I've never had this horrific experience at a dealership. Maybe some people do not like negotiating, but I look at it for what it is.. a transaction, nothing more, nothing less. They are trying to make as much profit on each sale.. I am trying to pay the lowest price on every car I purchase. This is not a surprise to anyone. I have no loyalty to any dealer, or brand, or particular vehicle. I am simply shopping for the best value on the vehicle I want to purchase. This means I literally have hundreds of dealers to choose from and it's advantageous to me that they have to compete on price to get my money.
I also don't just walk into dealerships looking at shiny new cars. I do my homework first. This means searching around the internet for what prices others are paying, finding the dealerships that honor the lowest pricing and I have my financing pre-approved. This is all done before I walk into the dealership. Most importantly, before I ever step foot into a dealership, I email dealers inquiring about their OTD "out-the-door" price. This is their itemized price with all the extras including.. delivery, fees, discounts, markups, taxes, tags, and title. Dealers will either give you the pricing upfront.. or if they refuse.. I move on to another dealership that will. And being able to move on to another dealer is exactly what makes the dealership model attractive to me. I do not have to purchase my car from a specific dealer or at a specific price. I can always find a cheaper price.. just takes a little homework to find it.
Once I find a dealer who agrees with the OTD pricing I'm looking for.. I head to the dealer to purchase the car. Outside of the Finance guy offering the usual extra market & protection packages.. which I've already told him upfront I'm going to say: "No to everything". I bring home that new car in about an hour. This was precisely the scenario when I bought my wife's ID.4 for MSRP about 8 months ago. And the dealer even matched the Carvana trade-in quote.. which saved us another $2,000 in sales tax. The exact same experience for the 5-6 cars I bought before. Do your homework, know what price you are willing to pay, treat it like a business transaction, and move on with your life.
Whereas when I purchased my Model Y.. I was very surprised to see Tesla was the one who wanted to play games. The internet offer for my trade-in was original $21,000 when I put down the $100 deposit and reserved my 2021 Model Y. When it was time to take delivery of the Y.. the offer magically dropped to $19,000. Their reason was because of a dime-sized dent in one of the pictures.. a dent any paintless dent repair shop would fix for $25. I know this because random PDR guys in parking lots have offered to fix it for $25. I ended up refusing Tesla's low ball offer.. listed the car on Facebook Marketplace and sold the same vehicle just 2 days later to a local Honda dealership for $23,000. Already $4,000 more than what Tesla offered. As far as the dent.. the Honda dealer laughed at it. Then the Honda dealer even went a step further and helped me refund the prepaid maintenance & extended warranty I had purchased on the Honda. Something I was not aware you could do. A week later I got an additional $1,200 check from Honda Financial.
All done.. I saved over $5,000 by avoiding Tesla lack of dealership veneer & polish by refusing to trade in my car to them.