This is what happens when you do the car buying transaction right....you do it my way
My Car Guru Podcast
This is what happens when you do the car buying transaction right....you do it my way
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Car
Nissan Rogue
The Nissan Rogue is a type of SUV that is good for families because it has a lot of space and is easy to drive. Many people like it for everyday use.
Car
Ford Escape
The Ford Escape is another type of SUV that is popular for its comfort and features. It's a good option for people who want a reliable car for daily use.
Term
invoice pricing
Invoice pricing is the price that car dealers pay to the car manufacturer for a vehicle. Sometimes, dealers sell cars at this price or lower to attract buyers.
Term
rebate
A rebate is money that you get back after buying something, like a car. It's a way for car companies to encourage people to buy their vehicles by lowering the price.
Term
dealer fees
Dealer fees are extra costs that car dealerships might add when you buy a car. These fees cover things like paperwork and preparing the car for you.
Term
out-the-door price
The out-the-door price is the total amount you pay when buying a car. It includes the price of the car plus taxes and any extra fees, so you know exactly what you'll spend.
Term
registration fees
Registration fees are the costs you pay to officially register your car with the government so you can drive it legally. The amount can change depending on where you live and what kind of car you have.
Car
Nissan Altima
The Nissan Altima is a car that many people buy because it's comfortable and gets good gas mileage. It's a common choice for everyday use.
Term
paperwork
Paperwork is all the documents you need to sign when you buy a car. It's important to understand what you're signing so you know what you're agreeing to.
Term
signing
Signing means putting your name on a document to show you agree with what's written there. It's important to know what you're agreeing to when buying a car.
Term
dealership
A dealership is a place where you can buy cars. They help you with things like financing and sometimes fixing your car after you buy it.
Term
gap insurance
Gap insurance helps you pay off your car loan if your car is stolen or totaled and worth less than what you owe. It makes sure you're not stuck paying for a car you can't drive anymore.
Term
extended warranty
An extended warranty is like insurance for your car that covers repairs after the original warranty expires. It can save you money on big repair bills, but you need to know what it covers.
Term
service contract
A service contract is like insurance for your car that helps pay for repairs after the regular warranty ends. You pay a fee upfront, and it covers certain problems that might happen later.
Term
finance manager
A finance manager is a person at a car dealership who helps you with money-related decisions, like loans and insurance. They might not want you to cancel something you bought because it affects their pay.
Car
Cadillac Escalade
The Cadillac Escalade is a large luxury SUV that is very spacious and has a lot of fancy features. People often buy it for its comfort and style.
LIVE
Hey folks and welcome back to another edition of My Car Guru.
I absolutely love it when somebody who has listened to the program for a long time finally gives
me a call or sends me a text.
I can't remember whether this one started, I think it started with a text, yeah.
We went back and forth a couple of times and finally they wanted to come down from
the big city of Elizabethan.
Now if you live someplace else in the United States or on this planet, you would probably
call it Elizabeth Tun.
But this is East Tennessee, so it's Elizabethan.
The emphasis is on Beth, but yeah, they came all the way down from Elizabethan, I'd say
probably 45 miles and came to Greenville and we sat down, I met them in the showroom,
we sat down at a table.
And folks, they did this deal exactly like I've told you how to do a deal when you go
into a new car dealership to buy a car, whether it's new or used car dealership.
You lay the rules down early on, you want to do it your way, not their way.
Their way is designed to maximize gross profit and well, two goals basically.
To sell you a car today, even if you're not ready, and to maximize the gross profit that
they make on the deal.
And they do that with disinformation many times and subterfuge.
You know what that means?
I'm not really 100% sure, but I think it means not being straightforward, not being
transparent.
You want both of those, right?
I mean, the reason he said he came down is he just didn't want to play the games.
And he's listened to me long enough to know that I don't play games.
That's just not how I do things or my people.
We're not that kind of a business.
And a lot of car dealers are.
