Car Supermarkets-advice asap!

[doglover]

After extensive research around Ford dealers, other garages and private sales, we have finally found 2 cars that we really like at a local car supermarket. Basically, we're unsure of the protocol when potentially buying from this outlet; do we haggle or are the prices pretty much set? (The prices do seem in line with Pakers). We're going back to look again tomorrow morning so hope some of you may have some experience to share this evening!

Anyone?!

haggle all the way, they may have cut it as much as possible but you will never know unless you ask, make sure you ask for Tax thrown in and warrenty extended and as much money off as possible .

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we've just visited one today, we tried to haggle but there didn't seem much room for discounts. try and get tax and mats as minimum extras.

I bought from a car supermarket, they made it quite clear that the prices were fixed and that there was no room for haggling. We tried, but they politely declined to haggle. Like you say though, the prices were in line with Parkers.

Our next car was bought 2ndhand from a Ford dealership. We haggled and got discount plus extras. I'm sure it helped that it was nearly the end of the market, so shifting cars and meeting targets was problably more important than absolute amounts of cash earned.

I mean, it was nearly the end of the month.

end of month always better as they have to sell XXX amount of cars so if its been bad month they will drop price. Would also try to haggle or at least get warranty etc included in price. Depends which carsupermarket you are going to. IF sales man cant drop price ask to speak to manager and just let them know you can only pay xxx amounr.

if the car still has manufacturers warrenty is it worth getting one from the garage as well?

"warranty" even

Don't know about haggling, but do know that you shouldn't take the credit they offer. We bought a car for £9k, if we had taken their credit and all the payment protection etc, we would have ended up paying nearly £20k over 5 years

We bought on our cc and then took out a personal loan - much cheaper if you can do it.

Also, we got a 2 yr warranty (although had to pay more if we wanted a 'better' one). There were loads of t&cs on it - we had to have it serviced by a main dealer every 6 months. We decided not to bother, and go with our normal garage: the cost of the services would probably work out more than any extra work we would have to have done bearing in mind the car was less than 1yr old when we bought it.

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Car supermarkets can be cheap, as long as you don't let them screw you for extras like 'EU' number plates, extended warranties and international breakdown assistance, you're also in a better position if you finance the car through someone other than themselves, then you can say you can only afford say 1 1/2K less than the car you want is. As per other posts, walk away and leave it for a few days, they'll probably call you with a reasonable deal.

Thanks, guys. We appreciate your pearls of wisdom.

Returned to Autoplanet today and have bought a car! We're delighted with it; will collect on Tuesday. Thanks again for advice offered.

did you get a discount?

Well we're the world's worst hagglers so not really! The car we've purchased was below the Parkers price so a discount was always going to be unlikely. We did 6 months Tax and fuel included which wasn't bad!