...not much really. But I do have a nice piece of yellow paper, committing me to paying a lot of money to the Subaru dealer for a 2005 Forester XT in a week or two.
THANK YOU everyone for your advice and feedback, both positive and negative. Obviously I'm not done yet, I still have to consider snow tires and steel wheels and accessories but that's later. And I have to pick a colour. I'm now agonizing between red and grey. The grey looks nice and is a nice alternative to silver. The red has a little more style. I don't know what to do, and they won't order my vehicle until I tell them.
But I wouldn't have gotten this far this well without your help and support.
I even managed to finalize the deal without compromising on the process I set out to do. We got "best prices" from two of the three dealers who helped us kick tires and do test drives. The spread was very small and I was determined not to wave one dealer's price at the other in hopes of matching (I don't generally approve of that technique, if one is more expensive, either pay his price if you want to deal with him, or buy from the other if price is more important or the spread is too great).
But I was able to buy from the higher one at the price he quoted, convince him to take my trade, and have it all in one tidy deal, without doing the "match it or lose it" approach. I appreciated the fact that he respected my desire not to ask him to match (he made it clear he would if I asked, but also that he understood I didn't want to ask).
I'm sure I could have made slightly more money buying from the other dealer and selling my Explorer privately, but at this point I just don't want to deal with it (and I'm going to keep the plates for sentimental reasons -- for the first year anyway -- and it's easier to do that this way too). Yes I'm paying him to eliminate the hassle of selling my car, and I'm willing to do that. If anyone wants a 1991 Explorer in working order for parts or whatever, email me and I'll give you the salesman's name.
The dealer in Montreal gave us his best price and it was really good, better than the lowest Take-It-Or-Leave-It price I could offer through CarCostCanada.com, and the one Ottawa dealer also gave us a good price but a little bit higher (it would have been an incredible price if not for the Montreal quote). I thought I'd have to pay TVQ and get it back, but I've since learned that if I didn't try to register it in Quebec, the dealer would be allowed to not charge me the tax at all.
The other Ottawa dealer wouldn't give me a bottom-line best price unless I was committing to buy it from him (IOW, if he accepted my offer I would buy the car). So the best price he would give me was way more than the others, since he was leaving haggle room. He said he didn't want me to take his best price and then go ask another dealer to beat it. I suggested that he was asking me to do just that, but to his benefit (take the best price I'd received so far, and ask him to do better), and that wasn't what I wanted to do. As I mentioned above, I didn't want to do that. It's so 90s. So I didn't.
If I'd been unable to come to terms with the other Ottawa dealer, I'd either have gone to Montreal, or I might ("might", I say) have offered the 90s guys $2000 less than the best best price I'd found. No way would they have accepted it, but if that's their game I'd give it a shot (to punish them, not to reward myself, of course).
As it turns out, I think both the seller and I did okay, I know I could have gotten another $500 out of them by asking them to price-match, then sold privately for $1000 and netted $500 more than I did, and he might have been happier to get $500 more in cash (match the Montreal price) and not take my trade, so we each gave up a bit. I paid $500 less than I might have, but no longer have an Explorer to sell or trade, and the dealer got $500 less than he asked for but has an Explorer that must be worth that much for scrap (even after you remove the add-on CD player, remote starter, and two remote door locks).
So there you go. I'm done. Except for waiting 7-10 days for them to get my vehicle from Toronto.
Thanks again!
=andrew
(Message edited by awebber on October 17, 2004)