Most aren't, most do it pretty straightforward, but still, they want you to follow their
process.
And what I try to teach people to do is you follow my process and you'll always get a
better deal.
So in this particular example, and I'm not using any names, they had been in the same
car for a number of years, quite a few miles on the vehicle, been a decent car, had a
few issues with it, but wanted to buy something new.
It's time.
And so they had a list of all the features that they were interested in.
They didn't pick out a car.
They didn't come here saying, I want a Nissan Rogue or I want a Ford Escape.
No, they just had a list of the things that were non-negotiables.
That's exactly what I tell folks to do.
Know and understand what your non-negotiables are.
Make the salesperson sell you a car.
When I say sell you a car, what I mean is to do a full product presentation, go
on a test drive.
You know, we call it a walk around.
That's where you open the doors and open the rear hatch and open the hood if
necessary.
I've always opened the hood for my customers.
I don't know whether my salesperson did with them or not, but that's just
something that, you know, you want to show them what they're getting for
their money.
I mean, if you go to a, I don't know, let's say you're buying one of
those DR Horton homes and they have a model home and you go in and you
look at it.
You say, well, I like this color siding and we need this much square
footage.
We need three or four bedrooms.
You know, you tell them everything that you want and then they take you to a
model and show you what it looks like when it's all finished.
That's the walk around.
I mean, you get to see how everything works.
Now, I mean, you don't really take a house on a test drive, but I
guess it's a combination of the two, but you always drive the car.
You know, one of the things that this gentleman noticed about this
vehicle, I had him test drive three different things that I thought would
fit and, you know, they really liked one.
They liked the other one, but it just wasn't right.
As far as visibility is concerned, then they drove a third vehicle that I
thought would be a really good value.
It was more expensive.
So they've got three good options in the right color for them to look
at and analyze.
That wouldn't have happened at most dealerships.
What happens at most stores is they take you to where the vehicles are out there
and they don't sit down with you and talk about anything until you've
already selected a vehicle out there in the lot and they're fishing to find
out if you're a payment buyer or not.
Because that will dictate the way they present numbers to you.
I don't care if somebody's a payment buyer.
I want to make sure that they get the right car for them first.
Is that not the most important thing?
Is the amount of money that you're willing to pay per month the most important thing?
I'm not saying it's not important.
It is.
I mean, it could determine whether or not you buy the vehicle if you can't get
a payment that fits your budget.
But what if you get a payment that fits your budget and you hate the car?
You know, 90 days after you've bought it, you're saying, honey, what have we done?
This is totally wrong for us.
I told you we needed a third row seat.
You know, but most people don't do that.
They buy the payment.
These folks weren't buying a payment.
That's not the way I roll, as I like to say.
No.
No, let's pick out the right vehicle and we'll make the numbers work.
If the numbers don't work, then you move on, right?
You just don't buy the thing.
You go home and think about it.
So they test drove all the vehicles.
They sat down.
I went over, printed out.
Well, basically, we looked at their trade into.
We did an evaluation on their trade.
I go to my sales manager.
I said, OK, structure the deal this way, which right now we're selling every
Nissan for invoice or below.
And this particular one of the vehicles had a $5,000 rebate on it.
I thought that would be something worth considering.
So I printed out two separate buyer's orders or sales contracts, broke down
all the selling price, the trade value, the taxes, any fees that are involved,
registration fees and so forth, and a bottom line number.
And you know what he said to me after I presented those numbers to him?
He said, well, you know what I'm going to say next?
I'm going to go home and think about it.
I said, you have been listening to my radio show.
Because that's the smartest thing that a person can do.
You know, unless they've spent, I don't know, hours and hours looking at the numbers
and they're already prepared to buy something, they don't need to go think about it anymore.
Thinking about it is just creating additional stress.
I get it.
But there's too many people that haven't thought about it.
It becomes an emotional purchase rather than something that's logical.
And they end up making a bad decision.
