If there is one car buying tip that I can give that is going to hold true anywhere it is to not make a pest of yourself. If you have already read through my glossary of car dealership terms. This is where the strokes, yanks, squirrels, and spooks come out to play. Don't put yourself in this category because a good salesman doesn't forget shit! I sure didn't.
It's no secret that a car salesman is paid on commission. Their time is literally money and that is how they look at it. Now is it okay to go in and work some numbers to go home and sleep on it afterwords? Absolutely. It's when you repeatedly show up on a weekly or monthly basis to expect that "things have changed." At any store I worked at there was always a notorious group of people who did this. I never could understand this demographic of people. Their customer loyalty is usually terrible. When I say customer loyalty I mean they wouldn't even ask for the salesman they previously worked with. This is just flat out rude and bad etiquette. Unless you had a salesman that was truly a creep. I wouldn't ever recommend doing this. Moves like this will get you remembered by all of the staff very quickly and when you do truly want some help and you are ready to buy they are going to scatter like mice. Now you're thinking "well if they want my business they will help me." Yeah ok, go in with that attitude and let me know where that gets you. You have to remember that those salesman are still your liaison between you and the manager. Salesman are humans with a patience threshold just like anyone else. If you have been in periodically over months and have talked to 3 salesman. I as a salesman would have known there is no money to be made off of this person and I wouldn't want to help them even for the lousy hundred bucks I would get for it. Worse yet, if you had already dealt with someone else the odds are I would be splitting that lousy "mini" deal with another associate. Further taking away any incentive for me to assist them.
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| No One Likes a Pest |
I am going to give you a real example of one guy that stands out in my mind over the years from selling cars. I was working at the biggest Toyota store in town. Actually one of the higher ranking stores in the Chicago Region. This dude was such a repeat offender that we had all affectionately named him Tacoma Bob. Anytime Tacoma Bob pulled up out front you could expect to hear cracks in the showroom like "oh great, what's this spook want?" I was the first unlucky son of a bitch to work a deal with him. He owned a decent old 4x2 Ford ranger he was real proud of and wanted ungodly money for. He was wanting to trade it in for a new Toyota Tacoma. I spent a few hours with this quirky old fart just to be $4000 away from a car deal in the end. When you are selling a new car at invoice and giving the most for their trade you can there is little hope at this point with a spread like that. The guy was simply unrealistic. However, he would come in every few weeks or few months and yank someone else's chain. Hell if I still had the guys paperwork I would pull the new unlucky salesman aside if he didn't know who this guy was already and warn him about what the guy expected. After Tacoma Bob did this a few times just about every sales associate (about 20 of us) knew who he was and what he was up to. None of us would go talk to him anymore if he came in. We ignored him until he left. If he did snag one of us. We would just say "haven't you been in here before, who were you working with?" Once he finally realized we were onto him. He stopped showing up. Maybe someone else earned his business. To that we could only say "thank God and good riddance!" My point is that even if he did eventually buy he made such a nuisance of himself that we didn't give one shit where he bought a car. My manager didn't care either because he saw it as someone just needlessly tying up his sales staff's time. The old saying that "the customer is always right" loses it's luster if you make a pain in the ass of yourself.
I wanted to share that story with you because I don't want you to be this person. Chances are that if a store has really taken the time to work some numbers with you and "walks" you in the end. They have put their best foot forward and let you leave with a figure they are comfortable with you shopping them against. Car dealers don't like to let money walk out the door. So if they do, there is likely very little in it for them at this point. The fact is. Deals don't get better over time. If there is a trade-in involved it will only get worse. Trade-ins depreciate by the DAY. You could also lose some factory rebate cash on a new car if you let things spill over into the next month and they take those rebates away. I will say about the only instance where you are going to see things get better on an old car deal is if you are on a new car that sees better incentives down the road or if you have had your eye on an aged pre-owned unit that they desperately need to unload.
The most important points to take from this article are as follows. Deals will not get better over time unless you run into a few of the factors I mentioned in the last paragraph. Salesman will remember your face better than you think. Always ask for the same salesman. Doing otherwise is a blatant form of disrespect at a car dealership. Understand that "walking" a customer is a good sign that a store has done the best they can. Hanging out at car dealerships and not buying cars will gain you notoriety as a stroke and you will only be remembered as a liar and not a buyer. This is a very simple car buying tip anyone can follow. Trust me on this.
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