To ask how not to get screwed over while car shopping.

[forfuckssakenet]

Need to buy a car . Can't be bothered with it, not good at it and have little patience for salesperson chat.

Not even sure the best way to go financially? Hire purchase? Pcp? Bank loan? Not in a position to purchase outright do would have to be one of these options.

I really want to get a good deal (or st the very least not get conned) and I need your help to achieve this!

Any tips? Also any car recommendations would be much appreciated!

Thanks everyone for all your replies! I have registered with carwow.

Thankfully I didn't have to go today so the horror has been delayed 😀

Tuesday is d day. Hopefully car wow will save me from this hell.

Take a man with you - not so much a man, but if you're not very knowledgeable about cars, at least take someone with you who is. The sad fact is that car salesmen DO approach female customers differently to male customers and often (not always!) assume that a woman won't know much. it's wrong - but they do. I can shut them up instantly because I know a good bit about cars and my partner is in the business so I know all the tricks. At the very least, do your homework before you go to buy.

As to the car - well, what are you going to use it for? Daily commute? Long distances? Just runs to the local shops etc? City driving? Do you want petrol or diesel? What kind of car do you want? Small, medium, large? Do you want brand new or second hand? Where abouts in the country are you? How often do you look to change your car? Do you have enough disposable income to cover servicing, repairs, MOT etc? With a brand new car you can get deals where regular servicing, tyres etc... are included in your monthly payment and you won't have the cost of an MOT for the first 3 years. You can then change to a new car every 3 years... but you never own it outright but you have more peace of mind regarding anything going wrong. Lots of people talk about owning cars outright but unless you are buying a classic sought-after car, it is going to depreciate in value and at some point won't be worth fixing. Consider if, as soon as you've paid off your bank loan, your car develops a problem that costs more to fix than the car is worth. You own your car outright but it's worth next to nothing and at best you'll make a couple of hundred quid at auction. You're then back to square one having to buy a car - another bank loan or whatever. That has happened to me twice. I now have a car leased through my work as a company car that I use regularly and I never have to worry about repairs or anything... and another car as my weekend car that I own outright but paid cash for it - no loan - and it's a rare classic - it's close to being worth 10 times what I paid for it.

Someone above mentioned auctions - yes, you can get amazing deals at auction but you MUST take someone with you who knows about cars and who can spot problems. There are great deals to be had at auction but equally, you will get total sheds going through auction and once you've bought it, you have no come-back if its got a problem, so you must be careful.

Its true though about taking a man with you. A lot of dealers see a woman and immediately assume you don't know much about cars and they can rip you off. Which can be very entertaining if you actually do know your motors but when you don't it does help to have a man there as deterrent. They are sexist pigs but if they assume that men automatically know cars better then they are less likely to try ripping you off.

I have always got much better deals on cars than DH has. I don't know any more about cars than he does but am a much better negotiator. As I said above, I also do my research so, whilst I may not know much about cars, I will have narrowed my search down to a few different options and be familiar with the spec of the different models within those options, which one I want, what the list price is, what Autotrader etc say is achievable and what I can get GAP insurance for, for example, through a third party rather than through a dealer.

Most car salesmen know very little about the cars themselves, I've yet to meet one who knew more about the car we were discussing than I did. They're just there for the hard sell on all the rest of the bullshit.

You can get PCP at the same rate as a bank loan contrary to advice from a PP depending who you bank with.