And you know what the most gratifying thing is to me as a person, as a businessman,
as a podcaster slash radio host is that these people didn't just hear me.
They actually listened.
They actually absorbed the information and they're using it.
And if most people would do that, you know, if you don't have time to listen to the show, fine.
Get a copy of the My Car Guru guidebook.
Make copies of it yourself.
It's, I call it a guidebook, but it's actually 32 pages of information on a PDF
if I send it to you, to your email.
And all you have to do to get it is send me your email address to 423-552-2020.
And then you don't need me.
You just need the book.
And if you read it, absorb it and use it, you will save money.
There is no doubt because you're laying out the rules because these dealers,
you know, you go to the wrong one and it's pressure, pressure, pressure.
And you end up paying more for the vehicle.
You don't really know what you paid for the vehicle when it's all said and done.
I've seen it a bunch of times, people come in here and they, you know,
they finally come in to talk to the guru, say, can you help me get out of this?
I said, sir, I'm sorry.
I could have helped you get out of it before you signed the paperwork.
But now it's just a little bit too late.
Here's what you can do.
I'll talk about some of the things you can do if you feel like you've really
been taking advantage of.
I'll be back in just one minute.
Okay, so one day I got a phone call from this elderly guy and he said, can I come in
and talk to you?
And I said, well, sure.
So I didn't know exactly what it was about.
I didn't know if he was coming in to, you know, complain about some kind of a situation
he had at my business or if he was going to try to sell me something, wanted me
to donate to some type of a civic event.
So come to find out, he wanted to come back into my office and sit down and talk to me
about how he could possibly get out of a deal.
He had bought a Nissan Altima, and I won't say where, but he bought, it was a used
vehicle and he had no idea what any of his paperwork said.
I've mentioned this on the show before, but you know, we print out all the paperwork
at my dealership and go over it with the customer.
They know what they're signing, but at a lot of stores, you don't know what you're
signing.
You're just, they just keep shoving paper in front of your face and you keep, they
say, sign here, sign here, press hard, three copies, press hard.
And so you do it.
And then the next thing you know, there's no paperwork.
They hand you a, like a storage card, a little flash drive that you have to have a computer
to see your, your paperwork.
And that's what they had given to this gentleman who doesn't even own a computer and still
using a flip phone.
So he's not real technologically savvy when it comes to that kind of stuff.
And I said, well, let me see it.
I plugged it into the side of my computer.
And as I've said before, this is the same example that I used many times.
I said, did you know that you paid almost $1,000 for gap insurance?
He said, what's gap insurance?
So he paid close to $1,000 for something that he doesn't even know what it is.
He's not ignorant folks.
He just was taken advantage of.
I could say that he's a trusting individual and he was excited about buying a new
car and he hadn't bought one in a long time.
That's about all I can say.
But and then I hit him with the harder one.
I said, did you know you paid close to $5,000 for an extended warranty?
No, what?
He couldn't believe it.
I said, well, I'm looking at the paperwork here and it's got your signature on it.
I printed it out for him, showed it to him.
He said, well, that's my signature.
I said, well, you signed for it and you signed for the gap insurance and you bought
some other kind of protection package for $1,200.
I mean, he was sick and I'd be sick too, wouldn't you?
Now, the problem is that all of this happened about 90 days before.
And so if there was a fraud committed, for example, that wasn't his signature.
That's when you go talk to a lawyer and sometimes if you talk to a lawyer and you
have them write a letter to the dealership, then sometimes that will get some action.
Some dealers will just clam up and won't do anything.
They'll just turn it over to their lawyer and then it's just running up legal fees.
But sometimes a letter from an attorney will get their attention and they may
invite you into the dealership to discuss this matter.
One of the things you can do if you do buy a car and you buy a service
contract for $5,000 and you buy a gap insurance for almost $1,000 and
some other kind of protection package, you can go into the dealership and
cancel all of that if you didn't finance it.
If you paid cash for the car, which he didn't, he financed the car.
