Posted on 08/12/2016 6:28:30 PM PDT by SoFloFreeper
Good for you.
You were ready to walk and that brings a lot of common sense to the other side in a hurry.
A 2-3 yr old Toyota with 40k miles costs just as much as a new Toyota.
I have been a clean up guy, body man, tech, finance manager, general manager and bank rep in the used car business. Ask anything.
The Certified part just means the dealership put a Toyota warranty on the unit, said it met certain used car standards (Most likely the same ones he has on the other cars on the lot) and the unit meets certain year and mileage specs. So the certified part is worth as much as the warranty.
Nitrogen is critically important in your tires. If you are a race car driver and you dont want your Camry LE sedan experiencing too much fluctuation in tire pressure depending on how hard you are pushing the car in the turns. Sarcasm off lol
If you can pay cash or get your own financing look at a long standing independent used car lot. They buy their cars from the same auctions as the franchise (Toyota, Ford etc) dealers. The difference is the franchise dealer sends a guy to auction and pays him 100 dollars a piece to buy cars. So he raises his hand 30 times and goes to play golf. The independent guy uses his cash out of his pocket or his liability in the form of floorplan. Independent dealers are more careful.
Carmax doesnt haggle because they sell everything for a healthy profit. Also nobody in that building knows poop about cars...
As far as any dealer fees, they are legal as long as they are applied equally to every deal. It should be hard printed into each bill of sale. That makes it legal, but they are still dollars and you need to take that into consideration. Looks like they are adding 1500 worth of fluff to the deal that you need to incorporate into your decision.
Carfax is very reliable for newer cars, the vast majority of which are covered by insurance all the time. It gets fuzzy when you are looking at 7 plus year old cars. They may be wrecked under liability ins and the ins company doesnt know. On older cars believe your eyes and nose.
There will always be another car.
Last used car I bought, I knew, like you, what I wanted. I searched for the dealers within 100 miles & searched their used car listings to see what they had, and I got it down to 6 cars. Narrowed it down to two after calling dealerships then all I had to decide on was how far I wanted to drive. One time the computer truly saved me money!
This website scours the Internet and finds available vehicles nationwide:
Craigslist is good, but be careful with private party sales. Why not a Volkswagen?
The Frick and Frack brothers say only weirdos drive Volkswagens.
I know you’re not in TX, but this is the ONLY place we’ll buy used cars from. And, it just so happens, the last used car we bought from them was a Toyota.
They don’t haggle...the most you’ll ever get off of their price is $500.00.
We took the car we bought to the local Toyota dealership for an overall look and they said ‘you got a great car’. And, it has been.
You can compare prices with their inventory.
...next call to make..BBB (BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU)
...it’s called “bait and switch”
Take any car to your independent shop that does not sell cars for a buyers inspection. They will find what is wrong with it because they want you to bring it to them if you buy it to repair. Their reputation is built by your experience with them only. Don’t rely on the dealers check out, the tech practically gets in trouble if he finds a problem. Any leaks they just spray of with brake cleaner. I am a tech. I have worked both independent and dealer shops.
If you have already bought the car you are stuck, other wise go to another dealer.
If i buy a later model used car i have to get it fianiced so i also get an extended waranty on it and it has more than paid off nearly everytime. but i don`t buy nothing else that the law don`t demand.
I drove toyotas for several years, they were the best of foriegn cars in the seventies.
The older TDIs are still a cult car.
Consider leasing a new Toyota Camry for three years.
Relatively small down payment and a small monthly payment gets you into a new car.
The warranty probably covers all repairs for the three years—you just change the oil.
At the end of three years, you bring it in, and lease another one.
You will be current in safety and technology that way.
You might say, but then I don’t own anything. But owning a car is merely owning a constantly depreciating asset, and you play Russian roulette the older it gets and the more miles you put on it.
After over 40 years of owning and leasing cars, I have found that cars are a necessary evil. They depreciate, and the longer you have them, the more breaks down on them.
Having a leased car, especially a Toyota, practically guarantees you no downtime for repairs during the lease period.
If you don’t have small kids or pets, and know how to keep a car clean, and don’t drive 20,000 miles a year, there will not be any problems with leasing.
You can buy additional miles/year if the offered miles is too low.
When you consider the costs of down payments, depreciation and repairs, leasing is very attractive. The leases for less expensive cars,like the Camry are very good deals.
You can own one car and lease another.
What I have learned is that you can love a car, but they don’t love you back—no matter how well you care for them they break down over time. Sometimes at the worst times and in the worst circumstances.
They are transportation.
If you find you really, really like the car, at the end of three years, you can buy the car/or finance the purchase of it.
If not, you are not married to the car and at the end of the lease period you give it back.
