So there I stopped at the Jeep dealership on route 70 and was met by John who seem to really want to sell me the Jeep I was eyeballing. There was no price listed on the window, but they did have the items the vehicle contained on the side window... Still, no MSRP or what they were asking for it. I asked John what the price was and he said "let's test drive it and then we'll get down to the numbers..."
K - long story short: we test drove it, I liked it. It had low mileage, was a pretty good condition but a few scratches here or there. No biggie, I liked it.
I told John that I could only afford around $320 in payments. I wasn't expecting to achieve it because other dealerships had been giving $390 for Jeeps, even when leasing.
Here's the break down:
Trade in: Ford Explorer Sport with a blue book value of $3,700
I owed on it: $6,700 (giving a negative $3000 equity)
They gave me a paper with the following breakdown (numbers in general arena):
Sticker: $26995 (with WOW) written next to it
Trade-in: $8000
Pay-off: $6700
Taxes, blah blah - don't remember those
They came back with a $590 payment. I said no. They came back with a $490 payment, I said no. Sales manager came out and gave me the pressure stuff. We came to an agreement with $1000 down and $410 payments. It sounded good to me - heck the vehicle was $26K - and it seemed like they had eaten some of my negative equity, right? WRONG...
Looking on their website, the vehicle is listed for $18995. Additionally, Kelly Blue Book agrees with the website price. What happened? They beefed up the price by $8000 to eat up my negative equity and then some. I walked out paying a $23995 price which was $5000 more then what it was worth. And they said I was getting a steal. I'm 38... I should have known better... Now I will have to pay for the next few years for the critical mistake.
Use Kelly Blue Book before you ever deal with these guys.
0 comments