thanking them for their business and they I was proceeding with the low dealer. I had three that were low and within $100 of each other. One of the low dealers that wasn't selected emailed me back asking how he was not lowest. I told him that he and two other were within $100 of each other, he proceeded to try to beat them out how ever possible. The dealer I selected was prompt, courteous and never tried to force a telephone call. For $100 I wanted to deal with a business minded person not a at all cost sales person. He was not giving up so I stopped responding to his emails. The dealership I selected handled everything via email and phone. I went and met up last night and in less than an hour was out the door. I got my financing through Alliant Credit Union at 1.49% for 72 months: Best Car Loans The VoIP service I use to setup a temp number is anveo.com. They offer 5 day truely disposable number but I bought a monthly number ($1 month, 3 month minimum). I purchased a vehicle pricing report from fightingchance.com. I test drove the car at local dealership and offered them $23k OTD prior to soliciting the other dealers. 2013 Prius Two right under $23k OTD. *They also included the factory carpeted mats, $299 retail on their paperwork, $100 on ebay.
you did so much legwork and covered all your bases so well. all i ever do is email three dealers and buy from the one with the best price. lazy!
I did nearly the same. Luckily in the DC area there are plenty of Toyota dealers. Surprisingly the dealership I test drove at ended up being the best price too, right off the bat. No grinding necessary. I sold cars for a short time in the past, so the one thing I do differently (if I like the place) is plan to give the dealer/salesman that did the test drive the last shot. Do my price canvass and then go back to them and say here is what I am looking at and if you can beat it, it's your sale. I figure if they take the time to do the test drive I can pay them back with a small advantage on winning the business. I also created a Google voice number for conducting business along with the email addrsss. It was golden seeing a few dealers were calling months after I said they missed out.
when I got my 2010 a few weeks ago... I was only looking used.... There are tons of toyota dealers in NOVA as Vic said, but many did not want to deal. I went to oonskay, they had the car I wanted and it was real close to the price I was willing to pay.. I mean real f-ing close. but I wanted to stick to my price point. they would not budge....at all. so I ended up at a mazda dealership across the street that had (what they thought was a prius iii) which was acceptable to me, not my fave color, but they came down a significant amount.... car had been on the books for 60 days... old inventory is gold for those looking for a deal...
Good job. Let's me know the current local price of $22,500 w/60 mo., 0% financing is a good deal. I test drove, but we're still thinking of a Plug-in Prius. I'd be giving up the pure EV for the new Prius.
