Buying a used car - can you haggle?

[Carclueless]

We’re buying our first car. Looking at approved used for peace of mind, paying cash. Spoke to a dealer earlier who said there was no movement on price possible which surprised me as I expected to haggle a bit, especially paying cash. Obv have never done this before though. Is the list price what I can expect to pay?

Pretty much. I think they have really tight profit margins and most dealers don’t want cash anyway, they make more money from people buying on finance through commissions etc so cash is no longer king sadly. Rather than money off you could see if they’d throw in a service or something but out of everyone I’ve known by a used car (including myself!) the price quoted was the price paid

Buy*

I've read a few threads on MN recently, where people have generally said that there's much less room for haggling these days, particularly when you're paying cash. So, make sure that you look at online car valuation sites to make sure that the price is reasonable, then try to haggle for a cash reduction, but then also try to haggle for other things that you'd like - mats, tank of petrol etc. Good luck!

I haggled a bit and got an extended warranty plus a bit odd, why wouldn't you try

As PP said, dealers make money on commission from financing cars do I wouldn't expect them to be prepared to lower the price.

I heard used cars have really increased in price lately. All cars seem to be £500-£750 more than they were before, so I don't see them coming down on price that much. Like the pp said I think they prefer finance payments these days.
If you went to a small place to buy a car - not a big dealer I'm pretty sure haggling is expected.

Of course there’s room to haggle, I’ve always bought used cars and sold mine on and it goes both ways. Bought my recent one last month and negotiated £300 off the list price.

Paid cash too

What do you mean, won't haggle?

I got extras thrown in for free/discounted when I bought my car. They can really add up.

Used car prices have rocketed recently.

I bought a new car at the weekend. Prices are going up due to a shortage of parts for new cars. In turn however, i got more than I was hoping for for my PX.

No reduction on price, but i got extended warranty and a full tank of fuel

Thanks this is really helpful! I just wanted to get a sense of the norm in case this particular dealer was trying to exploit my naivety. One of the ones we’re looking at is quite far away so we’d be buying it unseen and getting it delivered so maybe will see if I can get free delivery and a full tank of fuel if they won’t do anything on the price.

I'd be really cautious about buying unseen - we found what looked like the perfect car recently, but then it was in a lot worse condition than we could tell from the photos. Do you have time to wait for what you're looking for to come up more locally?

We don’t really. We need a car this summer for various reasons and there don’t seem to be too many of what we’re looking for available. We’re buying an approved one from a dealership to try to minimise the risks a bit and have had a personalised video as well as a generic one and it looks fine. We also have a 14 day right of return though would be such a hassle if we had to do that.

Heard that there's a massive short supply of new cars due to semi conductor industry being directed to laptops/ iPad demand (due to Covid) so a huge backlog, so price of second hand cars has gone up. Not sure how much wiggle room you might have but worth a try!