We've been looking at a Fabia Monte Carlo, and have asked for quotes via Carwow, the best offer has come back at £14,378 which includes a manufacturer contribution of £1,750. If we put down a £3,000 deposit, monthly payments have been quoted at £139 per month.

 

We visited our local dealer today to test drive a Monte Carlo just to make sure my wife would be happy with it. When we mentioned the Carwow price to the salesman, he was adamant that there's no way we would get the car for that price, and that the discount provided is more than the 14% margin dealers have on vehicles.

 

So, I'm wondering, is the dealer being truthful or trying to put us off? Or is the Carwow dealer wrong? The offer is at least £1,000 better than any other offer on Carwow, the next best being £15,333.

To be honest, if I was a sales person, I'd probably say the same thing as someone is about to steal their "cut" - I got quotes from 3 or 4 brokers when I was getting a new car, built to order at factory - VW Polo, after I got all the prices, I went to my local VW dealer and stuffed a proposed car purchase order in front of them with my only acceptable price, which was the best price brokers had given me with maybe a few £100s added for the convenience to purchase locally, that worked okay and bought me in a car via fleet, pre reg'd by them but never used, which would worry some people but I was planning to run that car until that "pre reg'd" issue would not affect its value.

 

Edit:- maybe you could do as I did and see where that gets you, remember to add in a few £100s to your best quote though.

Edited 18 December, 20187 yr by rum4mo

Thanks,

 

To to honest, I'd be fair and wouldn't expect the local dealer to match the price, but at least make an effort to get close. Happy to pay a little more to deal with a more local dealership than one 200 mile away.

 

I guess I could email the deal to other local dealers and see if they'll match or get close to it.

 

Failing that, I'd be happy to make a day of making a 400 mile round trip for that kind of discount.

 

I found an online broker who advertises the same car for over £1,000 less than that being offered on Carwow as well, but it's got to be too good to be true (about £13,200).

 

Shaun

1 hour ago, rum4mo said:

bought me in a car via fleet, pre reg'd by them but never used

 

The trick is to register the fleet car in the customers name but use the garage address.

Then when the customer buys the car he moves address but the car still has one owner.

 

Thanks AG Falco

I used carwow and got £3500 off an S EL and a £20 Amazon voucher for using them.

I played a few dealers off against eachother (one shouted in exasperation) and eventually got a local one to cave in and match another dealer 200 miles away.

It really is worth doing the homework and haggling.

The worst that can happen is that they say no and frown at you.

 

There are 2 parts to the dealers margin, it appears he has already told you it is 14% (although most wouldn't divulge such a figure) and volume bonuses

 

It is the volume part that enables the low price, if there is a target to sell say 50 cars in a Quarter and that is met, then a bonus of £50,000 is paid (these are made up figures, for easy maths), then clearly there is another £1000 average per car available.   Lets say half this bonus is given to sales staff, and the other half is kept by dealership, then the dealership have another £500 to reduce price by with no loss compared to them selling under 50 cars

 

Try contacting more dealers, someone might be just short of a target and keen to deal

If they are going to get a car to register on 31 Dec anyway, May as well sell it to you for same price (and suggest that, as salesman won't default to the alternative economic opportunity mode, instead thinking in mark-up mode)

 

 

When I bought my new Citroen I used Carwow to get some quotes. But actually they can be more expensive than a dealers quote. It all depends how you want to pay for the car.  I decided to pay cash. That's the only way you can take full advantage of any Carwow discounts and truly getting the quoted knock down prices. If you buy using pcp or finance, even with 0% the price of the Carwow vehicle goes up pretty much to the full retail price. So I was quoted £15,500 for the new Citroen through Carwow (full price otr was £18,500). With 0% pcp the cost of the car went up to £17,800. That's the price you pay with 0%.. With finance at 5.9% that went up to near £18,250 plus the interest, so you end up paying a huge amount more than the original cost of the car through Carwow. Of course, you get a £20 voucher!!!

 

However, I approached my local Citroen dealer who not only quoted me a lower purchase price for cash than any Carwow dealer, but also offered me £1000 more for my trade in than anyone else through Carwow. I actually got a near £20k car for just £14556 otr, rock bottom price. Dealer only made some small amount of money from his bonus. My deal included some factory discount. Citroen don't often give out much in the way of customer discount incentive, and yes, dealers operate on a 14% margin for Skoda as does Citroen on their 'B' segment cars. They are all much the same for mainstream cars but there is less margin for some cheaper makes of car.  There is only so much money in any car deal and it's the way the deal is presented that will lure the customer in or not. Paying cash is the only true way to get a really good discount.  Although buying with cash is not always an option when you have other priorities, so shop carefully and do your sums. 

Edited 19 December, 20187 yr by Estate Man

Cheapest deal I had from my dealer was on PCP. This opened up a further discount not available to pay cash. I choose the PCP deal and cancelled the deal within 2 days. I then had 30 days in which to pay for the car in full but avoiding the 5.9% interest. Interest was charged on the 2 days and came to less than £5 thus saving a hill of money.

 

Bill (clever little fellow)  

Yes there was quite a bit of that going on round about the time that I ordered a new factory build Polo for my wife, but I was not brave enough to do that, I kept thinking that there must be a catch, though it seems not.

 

Also when getting a broker price either for a cash sale or PCP it was always just you getting the best quote, the actual handling of money was taken care of by your accepted supplying dealers, so the cheapest PCP prices always took it that the dealer was contributing the normal chunk of money as they would for a "walk in" sale using PCP - in my case it was a cash purchase.

