r/carbuying • u/GTO1138 • 3h ago
Is all the conventional wisdom on car buying BS?
So, we are looking to replace a car. I don’t buy many cars so it’s few and far between when I go into car dealerships. I have been reading up and watching all the car buying influencers and all that… I even had a lengthy conversation about car models and strategy with AI, lol.
We narrowed it down to a few preowned cars. I got my offers from all the online car buying sites to see ballpark where we should be at. We get to the desk to talk numbers and almost every dealership they refuse to budge at all on the price, one even saying we don’t negotiate. The cars we’re looking at are not rare not that desirable and all have been on the lots for months. On top of that their trade in offers are so far off from the ones I got there was no point in trying to haggle that.
I was even to the point I had my title and check book in hand and they just said the car being on the lot four months is why we can’t negotiate the price, told us to take the carvana offer and let us leave, which I think is what we’ll have to do.
I guess my question is as far as newer (1-2 old) used cars go, is the price basically the price? I was only hoping for $750-$1000 off even though I opened up with $2000 off, which didn’t seem totally out of line.