Posted on 02/08/2022 6:36:02 AM PST by devane617
Thinking of buying a car? Kimberly Walker, a mother of two in Columbia, S.C., can tell you exactly what that's like these days.
She recently found herself having to shop for two vehicles on opposite ends of the market. For herself, she wanted a late-model electric Audi, and after looking around, she was able to find a used 2021 e-tron at a local dealership.
The price? An eye-popping $68,000 with no room to negotiate.
"We went back and forth. We were there for four hours," she says. "They did not budge on that price."
For her teenage daughter, Walker was looking to spend just a few thousand bucks on an old car. The experience wasn't any better. For four months they tried private sellers and kept losing bidding war after bidding war. CarMax didn't have a single option under $15,000.
They eventually found a car. There was just one catch.
"We ended up purchasing a 2009 Toyota Camry that actually was not running at the time," Walker says. "But the mechanic agreed to put a new engine in it and gave it to us for $3,500."
(Excerpt) Read more at newsbreak.com ...
I was looking at a new Ford Bronco the other day.
The sticker from the factory said $34K, but the salesman said the price was $50K.
I asked him why and he said it was a ‘Market Adjustment Fee’
In other words they added-on $15K because they could.
I’ve bought A LOT of cars over the years. She did it wrong. You find the car online, you e-mail the dealer for a price, if you don’t like that price, you e-mail the NEXT dealer that has one. I’ve found that if there are dealers in small towns, or “out of the way places” they’re more likely to be reasonable on pricing.
A little something that I wrote up *23 years ago* on the topic is mentioned here: https://www.stangnet.com/mustang-forums/threads/really-need-your-guys-help-advice-possibly-scammed.770665/post-7735889
The issue is, people never stop to think about why exactly things cost what they do.
In a free market, the cost of anything will nearly always be the most people are willing and able to pay for it, assuming that price is above your cost to sell it.
All right, then. *puts away six-shooter*
“Depends on the damage that caused the salvage title. My dad purchased three different salvage-titled vehicles from a guy who specializes in them.”
I crashed a car. Technically it was ‘totaled’ because the cost to repair $2500 was higher than the trade-in cost $2,000 (it was an older car). So I kept it, got about $1500 (trade-in minus junkyard price) and fixed it nicely (although with a crappy paint job where the damage was) and drove it until it rusted through - drove like new.
Never had a problem until I tried to buy insurance once from a new company and was told that one of my cars had a “Branded Title” and therefore they had no interest in insuring any of our cars. Go figure.
Poor lady probably had to cut down on the days of the week the cleaning people come
It’s a long walk...
Ok.
Cars sit less than 30 days on my lot.
Sometimes the price goes up in that 30 days due to nada price adjustments, rarely of ever do they lose value now.
The rules from 2 years ago no longer apply.
Yeah, that is the case now. I was talking before the chip crisis that wouldn’t be here now if we had not outsourced everything we used to do here.
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