dad4papa2 wrote:
I took my son to a dealership a few years back. He was ready to buy his first ever pickup. We found the pickup he was wanting and went to visit with a salesman. We had only seen the sticker price of this new pickup so we visited about the features it had and got all the info we needed. Of coarse at this point during our conversation he had asked my son what kind of payment he wanted to make. I had told my son after the salesman's first time of asking that to not talk yet about payments. So we asked him what could the pickup be bought for. We were interested in the cost of the truck. This guy would not give us a price on the truck. He continued to ask what kind of $ amount of payment he wanted to pay. I finally stepped into the conversation and told the salesman that my son was ready to by a pickup and it was none of his business how much he could afford to pay on the payment. I asked one more time if he wanted to give us a price and he said he really wanted to finance it for us.
I simply told my son to come on let's go. We walked out the door and left. The salesman never once answered our questions on price.
A couple weeks later he seen my son up town and got all over him for buying a truck somewhere else. My son did the greatest thing and turned and walked away from him.
I, nor he has walked back in their door in about 19 years.
Dad
While I would 100% agree that you should never negotiate based solely on payments, payments are in fact normally the most important part of the purchase. Even when paying cash, it still involves one payment. Any good salesperson would be remiss in not asking either what kind of payment you want to make or how much do you want to spend.
One would be amazed how many folks walk into dealerships of all kinds without any idea of the relationship between the purchasing price and the payment needed to support that price. People often have a budget of $400 monthly while looking at a vehicle that requires a $600 payment with their available down payment. The salesperson can spend hours extolling the virtues of the potential vehicle and taking demo rides only to find they are no where near affordability. Generally this leaves the customer walking out because they are either upset with reality or embarrassed... which means a lot of wasted time.
Discussing payments with the salesperson is not necessarily a bad thing but you can always remember the ultimate sales price determines the final payment.
