RIP 96 Town & Country

I see you obviously did not carefully read my post or you would have seen
that
I said the following:

"...And with a $3K trade in allowance for your used van, you ended
up at the same place as if you had sold it for $1K, then beaten the price
on the new vehicle down another $2K. Your dealer really ended up doing
you a favor in this case since now you don't have to dispose of the used
van..."

Dealers aren't stupid, they do these deals all day long. They know that
just
about everyone walking through the door that has a trade in is going to try
to
phyche them out by not asking for trade in credit until they have a final
price
in hand. So they take the safe road and just assume that a trade in is
going to
be presented at the last minute, and they make it work to their advantage
by leaving some fat in the price. Then when the trade in is presented they
can
afford to give a rediculously inflated price for it so that the buyer
figures
I've gotta buy my new car here because nobody else is going to give me
this much trade in credit for my old piece of crap. Ultimately it works out
fair for all concerned because the extra the buyer thinks he gets for his
POS he pays for in the new car price, so the buyer really ends up getting
the true value for his old POS, and the buyer also ends up paying a fair
price for his new vehicle. But the way they do it, the buyer has a much
more
warm fuzzy feeling about the dealership, rather than thinking they are a
heartless bunch of cruel bastards. The fact that your sitting here
defending
the price you got as a great deal is perfect proof that the dealer has set
the sale up properly to turn you in to another buyer that's going to tell
all
his friends about the great deal he got, excellent advertising value there.

Nowhere did I say that you got "taken advantage of" in fact to the contrary,
the
dealer played fair with you. In short, since you elected not to put money
into
repairing your van then selling it through private sale, you got a fair
deal. You
did not get an earth-shattering fantastic amazing deal, you got a fair one.
Sadly,
in US society today, people seem to feel as though they are cheated if they
just get fair deals, so much effort is put into making the typical consumer
think
they are getting an amazing deal for a typical sale. Witness me having the
teremity
to actually infer that you didn't get the most fantastic deal on the planet,
so your
knee-jerk reaction is that I'm saying that you were taken advantage of.

Ted

 

Ted, attitiude aside, your statements concerning the approach to purchasing
a new car is right on, in my opinion. I was merely reporting that I had
followed that approach and feel that, as a result, I got a fair deal.
(Dealer Invoice less rebates, on the new car, and the a fair price on my
trade in). In NYS you save the sales tax on the value of the trade in so you
need to get at least 8% more on a private sale to stay level on the deal.
Are we on the same page now?

Richard.