I'm a retired salesman

monkey44 wrote:
"From a lay-person's perspective, all of that is logical. From a Dealer's perspective it makes very little sense and has very little to do with why transaction prices are negotiated and not constant."

The interesting part is, a dealer knows exactly what price they can sell for at the minute a transaction begins. But they won't share that number, ever.

Instead of honesty, we have both sides of a transaction inspecting and investigating the other side because as a society, we have come to expect everyone is a cheat.

This is why I loved working for the dealership I did all those years ago. They did not haggle at all. They put a price on the unit as soon as it showed up on the lot. The price was always $500 over dealer invoice (this is probably not realistic today with inflation). Of course they got other dealer incentives so the $500 was not all they made on a sale if the vehicle moved quickly. There was NO negotiating room which upset some people but most didn't mind. Especially when he would get out the invoice book and show the customer. Vehicles didn't stay on his lot very long when I worked there. People came from all over to purchase. The down side was that he also did not keep very many used vehicles on his lot. If the vehicle didn't sale in 2 weeks, it went to wholesaler. This meant that he did not normally give even trade-in value for your trade. He advised people of his rule when they came in and suggested to most to try and sell it out right if they could or bring a buyer with them if they wanted to use as trade. Again, this was not favorable to some. I know the dealership is still in business but it is now 3rd generation running it so I am not certain if they still operate the same but they sure sold a lot by practicing this approach back then. I wish more dealerships or salespeople in general practiced this approach today. I personally don't like to haggle (I do it) although I know some prefer it. I just want an honest deal for a fair price.