Jeff Henrickson

Watch and question their numbers. Typical shady dealership trickery changing the numbers hoping you won’t notice, playing games like trying to pressure you into putting money down whe Typical shady dealership trickery changing the numbers hoping you won’t notice, playing games like trying to pressure you into putting money down when you don’t need to, continuing to negotiate after the deal, and even giving the old “I’m probably going to get fired for this” line to which I laughed out loud. My wife and I arrived knowing the exact vehicle we wanted to purchase. Spoke with a polite, knowledgeable, and relatable salesperson. Worked a deal on a $91k MSRP for just under $61k after trade and add ons. So we had plenty of equity to get the financing done. Salesperson said everything looked great and moved me to finance where things went off the rails. Typical finance guy that tries to act hard-nosed and “is what it is” so you’ll think you don’t have options and you won’t negotiate. He reads me my approval and tells me the monthly payment. I of course told him no, that’s over $200 a month more than it should be. He tells me my credit must have been good before but not now and that the interest rate would be much higher than before. I told him I knew rates are higher now but his rate was far higher than what it should be. We all know the dealership makes money of our interest rate so that’s the usual tactic. Then he told me I needed to put some money down to get the rate lower. I told him that wasn’t happening. He continued to pressure me to do so and I repeatedly told him no. I had an auto loan calculator open on my phone and started running numbers. I noticed even at the interest rate he stated, the numbers didn’t make sense. I asked him what the total finance amount was and he gave me a number just over $64k. That was over $3k more than the deal the salesperson and I had agreed on. When I called him out on it he left the room and said he’d find out what happened. The correct amount was right there in front of him on the deal sheet. He was either doing something shady and hoping I wasn’t going to question it, or the guy just doesn’t know how to enter numbers into the computer. To me it was obvious some shady stuff was going on. He came back in and put in the correct numbers. He still came up way off from what the payment should be and again pressured me to put money down. He then began trying to negotiate the payment “I’d be good with”. I stood my ground and told him I had a 4.5 hour drive home so I needed to hit the road. When I walked out I was met by the salesperson and his manager. I told them we couldn’t make it happen. They then tag teamed up, pressuring me and telling me how they were already losing money on the deal and how much vehicle I was getting for my money. (Two days later I saw they posted my trade in for over $27k when they gave me $21k for it. I know the business and that doesn’t bother me but to tell me they are losing money on the deal is just a huge lie.) Both were talking over each other I’m sure just trying to confuse and overwhelm me. They then started trying to negotiate a payment that would work for me. I caved a bit and went up $25 per month. The manager said he’d make it happen and head to the finance office saying “I’ll probably lose my job for this” to which I laughed loudly and said “you’re not going to lose your xxxx job”. He returned and said they had it worked out. I went back into finance and finished up the deal. In the end I didn’t feel great about it because I know they still got over on me a bit but it was a deal I could live with. So after that I just put on a smile and played nice to get delivery wrapped up and get headed home. The salesperson had said they would hand wash the vehicle and fill it up. When he brought it around it had been washed. Once I left, I looked down and saw less than a 1/4 tank of fuel. So I guess they saved themselves the cost of a tank of fuel too. My summary. Upon arrival I really thought I had found a smaller dealership that would be different than the big city high pressure places. I was wrong. More

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