If you financed the car, you can still cancel all those things, but
it's not going to reduce your monthly payment.
Why not?
Well, because the cancellations go to the lender.
So what it does is it reduces your unpaid balance.
So let's say that you owe $25,000 on the car and you cancel all of those products,
then you can reduce it to maybe your unpaid balance goes down to 19.5 or
something like that.
So you can do that, but it won't affect your monthly payment.
The problem is with a lot of these dealerships is they will make you
jump through every hoop you can imagine.
It's like trying to get an insurance claim paid when you are planning on flying
to Las Vegas and you get sick and you bought that AIG insurance, travel insurance.
Well, that was me.
I did it and they did not make it easy to say the least to file that claim.
It's kind of like going to a car dealership and trying to cancel an
insurance contract at some dealerships.
And they, you know, you go in and you have to talk.
Well, sometimes they'll make you talk to the finance manager.
Well, he's the guy who loses commission if you cancel that contract.
So you really don't want to talk to him.
I would try to go to the main office to say I need to do some cancellations.
Why do you want to do that?
Well, because I don't need this warranty and I just don't want to cancel it.
Many times they will just force you to talk to the finance manager and he's
going to, he's going to do everything he can to keep you in that contract.
Just get ready.
But if you want to cancel it, you can.
Now, here's the other problem.
How long should it take to cancel a warranty?
Maybe, you know, I might give him a week to provide me with the cancellation
proof if it takes beyond that.
They're stonewalling, okay?
And it might have just fallen through the cracks.
That finance manager is going to take that cancellation request.
And he's going to be, he's going to be resenting it for sure.
And he'll put it in a file and he'll just stew over it for a while.
And it'll be the last thing he does that month.
And if he's in control.
If it's somebody in the office, they'll do it, bam, they'll get it done.
You know, it's if you go to your salesperson and ask him to do it, he's powerless.
He can't do anything.
He doesn't even know what a cancellation is, probably.
But you can get it done.
But if it goes more than I'd say 10 days, I'm going in and talk to
the general manager of the dealership.
Say listen, I didn't realize that I didn't need these products.
I shouldn't have bought them.
I want them canceled.
I know it's going to be applied to the end of my contract.
You're going to send the money to the, the financing source.
That's fine.
I just want them canceled canceled as of today, not tomorrow today, because
the folks, the longer you wait for the cancellation, the less the cancellation
will be because they use, you know, the greater of time or mileage that
has elapsed, it's a ratio.
And so, you know, since they're doing that, the longer that they can put
you off, the more money they get to retain.
So you can see where there's a conflict of interest there.
Now, he shouldn't have bought the extended service contract to begin
with or he should have looked at the price that he was paying for and
said, no, no, that's, that's too much.
You know, on a Nissan Altima, you, like a one year old Nissan
Altima, you know, it's not as expensive to ensure that car as it is like
a Cadillac Escalade.
When I say insurer, I mean by a service contract and extended warranty.
I mean, 1800 to $2,500 maximum, $5,000, they're ripping you off because
that warranty probably cost them 1200, 1500 somewhere in that neighborhood.
Yeah, they can sell it for whatever they want to.
And if you're not paying attention, if you're just a payment buyer and you,
you know, you thought that you bought the car for 450 a month and you,
last thing you heard, it was for 60 months.
And then when you get home, read the paperwork, they did it for 450 a
month now, but it was 84 months.
And, you know, that's only 24 months longer.
You're going to be paying for the vehicle.
Just two years, no big deal.
It is a big deal.
I'll be back in just one minute.
Okay, I am back.
You know, the best thing you can take with you and the thing that they
don't want to see you pull out is a calculator.
Now, most of you have calculators on your cell phone, but if you don't,
it'd be really cool for you to get one of those that even has tape.
If you pull out a calculator that has like paper tape on it, they're
going to start panicking because they know that you're, you're going
to check the numbers, your numbers person.
