Believe me, I tried; however, the car was already priced below every equivalent model in the area (I knew this for certain and so did they) and they were unwilling to lower the price. I brought with me a printout from autodamageexperts.com and the exact service history of the vehicle showing the repairs made. The guy in charge of sales then came over and told me that was already included in the price. I told him I wouldn't buy it then and he said he'd keep me informed if another car came in soon. Maybe I could have pushed a little harder but I think the price was fair. The damage was very minor--they replaced a part of the bumper and come clips. I inspected it carefully all around and could not see any evidence of the repair. It was a leased vehicle before so I'm pretty confident it was taken care of all around.
Instead of getting them to lower the base price, I was able to have them install running boards and provide me with a second key at cost. Maybe I could have gotten a little more but I put on a lot of pressure and told them I was unwilling to buy it for that price without an accessory concession. I feel like I got a good, fair deal. Then again, in every good hustle the person hustled always feels like they came out ahead I suppose. But seriously, as far as I can tell so far I got an awesome vehicle for about $1000 less than the Bluebook value (even though they claimed it was $4,500 below Bluebook).
The best part was at the end when they wanted to sell me the extra warranty crap. I declined everything. Then he offered to reduce the price slightly. I declined again. He reduced it a little more for a "Costco" discount (maybe legit, maybe lol?). I then offered half of the asking price for the the tire damage warranty and electronic systems warranty--primarily because the electronics burned out on my last car pretty soon after I bought it and I do a lot of street parking and driving on unimproved roads so I think the tires/rims could get messed up at some point. The sales guy said "man, OK I can do it just because it's late at night now and I'm a pushover when I want to just go home." I retorted, "actually my man, YOU are the one who waited until the 11th hour here to raise these issues with me. I've been here since 6:00--sitting around waiting on you guys to shuffle papers/play good cop bad cop for the past two hours--and it's now 10:30 and this is the first I've heard of it. So don't think you can trick me with this reverse psychology crap by claiming your chosen tactic is being used against you." Things suddenly moved much faster after that and I ended up with the extra coverage for tires and electronics at half the standard price.
I still wonder if I got swindled there at the end. I did the math and it's still a bit of a risk/reward thing. I certainly don't hope to have to use the warranty but I'm OK with having paid for it. I don't have the paperwork in front of me but I think it works out to about $1250 for those things. If I have to replace a couple rims and a couple tires I'll come out ahead...I think.
:banana:
