How much should I demand from a dealer who screwed up?

They won't go up on your trade in price,if you are not happy with them go somewhere else and buy.

 

And dealers wonder why customers come in ready to kick the sales people in the nuts. Crooks.

 

Only read the first page. I'm going to guess the OP didn't get the pitchforks and torches charging against the dealer as he expected?

 

Here's what dealer hold back is. It's an incentive from the manufacturer to the dealer to get them to move cars off the lot. Most manufacturers have a dealer hold back but it's not the same for everyone. The last time I looked this up the hold back for Toyota was 2% of MSRP, but the way hold back works is that it's on a sliding scale that starts with 100% of the hold back when the vehicle hits the dealer lot and decreases to zero percent at 90 days, so if you're going to use dealer hold back as part of your negotiation strategy, and I always do, you need to know how long the car has been on the lot. It's also the reason you do not want a vehicle that's been sitting there for four months like was mentioned earlier. The hold back is already gone.

I first learned about this stuff when you had to buy the Edmunds newsletter at the news stand and that was thirty years ago. By 1996 when I helped a close friend buy her Passat in Glendale, Ca. Edmunds was online and with their tools I was able to calculate the actual cost to the dealer within a few dollars. The salesman there could not believe that I knew their price - and whenever possible you should negotiate from the bottom up not the top down - and when I told them all the information was "online" they had no idea what I was talking about. Then they offered me a job. I just laughed at them and told them I'd much rather stay a photographer which I still do to this day. Unfortunately, in the meantime, Edmunds has become a big business and all that juicy information has either been excised from their website or it's been buried and is very difficult to find.

I helped that same friend buy her Outback at Santa Monica Subaru a dozen years ago and as part of the negotiation, which took all of ten minutes and came down to floor mats, I mentioned dealer hold back and the sales person looked up and said "you're not supposed to know about that." Oh, but I do, but I do. It was actually the easiest car I've ever negotiated. Then four years ago I bought my gf a new Forester at the same dealership - and I always make them write down what they think is their best number first - you NEVER want to go first - never, and when I did that this time, and I had done as much research as possible, the number she wrote down was actually better than I thought I would ever get, knowing what I knew, so I said, "done." So maybe that one was easier. I was really surprised. When I did the same with the Outback, the salesperson just wrote down MSRP and I laughed at him and told him he'd have to do better than that as a starting point, which really put him on the defensive. To be honest, I don't really care about what tactics I use with them because, as a rule, they are the most ruthless, dishonest bunch of sales critters I've ever come across.

If you're really interested there are documentaries out there about how complicated the dealer pricing can get when there are quotas from the manufacturer that explain how, if a dealer meets a specific quota they then get a big incentive which is why, if you're extremely lucky, and hit them on the right day, and they are a car or two short of that quota, they will sell the car below cost because they know the quota incentive will more than make up the difference. This, unfortunately is one area the consumer is not going to be able to find much about online or anywhere else but it can be a factor. It might have been a This American Life episode where I heard about that.

I guess I like buying cars for my friends because I tend to hate car sales persons so much and because they have no compunction about taking advantage of their customers, I like to take advantage of them whenever possible, and always with a smile and always knowing that you hold the power of being able to walk away if you need to. And in fact, we did that with the Passat over $200. My friend was crying as we drove away and the sales person was just standing there on the curb wondering just what the fuck went wrong. I told Wendi to call them back the next morning, offer to split the difference. She did. They did, and the deal was done. And I still would not take a job there. .

As far as the pricing the dealers get from the manufacturers, it's illegal to offer a dealer or group of dealers a price that is not available to every other dealer. You can't do that. You have to offer the same deals to everyone but you can certainly have tiers where some dealers won't be able to afford - like a minimum purchase quantity to qualify for a specific price. Not every dealer can afford the terms of the deal but they have to have it offered to them.