Haggling with a car dealer in France

Hi,

Of course, negotiations are always possible. But it will depend on the model and your ability...

Negotiation is a weapon.Learning to use it means knowing your advantages over your enemy.
You have a big advantage in that the dealers wants your money more than keeping the car, but you can buy a car in a lot of places.
Your feet are a great tool - not for kicking the salesman in the nuts if he won't cut the price, more for walking to the next place .. or at least looking like you're going to.

Hi Fred,

It's a weapon, you're a little extreme ... For me, it's more like a game of poker where each evaluates the other.  When buying a car, which I had seen in two different garages, I squarely put the two sellers in competition via the free hand of my smartphone.  It was epic ...

I prefer a big knife and 10 large thugs (vicious ones that don't like fluffy puppies) - Works every time.

Fred wrote:

I prefer a big knife and 10 large thugs (vicious ones that don't like fluffy puppies) - Works every time.

In the States when I was buying a new car 6 years ago, I got an invoice price for the car I want on Edmonds.com and went from there. There is no such a thing in Europe.
I have just recently had an experience buying a new Reanault Captur. I live in France near Luxembourg and Belgium. I figured out what model and options I wanted on the Renault website and went to Renault dealer in France and then Belgium. Belgium was much lower. They gave me the detailed price offer over the email, I took it to Luxembourg and asked them to meet the Belgian price, including trade-in.  They agreed and I am getting the car at the end of March. I am nor sure, if they would lower the price, without Belgian dealer's offer.

Depends.  Some cars sell themselves without much input from the sales guy (for example the current Tiguan models from the VW/Audi group) had a crazy waiting list when I bought mine - they could probably have surcharged the damn things and still sold them.  Other cars you could probably get a good deal; all you can do is do your homework, have 2/3 models on your potential list, don't go for a best seller, always ask if they're willing to discuss price or some other kind of support and be prepared to move on.

Before living in France I spent most of my adult life living in Asia and was in the thick of negotiating prices in my business. When living in Asia negotiating is a way of life.

Anyway, when I moved from Hong Kong to Paris, my first car was a BMW 730i. It was 4 years old and I bought it form the previous owner who brought it to my warehouse. It was perfect and I negotiated slightly more than 5% off his asking price. I was actually after a Mercedes 300E but the four door BMW was more practical as I had 3 kids at that time. The second car we bought was a Peugeot 205 automatic and we were not able to negotiate the price down.

When we moved to Biarritz, we bought a Renault Espace which was really amazing. We bought it from the Renault place also couldn't bargain down the price at all as at that time Espaces were in high demand and that car was superb.