tofuspeedstar
Bosozoku Champion
Call me a bad salesman. but isnt monthly payments really what the point of financing is. you can get that number down to w.e you want. and then you get some absurd interest rate.
one reason i hate working in the car business is because its the only place you can negotiate your price down to invoice which would mean i would technically make no money.
and in terms of financing thru credit unions most of the time a good finance dept can match said credit union.
i hate the bad stigma around car salesmen. when the times your really getting raped is when you come in for service.
i have a client who ordered wheel locks and i was paying for it. so instead of having service put them on at $100 P/H. i just went and did it myself in 10 minutes.
When I sold cars, to me the point of financing was just another opportunity to make the dealership money really. Where I worked the finance guys were pretty well off since there were only three of them total. So on Saturdays there would sometimes be a line of customers waiting to get into finance. It was absurd how dumb some customers were thinking they were getting a great deal.
Yes, when people come in to negotiate prices, you could end up making no money, or end up making a lot, it's up to you how you put it together (Where I worked even invoice deals we made $100)
Yes, there was a lot of bad stigma when I sold cars, we were thought of as the wolves who waited at the stairs for a potential customer and then greet them and smother them, but we really weren't like that.
As someone who worked in both the sales and the service departments of a dealership, I would say most definitely you get raped in service, I agree with that.
I was just giving the OP some inside info really on buying a car from the salesman's POV since I did that for awhile. It had it's fun moments but it was definitely nerve racking at times.
Also to the OP, definitely don't buy a car older than three years, so the newest you'd be looking for right now is a 2011.
And if your Mazda 3 is valued at $2300 on KBB or NADA, expect like $1300-1500 on trade in.