 

I remember in the "good/bad old days" when I was buying a Ford and Ford were offering crazy low interest rates on loans - so I tried to get a car for less and buying for cash - dealer's finance person was not interested in giving any discount for cash sales, very annoying!

9 hours ago, rum4mo said:

Yes there was quite a bit of that going on round about the time that I ordered a new factory build Polo for my wife, but I was not brave enough to do that, I kept thinking that there must be a catch, though it seems not.

 

Also when getting a broker price either for a cash sale or PCP it was always just you getting the best quote, the actual handling of money was taken care of by your accepted supplying dealers, so the cheapest PCP prices always took it that the dealer was contributing the normal chunk of money as they would for a "walk in" sale using PCP - in my case it was a cash purchase.

 

I remember in the "good/bad old days" when I was buying a Ford and Ford were offering crazy low interest rates on loans - so I tried to get a car for less and buying for cash - dealer's finance person was not interested in giving any discount for cash sales, very annoying!

 

It just shows how much standards have fallen when we treat the Franchised Dealer Network with the suspicion we only reserved for the railway arch 'Del Boy' types. The reason for the Dealer Network success was based mainly on the trust with which we viewed them, safe in the knowledge that they would do the right thing in the event of any issues - in effect a safe haven from 'Dodgy  Garages'. For their part, they enjoyed the profit they made from charging higher rates for goods & services. Oh how we long for those halcyon days!

 

I too was extremely sceptical about stopping the PCP deal and 'phoned VW Financial Services to gain clarification.

 

What is this world coming to.

 

Bill  

Bill, you are a clever little fellow! Very good deal you got. 

 

This thing to remember is that any car sold has only so much profit attached to it.  You can get  manufacturer deposit contribution of £X's but may find the 0% rate is 4.9 or 5.9%. Whereas, another dealer another month may have 0% finance pcp or whatever, yet almost no factory discount contribution and a lower dealer discount. If you work out the difference in what you pay for the car, it still comes out nearly always pretty much the same! My last Skoda pcp was a great deal, 0% pcp, £1000 factory dep contribution, and £500 fuel card with almost no dealer discount. Still, very good. The next month it was a £1500 manufacturer deposit contribution on pcp and two free services with no dealer discounts and a 2.9% pcp finance rate. When you work it out the cost of the car was the same, with little variance on actually what you paid. Yet paying cash you saved a shed load of money beating all other dealer/manufacturer offers. 

 

The only other thing to bear in mind is, if paying cash, how much discount the dealer will offer is dependent on how many cars he has been selling, and how much extra dealer bonus he wants. I got my Citroen at the cash price that I did (£1000 cheaper than anywhere else) because the dealer was incredibly keen to sell me a car so he could get extra bonus. So much so that he didn't make a penny on my car sale, only on his bonus which is far more than any single car sale. 

7 minutes ago, Estate Man said:

Bill, you are a clever little fellow! Very good deal you got. 

 

This thing to remember is that any car sold has only so much profit attached to it.  You can get  manufacturer deposit contribution of £X's but may find the 0% rate is 4.9 or 5.9%. Whereas, another dealer another month may have 0% finance pcp or whatever, yet almost no factory discount contribution and a lower dealer discount. If you work out the difference in what you pay for the car, it still comes out nearly always pretty much the same! My last Skoda pcp was a great deal, 0% pcp, £1000 factory dep contribution, and £500 fuel card with almost no dealer discount. Still, very good. The next month it was a £1500 manufacturer deposit contribution on pcp and two free services with no dealer discounts and a 2.9% pcp finance rate. When you work it out the cost of the car was the same, with little variance on actually what you paid. Yet paying cash you saved a shed load of money beating all other dealer/manufacturer offers. 

 

The only other thing to bear in mind is, if paying cash, how much discount the dealer will offer is dependent on how many cars he has been selling, and how much extra dealer bonus he wants. I got my Citroen at the cash price that I did (£1000 cheaper than anywhere else) because the dealer was incredibly keen to sell me a car so he could get extra bonus. So much so that he didn't make a penny on my car sale, only on his bonus which is far more than any single car sale. 

 

How can 0% be 4.9% or 5.9%? If it's 0% then that's what it is.

Rusty, yes that doesn't read well does it! 

 

Should say... "You can get a manufacturer deposit contribution of £X's, but you may find the finance rate has gone from 0% to 4.9% or 5.9%".  Just saying that it's how the deal is presented that you have to be careful with. It may sound better or worse than last months deals but if you do the maths, the cost of the cars is usually very much the same or exactly the same. 

 

Thanks for pointing out the poor choice of words earlier.

Yeah, that makes more sense. Although knowing car salesmen I guess anything is possible...

This is one thing I have noticed getting quotes. Via SEAT I think they're offering 0% finance, but once the dealer starts offering discount, they claim back the loss via a higher interest rate, in the case of SEAT it's 6.6%.

Rusty, just noticed you are learning to write, as per in your Avatar! My god man, that makes you a scholar on here...lol

TheBinarySheep, yes indeed. That's exactly how it works. They actually don't give anything away. There is only so much profit in a car and they can't work miracles. The best way to buy is cash or when there is solid factory support for a discounting scheme with 0% finance of some sort. 

3 hours ago, Estate Man said:

Rusty, just noticed you are learning to write, as per in your Avatar! My god man, that makes you a scholar on here...lol

 

That actually refers to something which happened four years ago. It's detailed here, and although some of the pics appear to be missing now you get the general idea if you read through a little.

Edited 29 December, 20187 yr by Rustynuts