Best thing you could say to them, even if you're not say,
Hey, I'm a numbers person and I want to see them, all of them, everything.
So, you know, that, that little extension of that contract.
You thought it was for 60 months of 450 a month and it's 84 months.
You only paid $10,800 more for that vehicle than, than you thought you did.
What could you've done with $10,800 in your budget?
I mean, that'd pay for one heck of a cruise around the world.
Well, maybe for one, but still, you could go by yourself.
You know, just think about these, what seemed like little things like
just bumping you $20 a month or $30 a month or, you know, you buy this car,
you work for a week or two and doing all this research.
And you think you're a savvy car buyer and then you go in and you're
dealing with somebody who's a little bit savvier than you are with the numbers
and you get all emotionally caught up in the process, excited about the car
and driving, you're thinking about, you know, where you're going to take
your first vacation in the car and driving it to see the pretty leaves
this fall and all that stuff.
And you forget that, you know, that budget that you agreed to before
you left the house and you think that everything's going to be okay.
And so you sign all that paperwork and you never really did finalize
talking to your insurance agent about what the rates were going to be.
And then you find out that your insurance rates are going to go up 30%.
So that, in addition to the increased car payment, has you in a state of shock
and then you pull out the paperwork and you see that you paid, you know,
way too much for a service contract, gap insurance, all that stuff.
So you can go in and you can cancel those products.
And if you run into a problem, I mean, like I say, if it was for a
fraud, you need to talk to a lawyer.
If it's not your signature, that's a big problem.
They can get in a lot of trouble signing paperwork for you.
Now, most dealerships will get you to sign a power of attorney,
but typically those power of attorneys are for registration purposes only so
that they can sign for your license plates and the registration of the vehicle.
Don't sign some blanket power of attorney to somebody that you don't know
and don't sign some agreement that says that you can't sue them.
There are a lot of dealerships.
They get sued so much they got tired of it.
So they just sign a binding arbitrage or they just have you sign
a binding arbitration agreement that if you find something you're unhappy
with, you can't sue them.
You have to go through arbitration.
And that's where you have a mediator could be an attorney or whoever
that, that makes a decision.
You're not taking them to court.
And another mistake some people make is they start blasting the dealership on
social media and on their Google or their, yeah, their Google ratings before
they've even gone in to talk to them to see if they're going to make it good
because you're giving up all your leverage.
I mean, if, if you've already blasted them, they don't have as much to lose.
Now you can't, as I've said before, you can't go in and threaten
a retaliation with social media or with their Google ratings in exchange for
them doing what you are asking them to do.
That's extortion.
Now that's not, I don't know if it's criminal, but it is extortion and it
is something that you can get in some serious trouble.
They can end up suing you if you're not careful.
So approaching this the right way, going in calmly, talking to
the general manager, being a business-like person, it'll get you further.
However, go in with the calculator, especially one with tape.
They'll just love you for that.
And I will too.
Thanks for listening to this edition of my car guru.
Send me a message if you have any questions about car values or whatever.
If you want some advice on how to handle particular situation you've
gotten stuck with, feel free to let me know about it.
Text me 423-552-2020 or send me an email to lennielawson2020 at gmail.com.
And don't forget to ask for the my car guru guidebook, because if you have
that and you read it, you won't need to do anything else if you follow
the instructions.
It's easy, easy peasy, lemon squeezy, as my granddaughter likes to say.
Again, thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.
About this episode
A listener shares their successful car buying experience after following the host's advice on navigating dealership processes. Emphasizing the importance of knowing non-negotiables and avoiding pressure tactics, the host recounts how the listener prioritized the right vehicle over payment plans. The episode also highlights common pitfalls in car purchases, such as unnecessary add-ons and the importance of understanding paperwork. The host encourages listeners to be informed and prepared to negotiate effectively, offering a guidebook for further assistance.
Original notes
Email Lennie at [email protected]
My Car Guru Podcast
My Car Guru...Lennie Lawson
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23:40