What to know before you shop.

I'm about to buy a new 2015 Prius v 2 in the Boston area. Though I'm not in a particular rush it would be nice to be done in Sept, maybe October.

I may decide to pay a "car concierge" to do this for me. Since, I'm busy and I know this project and it's associated negotiation might lead to my wasting far to much time on the it. As illustrated by the questions below. So... any advise about finding a skilled concierge.

Price checking: What do people advise for checking prices. I'm aware of TrueCar , and AutoTrader . Are there others?

Incentives of various kinds: is there a good place to find what's currently on the menu. Reading here and there I see a lot of inconsistency.

Inventory - is there a convenient way to get a sense of what inventory is out there. I see that Toyota has inventory checker. But it's very dealer friendly, for example it wasn't obvious I could easily make a list of how many cars of the kind I'm hoping for are sitting in various lots. That said it's my impression there is a lot of inventory out there right now. But, then - how would I know - lot v.s. little?

In a related question is there a way to see the inventory/history at the local car auctions of both new/used cars. It seems to me that a lot of inventory is coming off lease, cars that were new when gas prices felt quite different.

Dealer quality (an oxymoron possibly). I've been using Yelp to get a sense of how miserable various dealers make their customers. Is there something here or at another forum that talks about various dealers by region? I'm curious if there is a more statistically valid approach.

Does anybody think there is a compelling benefit to buying from a nearby dealer. In the past I've only done that once, and even in that case I don't think I ever went back to that dealer. But possible these care demand a more intimate relationship.

FYI there is currently a nice post discussing the now v.s. wait question - "Buy now or wait for better deal after 2016 annoucement".

Amusingly the best price for a 2015 prius v 2($23K) s currently from a dealer who's Yelp reviews are horrible. Many complain about his bait and switch ads. My inner negotiator feels there's money to be made (or at least amusing trouble) out of that situation.

Any other things I ought to have on my list?

Thanks!

 

Jimbo Palmer pointed out a post he'd written about who shouldn't buy a prius,
surprisingly I read that post already . Thanks for writing it. I'd sense it should also
mention that the acceleration may frustrate some.

Mike Focke asks about the cost of the concierge or buying service. ...

It would be interesting to know how the car buying service industry works.
I very much doubt there are more than a handful of firms doing the actual
work and that they then sign up the employeers, financial/insurance companies,
clubs, etc. etc. to offer the service. I assume they make their dime by
taking a cut and selling data.

The concierge services seem like smaller operations; and yeah you pay them
and they, presumably don't get a kick back or sell data about the transactions.

Two examples. Scott the car guy in Lexington MA will do this for $500; he's just
a guy who does this out of his house. Checkbook's car bargains is one of
those and is $250. They are a nonprofit. I'm a subscriber to Checkbook's magazine
etc.

For me it's all about the cost of my time, and getting the deal done.

Bisco admits that he just emails a lot of dealers and then takes the best
deal. I've done that once too. May do it again. That time I then took
the best two offers to the dealer that had the model I wanted and he immediately
matched the lower one.

I presume that's what the buying services and concierge's are doing too, though
maybe they do it with multiple rounds. I'd be surprised to learn that the
industry doesn't have some sort of "network" for doing this quickly at this point.

"The Eletric Me" muses about the fun of research/negotiating v.s. using a service.
Me too . Hell there have been times when I wasn't over-employeed when I'd
probably do it for free.

I did consider taking the names of the most skilled sales guys I encountered in
my browsing and asking some of them if they'd enjoy doing the deal for me.

- ben

 

Back to my questions...

Concierge or service - So has anybody uses one of the concierge services? Particularly car bargains, since
I'm leaning toward them?

Price Checking - Another is "cars ..." but I can't figure out how to get that past the url guard.

Incentives - Turns out that subscribers to checkbook, like me, can subscribe
to a bi-weekly mailing that lists all the factory to dealer incentives. The one I
just read said that factory to customer rebates should be revealed to the customer
at the beginning of the negotiation, so be sure to ask.

Dealer Quality - Not much progress there. Checkbook has some numbers too - for Boston
at least, but the samples seem smaller than yelp.

Dealer Location - Mike Focke confirms my opinion (i lovez that!) it's not worth worrying about. Other
opinions?

 

I went ahead with a concierge service, which in this case was more a shopping (bid obtaining) service. I.e. the guy that did the work didn't spend a lot of time giving me progress reports, one-on-one hand holding, and he certainly didn't come to the dealer with me (he was hundreds of miles away). He seemed a bit over-worked. He a backlog that slowed things down. But I was quite satisfied.

It cost be $225 and they did a few rounds with it looks like seven dealers - though two of them declined to play. What I got in return was a handbook - explaining terms like invoice, holdback, doc fee, ad fee, fuel fees of various kinds, etc. etc. A print out of the invoice and msrp for the requested car and all the options. These bids specified the TDA (toyota deal ad fee), the doc fee, the about relative to the invoice, a promise to show me the invoice, and terms variation if the dealer had to trade to get the car I actually wanted. I was assured these bids amounted to a contractual commitment.

I have done all that myself in the past. Except. I didn't appreciate the importance of getting all these fees explicitly stated up front. The variation in doc fee here in massachusetts is incredible I think it ranged from 400 to $800. The charge to trade to a different car varied a lot too (from zero to $600). And the distance the dealer was willing to travel to do it.

I used Checkbook.org's CarBargains, i.e. a nonprofit. It took a while, 10 business days, but it could have been longer. I don't know the size of the staff there, I dealt with only one guy, but I think he had other folks doing the leg work.

Using this approach is all about trade offs. While I have the knowledge and skill to do this myself I didn't have the time. It was totally worth it on that front. Could I have gotten a better deal overall? I don't currently think so. But I might have if I could of figured out how to get access to the "on the ground" inventory database.

In spite of my plan to avoid falling into the rabbit hole of negotiation et. al. ... I still wasted far too much of my time shopping. I made a list of ~30 dealers and by hand dug out information about their inventory. Good lord! There is a lot of Prius v inventory around here, and a lot of it is quite vintage at this point. There are at least 3 new 2014 cars in dealer lots. The one I'm buying, 2015, has sat in the dealer's lot since last winter (the photo shows snow the ground). Knowing that I've no doubt I could have gotten another - oh say - $500 off what I paid, but it would have take an unknown number of hours of recreational negotiation. Time I didn't have.

I have signed a purchase agreement and will update a bit more once that goes thru.

The dealer's guy will have a four hour plus round trip drive to fetch my car. While he didn't tell me that (and why should he?) he did later tell me the VIN, and the internet knows things. My (did I mention time wasting!) search of oh so many dealer inventory listings didn't extend that far.

I now need a checklist of things to consider having the dealer adjust before he lobs the fobs in my direction.

 

FYI - Searching google for: filenamerius2014-OwnersManual.pdf
uncovered the 2014 manual and the list of customizable features is around page 600 in there.

It seems to imply that some "customizations" are available only on higher trim levels, and if so it calls the trim levels 1, 2, and 3. For example using the remote to turn on the air conditioning is, apparently, only available on 3. How these trim levels relate to the trim levels in the US is unclear to me.

That said it implies that setting the backup beep to a single beep is a level 3 feature.

I ignored that aspect and just send them an email requesting the non-defaults I wanted. We'll see what happens.