Buying new car - what do they DO in the back room?

[HippyDays]

I’m trying to get a new car (on finance). Naively thought it would be a quick pop in, get some figures and say yes or no. Good grief, the amount of FAFFING!

What is it they are doing when they disappear in the back? Why can’t it be done at the desk with me?

I wanted it sorted yesterday but it took so long I had to leave for an appointment so I’m going to have to waste more of today.

Would I be better going elsewhere, or will it just be the same?

They’re messing around with the numbers to try to reach a monthly repayment figure I’ll be happy to accept! - it’s a long process of haggling. They make an offer, I say I can’t afford that, they go into the back room, come out to make a lower offer, etc etc etc…

It is very tedious but in my case, it pushes the price down eventually!

I've always wondered that! I assumed messing about so I get bored of waiting and accept any figure cos I want the car that much.

Thanks, but why does it have to be done in a back room? He took his laptop with him so it isn’t that he needed a special computer.
Why couldn’t it be “it will cost 8 trillion pounds”, I shake my head, he taps away and then says “7.5 trillion pounds”. Why the getting up, walking away, coming back?

How much back and forward will there be. Life is too short for this!

I lose the will to live in car showrooms. I know this is ridiculous for an otherwise educated, independent woman , but having decided on one I like, I let DH do the numbers bit.
Life is too short.

Yes maybe this, he seemed surprised I was more keen to get to another appointment than just finish up and agree a price. At the moment I’m more tempted to think I’ll just keep my current car, I can’t be bothered with this long drawn out process!

Normally in car dealerships there will be someone who is the finance person, they have to look over finance applications / changes to them - so all of the salespeople can pull together quotes etc but they have to be approved by the actual finance person - at least in my experience! They need a sign off rather than each salesperson being able to just offer whatever they like. It's part of the process to be approved to offer finance to the public.

Maybe there is a call for a service where you can pay someone to do the faffing and you just get a message every now and then with “6 trillion?”. Quick reply back to say “nope” and they carry on with the faff for you.

Agree! It puts me off changing my car. The whole process takes far too long.

I had the call this week from the dealer saying I can change my car - I felt like he'd told me I have to have a tooth out. It's ridiculous it should be a pleasurable experience not a chore.

I declined and told them why.

Oh this is interesting and makes much more sense.
So how can I make this quick and painless? Just say what I want? How far can I push it? On the adverts they just have a price and we could just tinker with length of term etc. I thought (new) cars were a fixed price and haggling was just on second hand, but I guess I’m wrong!

Yes, the back room is where Finance Guy lives.

With a new car, we work out how much my old car is worth to trade in, I tell them if I can add anything else to the deposit, and then we haggle. It’s boring but usually worth it.

I think this happens (well to me anyway) when you buy a new mobile phone and contract.

I can't understand why it takes so long. One would think that being involved in technology they could action things more quickly.
AND there is often a queue to speak to someone.

Perhaps by dragging it out they hope you'll say yes to anything in order to get out of the shop whilst there is still some daylight?

It’s because

1. they are disorganised
2. the salespeople have next to no autonomy.
3. everything has to go through one particular manager who’s busy and disorganised and the salesperson has to wait for them to be free to do the next bit of the haggle.
4. the systems are antiquated and designed to slow the whole process down- they misguidedly think it will wear you down into paying more.

at the end of it all your salesperson makes about £25 on your car, which on top of a shit (below min wage) basic is not enough for the shiny shoes he’s doubtlessly wearing 😂

Are they pretending to negotiate with their manager?

Some years ago I took out a PCP on a new car because the cost was hardly anything more than buying the same model a year or two old, which was my original intention.

What I didn't realise was that they made their money by selling a load of extras that I didn't want or were massively overpriced, that added around 20% to the total cost of the car. I kept saying I just wanted to buy the car and nothing else and he kept on with the hard sell of the extra insurance and internal and external coating and a load of other stuff and when I kept refusing he kept disappearing into the back 'to check with his manager'.

In the end I got the £2k of extras (it was a cheap car) for about £500 and I still felt ripped off but I was close to just walking away but I needed a car and I wanted to take the offer of a cheap new one that I thought was available but it seemed it wasn't really, without a fight.

Used to work at one. Salesman deals with customer at desk, assuming its going well we'd have to do the 'let me just bring over my manager/I'm just going to talk to my business manager', we'd go to their office, they'd bring up the customer crm page with your details on, they'd search for a car in stock that matches your wants or if we'd have to order it as well as running a soft credit check to see which of our companies would offer you finance and what products I've sold you and build them into the deal with the most acceptable price for you and the most money left in the car for us. I return to you to present you with 'the best deal my business manager put together for you' and hopefully you buy it. You can't see it because there's so many figures the BM or gm wouldn't want you to be asking questions about

We are on your side, it's the manager 'doing the deal' kind of spiel. I hated it and don't do it anymore and also have vert little patience buying cars

I'm sure it's slightly different I'm different dealerships but that was my experience of a main dealership

As another pp said, my base rate was 12k and we made £25 to £50 on a car and didn't sell tons

It is a pointless sales tactic to make you think that the offer they eventually give you is (a) the best possible offer (b) dragged out of them by your brilliant negotiating (c) special just for you (d) dragged out of the finance guy despite himself but only if you sign up NOW etc etc.
You would be much better getting the best price for the same car off Carwow, and either doing the deal through them or taking it into your dealer and asking them to match it. No faffing that way.

