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Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

If you can afford to, go buy a car before absolutely needed, get a Costco quote, go to the dealer and tell them that’s what your willing to pay, and keep saying no to whatever the financing person says. If they get annoying, walk out and find another dealership and hand them the Costco quote, and repeat. Should be done with whole process in 2 to 3 hours with minimal stress.

This is if you don’t want to play the haggling game. But I feel like most sought after cars don’t really have much haggle room anyway since they are so in demand, might as well save a few hours of your life and just walk in with the Costco quote the dealer has agreed to.

I avoid trading in and all that nonsense, that’s when dealers get to start playing games. I just prefer to run the car into the ground, give it away to family, or if I want a luxury car just lease it and return it.

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The Costco Auto Purchase program won't give you a quote online or over the phone. You have to set foot in the pre-selected dealership to receive the price. Costco negotiates the price once a year so there's no guarantee that price is market competitive, especially late in the model year.

That's not true, I received a detailed price breakdown over email.

This definitely doesn't reflect my recent experience in the last year. Got several quotes online from different brands. Costco pricing is a good benchmark; you can probably do better if you're willing to put in the time.

I also purchased a car in the last year, but the Costco approved dealer did not give me a quote online.

Also, or alternatively, make sure you have your loan approval in hand as well. I recently bought a car and thought I got an okay rate at the dealer through CapitalOne, but they “figured out” a way to get my interest rate a whole point lower (much better than anticipated) if I went with the dealer warranty. So the price of my purchase went up, but my monthly payments went down. That’s okay with me in the end, but I really would have preferred my “real” rate and no extra warranty of course.

Having a hard price and a solid loan letter in hand before you even step on to the lot is really the only sane way to deal with auto purchasing.

i went in with a 3.64% approval rate.

car guy says "oh, we can beat that!". Come back with "how does 3.5 sound?". "well... fine, I guess... not a huge difference, but if it makes it any easier... whatever".

Mind you this was... $9k loan.

I get their paperwork... reviewing it - 3.59%. .05% difference. I mean, yes, it's lower, but ... "damn, we can beat that!". He was so excited! It's about 40 cents per month cheaper.

40 cents per month cheaper for you, but he made money on the deal. If a car dealership sells you an extended warranty or financing then they get a cut of it. Se he went from making $0 on your third party financing to making some level of money on you. It's a plus for both of you when it works out.

Not only that, but for many people, you should probably try to negotiate for the lower net cost vs. lower monthly payments with a higher total cost. If you can float the money, why pay more?

that's what I figured - they had to be making some sort of kickback or referral fee or piece of that action.

The last time I bought a new car for myself, I had a pre-approved loan from my bank in hand.

The dealership swore up and down they could beat that deal.

Three hours later and they finally gave up and went ahead with our pre-approved loan.

Pissed me off to no end that they made us wait that long before they gave up trying.

my deal only took about 10 minutes. for a late model used car, I wasn't seeing anything much out of the 3.6% range anywhere, so I didn't think they'd be able to do much better. had they surprised me with, say, 2.2%... great, but it's still not a huge savings anyway.

I hope the term was the same.

The whole 4 square shenanigans is really annoying. Agreed on having your own financing lined up, I've never seen a case where a dealer could beat my credit union.

Also wait to mention your trade-in if you have one until after you have the rest of the terms nailed down(and ideally have a carmax quote before).

If the Costco quote is so good then why not just get the car from them?

That's not how it works. "Costco Auto Program" is a system where dealers sell cars to customers at prices negotiated by Costco. Costco itself does not sell cars.

Hm, I'd heard lately of people buying cars from some supermarket chain but that must have been something different.

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