New car buying: Costco or AAA experience??

[NCGrandma]

It's time to replace my 9-y.o. Toyota Matrix, but I've been dragging my feet because I hate the car-buying process. Starting to wonder whether using either Costco's or AAA's car-buying service would make the process more palatable. Any experiences with either one?

While I would of course like to get a decent deal (hey, this IS the BBB), I am at least as interested in avoiding the sleazier aspects of the negotiating, fending off the hard sell, etc.

[codex57]

Do you have a trade in?

All those services, including carsdirect.com (which up front shows you the prices), don't pre-negotiate the trade.

Nowadays, with the internet, buying a new car is easy.

Search my other threads, but essentially, figure out exactly what you want. Then, just e-mail all the dealers you're willing to drive to. Tell them exactly what you want (color, options, etc). Then, tell them to give you a quote. Half won't give you one and just tell you to come in and they'll take care of you. Ignore them. Take the actual responses with quotes and find the three cheapest or so. Then, just send a couple more e-mails playing them off each other.

You're done in 24 hours or so. Everything's prenegotiated. You walk in, test drive your car to make sure nothing is weird about it and it has no scratches and stuff, then sign the paperwork. Ignore everything finance tries to push on you.

Make you you ask for an "out the door" quote so you can compare fees and taxes and stuff. Some unscrupulous dealers will try and screw you on that. You don't care how they break down the price of the car with the various fees they charge, you just want to compare apples to apples so you want quotes for the "out the door" price.

Done this for my last two cars. Easy as pie. By the time I even start a conversation (thru e-mail so at my own pace), I've already weeded out all the scummy sales types.

[NJ_Mom2011]

We used the AAA buying program in 2010 to purchase a new Hyundai Sonata for ourselves, and in 2011 a new Hyundai Elantra for my mom. It was so super-easy, and the dealer paid the fee to AAA for using the system. It seemed to me at the time that I may have been able to squeeze a few dollars less from the dealer if I negotiated it myself, but overall AAA got us a competitive price, with little aggravation. The AAA system also seemed to point me to the more reputable car dealers in my area that played fewer tricks (such as pressuring me to buy bogus "environmental" packages or silly paint packages that painted an ugly stripe on the car). AAA's car program also directed the dealerships to have only certain of their sales guys deal with you, and they tended to be lower-key and less sleazy.

I looked into the Costco program, but I liked the AAA program better, as it gave me an instaneous price quote, while Costco's system had it that you can only find the price by having the dealer call you.

In terms of my purchase price, I got the Consumer Reports report for Hyundai Sonata, and the AAA price I received was better, and priced lower than the Edmunds average price too. Hyundai was introducing new versions of the Sonata and Elantra, we were making the purchases in the dead of summer, so these may have been factors for the good pricing.

The annoying aspects of both Costco and AAA were that the next few months afterward I kept getting bombarded by dealer spam emails and phone calls. If I were to do it again, I would give them a fake Google Voice number. Overall, given that I was 8 months pregnant for the Sonata purchase and my mom is disabled, I am glad that I used the AAA program, since it was so easy to use and I wasn't up for hassles.

American Express uses the same system as AAA, in case you're not a AAA member.

[mom2khj]

Do you have a trade in?

All those services, including carsdirect.com (which up front shows you the prices), don't pre-negotiate the trade.

Nowadays, with the internet, buying a new car is easy.

Search my other threads, but essentially, figure out exactly what you want. Then, just e-mail all the dealers you're willing to drive to. Tell them exactly what you want (color, options, etc). Then, tell them to give you a quote. Half won't give you one and just tell you to come in and they'll take care of you. Ignore them. Take the actual responses with quotes and find the three cheapest or so. Then, just send a couple more e-mails playing them off each other.

You're done in 24 hours or so. Everything's prenegotiated. You walk in, test drive your car to make sure nothing is weird about it and it has no scratches and stuff, then sign the paperwork. Ignore everything finance tries to push on you.

Make you you ask for an "out the door" quote so you can compare fees and taxes and stuff. Some unscrupulous dealers will try and screw you on that. You don't care how they break down the price of the car with the various fees they charge, you just want to compare apples to apples so you want quotes for the "out the door" price.

Done this for my last two cars. Easy as pie. By the time I even start a conversation (thru e-mail so at my own pace), I've already weeded out all the scummy sales types.

This is pretty much what we did and we walked out with a really good deal on my Odyssey!

[Snow mom]

I agree with Codex. Internet sales departments are amazing compared to the traditional car buying experience. I picked something that was on the lot at 5 dealerships within 100 miles of my home. I e-mailed them all what I was looking for and I believe I asked for a breakdown of out the door price. I guess it doesn't ultimately matter whether the lower price comes with this fee or that but I wanted to see it all laid out. I got that from at least a few dealers. I actually didn't bother to negotiate lower than the lowest offer, although I did have the dealership closest to my home match it so that I wouldn't have to drive to get the car. I probably could have done better but considering I had to do almost no negotiation I feel happy with the experience. The price I got was a fair amount lower than what Edmunds said others in the area were paying.

[codex57]

I agree with Codex. Internet sales departments are amazing compared to the traditional car buying experience. I picked something that was on the lot at 5 dealerships within 100 miles of my home. I e-mailed them all what I was looking for and I believe I asked for a breakdown of out the door price. I guess it doesn't ultimately matter whether the lower price comes with this fee or that but I wanted to see it all laid out. I got that from at least a few dealers. I actually didn't bother to negotiate lower than the lowest offer, although I did have the dealership closest to my home match it so that I wouldn't have to drive to get the car. I probably could have done better but considering I had to do almost no negotiation I feel happy with the experience. The price I got was a fair amount lower than what Edmunds said others in the area were paying.

And you should always beat the Costco/AAA price too. I don't think it's that much harder to do either.

[SnuggleBuggles]

The Costco one was annoying bc there was only one participating dealer near me (and it wasn't very close) and they wouldn't email or give me a phone quote.

I used Edmund's and sent an email through them asking for price quotes (I had them break down costs for car, fees, and the final out the door price). Super fast and easy! I took the top results and followed up via email and eventuallycalled. By the time we got to the dealer, everything was negotiated and done. It really was fast and painless!

[JustMe]

I bought a used car through AAA, it was about 2 years old. My experience was amazing. The price was cheaper than internet dealers were willing to offer for similar cars (don't know if I could have gotten them lower if I played hardball, but couldn't with just asking). The salesman drove the car to me, let me keep it over the weekend to see if it was really what I wanted, and put absolutely no pressure on me. My experience was all positive.