Partly it's because of the way finance is done, but it's also a sales trick to maximise profit. The salesman is putting himself in the position of being on your side. He's working so hard, going back and forth to appeal to the mysterious finance manager on your behalf to get the price you want. This makes you think that the salesman is looking out for your best interest which makes you want to trust him more.
In reality the salesman is trying to work out how much commission he's going to get from this sale. He's not on your side, he's on his. But you'll be more willing to go along with the price he sets if you think he's on your side but it's the nasty finance manager who won't budge.

Now I use car supermarkets where the price is fixed and there's no hard sell on the extras. Last time I bought a car, I went in, said I want to buy that one (which I'd already reserved online because the price was decent, it was a model I'd had before and it was during COVID when there was a shortage).

The salesperson had a half hearted attempt at selling me a few extra, which I'd already said I didn't want and I don't think she expected me to take, I paid for the car with my debit card and drove it away - the whole process took around an hour including a quick test drive.

When haggling, they do it so it looks like it's not the salesperson, and that s/he is on your side and it's their invisible manager who is the big nasty man who won't take anything less! Just smoke and mirrors as they hate haggling and the entire industry is trying desperately to move to a model where list/screen price is non negotiable!

I used to be the accountant for a few new car dealerships - the "front" salesmen knew exactly what they could offer/agree, they never needed to go to "ask the manager" - they knew what authority they had to haggle, they knew the book cost of all the cars they could sell, they knew their limits as to what freebies they could throw in, i.e. floor mats, half a tank of fuel, etc., they knew what manufacturer bonuses they could achieve and what their personal bonus would be selling each car. Going to ask the manager was just a ploy to fool the customer into thinking they were getting some kind of special deal or for the salesman to blame "someone else" for not giving a better deal.

At the end of the day, they'll try to get as much cash from you as possible, whilst giving away as little as possible. That's the very nature of a salesman's job. Going into the back to "ask the manager" is just one of many tricks/ploys that they use to make you think you're getting a good/special deal. The more times they do it, the longer it takes, is all a ploy to frustrate the customer into accepting a poorer deal, basically grind you down into thinking you're not going to get better, so you accept just to shorten the process.

My tip is to walk away. 9 times out of 10, they'll phone you back the next day with a better offer as they really won't want to lose the sale, and there's ALWAYS a deal to strike, however much they argue that they don't do deals these days!

This really made me laugh. I totally agree. I've just bought a VW T Cross (part finance) and I wanted to kill everyone in the showroom after an hour. How many repulsive cups of coffee do you have to refuse before they get the idea that you want to just pay for the car and go.

Oh I feel your pain.

I was buying brand new, I left the dealership and told them to email me the quotes based on 10k miles vs 12 etc

I conducted most of the work via email, I said don't call me I won't reply, email me and you'll get a sale. So other than collecting the car which was an utter cringe "reveal" bullshit I did all the negotiating my own time.

You can ask them to hurry up too, which I've done before just said I have 1 hours to get figures, I will make a decision etc, I think I just have gut bumped up the waiting list.

Your time is valuable don't waste it drinking crap coffee surrounded by men in awful suits.

If you're not trying to haggle, then of course it'll be quick as you're the ideal customer for them who is (sorry to say) daft enough to pay windscreen price. The showroom get their profit, the salesman gets his bonus, everyone is happy (at their end). Sounds like you were happy too. But don't make the mistake in thinking you couldn't have got a discount and more freebies!

The last two brand new cars we bought were both after several days of tooing and froing with the respective dealerships. The first was a list price £20k brand new car that we got for £15k. The second, a few months ago, was a list price £17k brand new car that we got for £14k. Both times, the salesmen initially said there was no scope for haggling etc "due to demand", but funnily enough, in both cases, after we walked away, the salesmen "had a chat with their manager" and found there were deals to be made after all! Funny that!

Same works the other way when selling. The "we buy any car" price of our car we intended to part exchange was £4k. The garage were willing to offer £4.5k against the £14k new car we last bought. I haggled and got them up to £5k pretty easily (it was ultra low mileage, exceptionally good condition, FSH, etc). In the end, we sold it for £6k to a more local private garage who only offered the same £4k at first, but when he saw it, we persuaded him to increase his offer as he clearly wanted it. It went on his forecourt for £9k and sold within a week!

So ultimately got a brand new list price car of £17k for just £14k and got £2k more part exchange by refusing to just take the dealership's offer. So all in all, £5k better off by spending the time, haggling, exploring options, etc. That was despite the industry saying they don't haggle anymore! That's what they want people to think!

Well said. Don't play their game. Play your own game the way you want to play it. Most of our negotiations have been by phone after an initial short visit. We even phone to arrange date/time of a test drive before we even set foot in the place, so we go, do the test drive straight away (time is only them copying our driving licences), come back, quick chat, walk away. All done and dusted in an hour. After phone calls and emails, deal done, arrange a date/time to pick it up, do the paperwork, say "no" to all their questions about extras, finance, etc., swipe your card to pay, and you're out within half an hour driving away the car!

The time before that, for a second hand car for OH, we did all the negotiating/phone calls whilst we were on holiday walking around a National Trust gardens. We'd been to the car dealership the day before, we picked it up the day after, on the last day of our holiday! All done and dusted within three days, and two very brief visits to the dealership, one to test drive, one to collect. We walked away after the test drive as the salesmen gave some crap about how the cars are on the internet and sold directly from the interest, the price was the price and there was no haggling. Funny how he phoned us up the next day to haggle!

They just want to grind you down into accepting their deal. You need to take control.

I do this with phone contracts. Soooo fucking tedious!

You will get far more for your car selling it yourself. More faff I realise. But at least you'll be paid for your time!

I’m surprised they didn’t suggest they phone you when they have finished.