03-25-2012, 01:35 PM | #1 |
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Buying Service vs. Dealer
Question: What are the downsides of using a car buying service vs. purchasing from my local dealer?
It seems that every organization that I am associated with, membership stores, credit unions, insurance companies, the company I work for, etc., offer car purchasing services. Unfortunately, as I have shopped for an X3 my local dealers have been unwilling to offer what I would consider a significant discount off of the full MSRP. Some of the purchasing services however are willing to provide a significant discount. I am talking about $3,500 or so difference for a loaded 35i. The problem is that these services work through and deliver their cars through dealers that are well over an hour away from my home. I would not want to go that far to have my car serviced. An example of one of my concerns is: My local dealers offer loaner cars when yours in the shop. Do they only do this for cars purchased at their dealership or is this a BMW corporate thing? One other factoid is that I would be factory ordering the car either way since there are no fully loaded 35is to be had in my area. I suspect that this question has been asked and answered before but if it has, I am not smart enough to find it on the forum. |
03-25-2012, 01:42 PM | #2 | |
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American Express, Costco, etc., are all great services; however, as you mentioned they often include doing business with dealers far from home. You've stated the only thing you will lose out on by purchasing from a dealer where you will NOT be getting the car serviced. Your local dealer could very well decide NOT to give you loaner cars, priority scheduling, etc. Now, if they were smart, they'll try to do everything they can to prove value and show you they're worth the extra pennies. As you can see from my other thread, I searched long and hard for my F25 and eventually decide to purchase from my local dealer, even though I could have saved $300 about 45 miles from home. I just felt that in the end, $300 was not worth the hassle of traveling and the issue mentioned above. Everyone has their price. If someone offered me a deal for $1000 better, you better believe I would have dealt with a new BMW center. My two cents...
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03-25-2012, 02:13 PM | #3 |
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Check with your local dealer re the policy on loaners. Mine local dealer still provides loaners regardless of where the car was purchased.
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03-25-2012, 02:49 PM | #4 |
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go over to bimmerfest.com. one of their sponsors works at a [south?] atlanta dealer, was just named one of the top 10 ca's in the southeast, and is reputed to give very good deals to bimmerfest members. [registration is free]
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03-25-2012, 06:06 PM | #5 |
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Drives: 2012 X3
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Location: NJ
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My dealer gave me a price which was lower (quite a bit - $750) lower than the prices I saw on Carsdirect, Truevalue, etc.
Last edited by dudley07726; 03-26-2012 at 06:12 PM.. |
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03-28-2012, 04:30 AM | #7 |
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I got $500 over invoice with the buying service. Don't think I've seen a direct through dealer price mentioned here that was better than that. And the "no hassle/no haggle" aspect of it was very nice. Nice to have a break from that kind of thing.
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03-28-2012, 10:19 AM | #8 | |
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03-28-2012, 08:05 PM | #9 |
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Drives: 2016 X5 xDrive 35i
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I used a car buying service from my credit union. It really didn't do very much for me - basically knocked a little off the MSRP and gave my contact info to 3 dealers. I ended up negotiating a better deal on my own - I also did a custom order. It was pretty clear to me, after talking to the dealers, that they treat the "car buying service" as a sales lead and nothing more.
Here is my recommendation: go to Edmunds to price out your car with the options you want (http://www.edmunds.com/bmw/x3/2012/?sub=suv). Make sure the MSRP matches what you get from building it on the BMW site - Edmunds can double-count some options that are included in packages. Then take the invoice price and add $500. Don't pay any more than that. I imagine you have more than one dealer in Atlanta (DC has 6). If your preferred dealer won't sell it to you for that price, then walk out and go to the next. Three of the dealers in my area would not sell it to me at my price, one came close and two of them came down to my price. The really frustrating thing for me was that mine was a custom build coming straight from the factory, so it was the exact same car no matter which dealer I bought from, but I got very different prices from each. And one more thing - since yours is a custom build, some dealers won't want to give up their production slots. They might try to push you off to a later production date. But normally it shouldn't take any more than 4 weeks from order to delivery. You may be in a tough spot right now because the '12 model year production ends in March and the '13s don't roll out until May. Good luck! |
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