Car dealers and bargaining

Daily Life, Swiss News and General Topics
1
Hi all,

I found a car on autoscout24 that I am interested in. Although I feel it's a bit overpriced for a 10 years old car, I have made an appointment for a test drive tomorrow.

I am wondering if any of you has experience bargaining with car dealers. Is it OK to bargain in Switzerland? How much should I offer him to start with? 75% of the price he is asking in the web?

Thanks in advance.

2
Bargaining for a car is very normal, and smart sellers already have added extra spare room to negotiate.

How much you should offer.. it all depends on the car and the current asking price. Just have a look on autoscout and such to see what actual trading prices are for equal cars.

3

You can always negotiate.

Try to find out how long the car is on the market - easiest way to see is via comparis as it shows the original date of the ad. The longer on the market, the easier to negotiate.

4

Suire, offer him 75% of the price, then come back and complain XYZ garage are arseholes and rubbish.

Try 10% and accept 5% you may get somewhere.

5
Longer on the market can also mean someone is not in a hurry to sell (like me), or similar cars also for sale. Advertising costs are not insignificant, for someone who wants a quick sale they often put a very competitive price on it from the start.

6
LOL a mk2 mr2 has been for sale in a local garage to me for 8 years, they only want 18k for it!!!! its nothing special, poverty spec bog standard mr2 with normal mileage on it, not mint by any means. I guess if they hold onto it long enough it will eventually become worth it

7
If you post the ad link here you will get loads of free advice

8
In my experience are most Swiss garages neither exactly "smart seller" nor expecting anything less than the price they wrote on the sticker. I managed to get it down a little as well as an extra set of winter wheels thrown in, but dont expect the bargaining "culture" that is normal with used car dealers the world over.

9
Depends on your bargaining skills.

Mine are crap but the OH wangled a huge discount off our car, and off previous cars. I just stand there with popcorn watching the show...

10
It might depend on the car and brand as well.

11
But then it doesn't make it peculiar to Switzerland. For us it's nothing "luxury", i.e. "showing-off cars" for want of a better expression. Maybe bargaining with a Maserati or Bugatti dealer will be met with stony silence but chipping out a discount on your run-of-the-mill family run-about will yield better results.

This is probably not unusual anywhere, never mind Switzerland.

12
True, but in general I would not call Switzerland a country where bargaining is as widely accepted as in many others. In the Netherlands I always bargained at stores like media market and such, here I see nobody doing such.

13

I got 30% off from a dealer. It was an Audi at a Renault dealer. The car was there for a year and the dealer obviously wanted to get rid of it.

14
I guess it's highly subjective but my (Swiss) OH will try turning the screws for most big purchases. Given that the person on the other end often seems open to it, I guess it's not such an unusual thing.

As I said, it's highly subjective as I only see it going on with purchases we make but, it certainly doesn't seem unusual.

Not sure about places like MediaMarkt because they are just shop-floor staff and maybe don't have the authority to do it, but you should definitely ask for a supervisor next time you fancy flexing your bargaining muscle.

15
Found an occasion at Emil.Frey in Nyon. Went home and found a very similar car on AutoScout for almost 20% less. I asked sales agent if they would match the AS price. He said No and didn’t even make a counter offer.

The days of these commission used car dealers are numbered.

16

It does certainly, a good selling car such as Volvo XC60 you cannot get discount on really, maybe a second set of tires/wheels at best, a dog or one being suceeded by a new model or a facelift will get you discount.

Saying that, here we are talking about a 10 year old car, unlikely to be more than 5-10% maximum as the sticker price can't be thathigh anyway !

17
I bought a car at the start of the year.

I adopted a few tactics that may be useful.

Initially I asked to look at a slightly 'worse' car, attempted to negotiate on that one and got the price down by 15% or so (I was semi interested in this one too so it wasn't purely a game). Then I said oh but it's missing feature x and y (that are on the car I was actually interested in). Allowing him to upsell me to the one I wanted.

I then used the same tactics but got some pushback. The one I wanted had many interested people coming to see it that weekend (well that's what he told me). Due to how the earlier negotiation had gone I didn't really doubt him on it.

In the end I pointed out a few scratches on the door and back bumper. He offered to knock 300 off for each or respray the door and back bumper. I opted for the latter. I also got a service included.

Lastly he was trying to sell the car with just summer tyres as the rest 'wasn't needed' . I was having none of it so I got some wheels and tyres from him too included. It took quite some persuasion though.

I was there 3 hours all in all, but negotiating takes time.

18
Throughout the years, I've bought two used cars from local used car dealers.

They always insisted on their advertised price and refused to bargain.

The first time was in Renault Glattpark Zürich, and not only did they refuse to change the price, but three salesmen were busy putting up a practical joke on me, by speaking Swiss-German between them and then inserting words in my native language, and every time I asked what their intention is, they laughed loudly and said I'm hallucinating, and that these are all words in Swiss-German.

BTW They actually let customers stand there and wait for more than 10 minutes while they ran the skit on me.

I recon they couldn't care less about making a sale.

19
Yep, some stores really look down on their customers. Or they simply underestimate them. I once got one of those stores being angry tho

My looks in the eyes of some don't reflect that of somebody willing or able to put down big bucks for some things, so years ago (mid 90's) I set out to buy a new bike and my budget was 8K fl.- (so roughly 3.600,- Euro) which by then indeed was an insane budget for a bike. 1st store I went to simply refused to show me their topmodels and would not even let me lift them up and such. Went there two weeks later to have one spoke adjusted on my new top model bike. They were absolutely not pleased.