A Camry lease will run you about $2,000 down and low $200’s a month or even less. Much better than putting a large down payment down and paying a high monthly loan rate and interest.
Also, no hassles with selling the car when you lease.
You sell your used car to a dealer, you get hosed. You sell to the public, you might get killed.
A car is not an investment, unless it is a surefire collectible, but then you don’t want to drive a collectible every day and lessen it’s value.
If you lease get GAP insurance from the dealer. I get it from the dealer, and then I have my auto insurer also add it to my policy—like $13/year. But if you total the car, here are no hassles as to the value of the car versus the lease amount owed.
Best of luck to you.
Having sold Toyota’s for a living, I can tell you this is Horsepuckey. The certified used vehicle status means nothing more than the vehicle was thoroughly gone over. Don’t fall for it and save yourself $1500 bucks. If the dealer was reputable, this would have been done automatically. The nitrogen in the tires is another thing. It’s supposed to extend the life of the rims by preventing rust. So every time you need to inflate your tires you have to ad nitrogen. The costs ads up and you could have replaced the rims for a lot less over the lifetime of the vehicle. Do yourself a favor and walk away from this dealership. Don’t go back.
As buyer, you call the shots.
The best advice I can think of is, you must be prepared to walk if you don’t like the deal, even if you ‘love’ the car.
Just as importantly, the salesman must understand that you are prepared to walk.
And if you don’t get the deal you want, walk away.
There are a lot of scammers out there but there are also some honest ones.
A week before,go by the sales managers office, generally they have a Chalkboard listing of who is ahead in sales, you want to see #2 salesman if he is close to the leader(he will deal).
My son bought his Toyota pickup truck from a multi-dealer (7 dealerships) at Mercedes-Benz dealership that was connected via internet with the other 6 dealerships.
The truck he was interested in happened to be going to auction the next week, and they transported it 90 miles at their expense for him to check it out.
It was dealer maintained (with records), carfax, one owner, and if they took it to auction, the auction house would have charged them another $400 commission.
Since he was currently unemployed they knew he had a fixed amount to spend based on an insurance check; with no trade-in due to the accident, they knew is was a "cash transaction".
The Mercedes-Benz dropped the asking price $1,000, the transport expense, and ate the $400 they would have paid at the auction house which put it in his price range.
When the salesman went into the sales managers office to dicker, he left the computer on(which included a microphone),
and he and the manager listened in on our conversation and knew that we were at out expense limit.
There were no further games, other than the sales manager came in shook hands and said "we had a deal" and incidental flaws were resolved when we came back two days later.
Other considerations: The end of the month is the best way to select the salesman you want to deal with.
Have a fixed amount you can spend,; if you have to get a loan get pre-approved at a Credit Union or co-operative, never go thru the dealership.
Anything said by you or others in the salesman's office can be heard elsewhere; if you have anything to be discussed do it off grounds away from the dealership.
If you have a trade-in, within minutes of you handing over your drivers license and they read your license plate, they have already done a credit check on you.
Let the dealership know that you are seriously looking, and be prepared to walk out at any time; we received calls the next 2 days from other dealerships where we went looking.
We have since bought this Toyota , and a Hyundai from this same dealership, always thru the same salesman, and will be looking again in the next few months. YMMV
Oh we walked away. We are patient people.
Advice:
1. Walk away and never go back to that dealer.
2. Consider using the services of a dealer agent: one who, for a fee, will purchase a used vehicle for you from the dealer only car auctions.
3. Consider buying something other than a toyota. The reality is they aren’t as stellar a vehicle as they used to be. And you pay a pretty penny for that brand name. Consumer reports has good used car reliability info for the type of car and years you’re thinking of.
4. Warehouse clubs like costco and Sams have used car buying services. They deal with the dealers so you don’t have to.
When I bought my 4 cyl 2003 Honda Accord some 2 years ago, the dealer would give me a price and the interest rate for 36 months and I would reject it. He would step out of the room then come back a bit later with a different price and interest price. On and on.
It was always the same price in the end. About $8,000 plus tax.
I bet they have charts with the rates and make side bets with the other dealers on how they can get more money out of you. The price in the end was fine as I had looked and looked for that car and the price was about the same from a dealer as a private seller. The car runs great.
I had to put in a .54 cent O-ring for the power steering hose because of a known problem with air leak plus later the a/c clutch would not always engage and that was fixed for about $330. The armrest was replaced by me for about $120 as the top was cracked. Otherwise it has needed just oil and rotate the tires. I figure I got 1 to 2 more years for the brakes.
11 Confessions of a Car Dealer
Don’t go car shopping without already having a price.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a16184/confessions-of-a-car-dealer/
Behind the Scenes at a Car Dealership
http://www.edmunds.com/car-buying/behind-the-scenes-at-a-car-dealership.html
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