Are you one of the thousands of car buyers looking to save some money by buying used? If you are, I’d love to show you what’s on the lot!
That said, I’ve got to be honest with you: discounts on a used car can be harder to find than you’d expect. While dealerships have been able to offer substantial discounts in years past, changes in the industry since then have impacted the way we sell used cars. However, because this isn’t exactly common knowledge, some car salespeople have had to turn away a few unhappy customers because of inaccurate expectations. I don’t want this to happen to you.
To get your car buying experience off on the right foot, here’s why a used car might not get the crazy discounts people might tell you to expect.
Online shopping has transformed the way people buy cars. With just a few clicks, buyers can see the exact price of a specific car from every dealership around them. Trust me, dealerships know this, and everyone wants to have the best looking price. This leads dealerships to aggressively mark down car prices just to get you to walk in the door. In other words, what you see on the sticker is already a marked down price, and we only have so much wiggle room to work with from there.
About a decade ago, you’d always get big discounts on cars because dealerships felt comfortable marking up the sticker price like crazy. Not so anymore. On the plus side, this means the sticker prices you see nowadays are a lot more honest compared to years past.
On top of this, cars of the same make or model may not be exactly equal. If the car I’m selling is $500 more than a seemingly identical car from a competitor, that’s probably because it has some extra features or has extra service work performed on the vehicle to make it safe and reliable. Even a sunroof can dramatically increase a car’s long term value, which usually means I had to pay more to get it on my lot too!
At the end of the day, both of us want to get you the best deal possible on a vehicle. But, when you are shopping around, the best price doesn’t necessarily mean it is the best deal. Sure, you may be able to find a great price on a car, but that vehicle may need a lot of work after you buy it to make it run safely and correctly. If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Often times, it is worth it to pay a few hundred dollars extra for something safe and reliable from a reputable dealership than it is to save a few dollars on a vehicle that has “some issues”.
Stapleton Motors 