thescrod

So I have never bought a used Benz or any used car for that matter. I have a strong relationship with my local dealer and secured a 10.2% discount off of 2 new, pretty loaded cars that I have on order for March build. As I mentioned in my thread from the other day, I am now in the market for a 2014 E550 4Matic Sedan. My dealer does not have what I want but there are at least 5 within a 100 mile radius that do. What type of discounts can someone expect from an MB Dealer on the CPO vehicle? More than they would expect for new? Less? A lot less? Does this somewhat of a rarer model mean even less than that? Just curious what people think. FWIW, I am in the Mid-Atlantic region.

RetiredSD

A CPO is a used car. Only the nicest cars qualify, get work done such as brakes and tires if not up to standards and have a warranty added to extend the original warranty. It's a used car, so there's no suggested retail and being that its the cream of the used crop. Because of it's limited availability/rarity, supply and demand says it will fetch premium dollars. I'm confident you'll be able to find most dealers will negotiate a minimal amount and not in any way a percentage. If you go to Kelly Blue Book or any other pricing guide, you can get an idea of it's CPO value and use that as a basis for a target price as well as going to Mercedes Benz website and do a CPO search of all available CPOs at Mercedes dealers. Best wishes on your "new" way of buying.

VegasE

I've seen advertised discounts in SoCal as much as 20% on new E350s. Your sig says you are in central PA so discounts there may not be as large as metro areas. The best way to get a good feel for a fair price is to search on cars.com and autotrader with your parameters of interest. Make sure your search radius includes the DC area which is a hotbed of off lease low mileage CPOs. Living in V3gas, I did this to include SoCal when I bought my CPO E350 and found a dealer with fixed price CPOs in SoCal that beat the competition by 10%. I checked with other dealers and some would negotiate little and some not at all even when I told them I would definitely not buy the car at their asking price. I wound up buying from the fixed price SoCal dealer over the phone, flying there, and driving it home (4 hour drive). It saved me $5K compared to local dealers. I've bought several CPOs of other brands long distance and it is the safest long distance purchase you can make. (I always sell my old car myself so that makes for a simpler deal.)

pjw1967

Much of what goes into buying a CPO is comparing the MSRP to the current asking price, and the nbr of miles on the clock. Our '14 ML350 2w had an MSRP of $68,500 with 30,400 miles and an asking price of $41,500. Saturday I discussed pricing for a '14 GL350 that had an MSRP of $85,000 with 30,000 miles and an asking price of $55,000. It seems the "discount" comes with the higher optioned cars. I have watched '14 ML350's on the MB CPO site and many have an asking price around $41,000 with an MSRP of $60,000. As VegasE said, we went out 130 miles to find the ML we wanted. Did the nego's by text and email, so when we got to the dealer all we had to do was inspect the car while they looked at our trade. In 12 minutes, they confirmed the trade in value. I took the car on a strenuous test drive for about 15 minutes. Went back and bought the car. Total time at dealer 1 hour 15 minutes. You can tell from the Carfax that many of the cars are coming off lease. The Carfax will say Sold At Auction. These seem to be lower optioned cars. If you have a specific option in mind it is harder to search for that on the MB site. You have to go to the dealer site and see if the dealer posted the MSRP sticker. You can also try Listingallcars.com. You can search for certified cars, and at the bottom of the search list they add a keyword box. You can put in something like Distronic and that will filter out a lot of the cars. Good luck.

thefisch

The days of haggling with a dealer on a used car are not what they used to be. With the information online for pricing and that ease of advertising to buyers across a large area (as evidenced by this thread), it seems most dealers just play the price and wait game. If it doesn't get a bite then they lower it a bit more. They will keep some play in the price and should be willing to come off their internet price at least $1k or so - enough to cover dealer fees. It helps if they've had the car for a while or they have a good supply. Even better if a nearby dealer has a similar car and you can play them off each other.

The 2014 E550 is already rare and if you're looking for certain options or colors then you might have to jump on the first one you see if it checks all your boxes. If you can compromise on mileage, color or options, then you can see if you can wait them out.

pjw1967

So true. Only 10 E550 CPO's nationwide on the MB site.

sleeperZ96BT

I got barely anything off of my CPO 2013 E550 from the advertised best online price (which was a few thousand off of the 'retail' price). Uncommon to see TT E550's around here and had some desirable options. In fact, someone tried to buy it outright when I had a deposit on it, thankfully my sales guy was one of their best and was able to hold it for me since I had the deposit.

cetialpha5

Not sure how you're looking but I just searched and found 22 2014 E550 4matics on MB site.

pjw1967

I limited the search to 2014 only and come up with 10 this morning.

babacah

From central PA also, bought a CPO 14 E350 about a year ago. Here is my experience in our market.

I shopped from Harrisburg to Philly including Baltimore area

Dealerships in this region varied from firm on their CPO price to fairly flexible. Honestly very much has to do with the particular car you are looking at and how much the dealer has in the car. Time on the lot is another factor that helps. Some cars they can move on, others have no room.

In the end I picked the car I wanted at the closest dealer and got $2500 of CPO asking price and got $600 of the 2 year extension to the warranty.

Was it a good deal, depends on perspective I guess. Could have bought non-CPO from non-Mercedes dealer for 3k less (before $1900 warranty) but having 66 months unlimited mile warranty was worth the extra to me.

cetialpha5

If you just search for 2014-2017, 22 will come up and they're all 2014's E550's.

If you got it at a non MB dealer, you could have gotten the 7 year/100k extended warranty for about the same price. Some claim the extended warranty has a little bit more coverage than the CPO, but they're pretty close.

VegasE

The longer a car is on the lot, the more flexible pricing will be. Look at the Carfax and if it has been on the lot over a month, dealers get anxious.

I did not realize the 550 was so scarce, so to get the best deal the OP needs to be patient and search the entire US. Again, buying a CPO long distance has almost zero risk.

pjw1967

I figured it out. I was doing coupes....

Johnny Rad

Oh, how I wish this were true. It's certainly what they want us to think, but I'm not counting on it as a guarantee. I've read numerous stories about questionable CPO cars. I still consider CPO as a "buyer beware" exercise though the risk can be minimized due to the warranty it comes with.

Great advice. Not only are they paying for it to sit, but it's getting stale. Every day that a used car sits on the lot, it's that much closer to being sold at auction.

Another critical piece of the puzzle is how much $ the stealer is into the car for ... and that's something we'll rarely to never be able to determine.

- They could've fleeced the prevoius owner on trade - or not. They might not have much wiggle room because they cut the new car / used car trade-in deal to the bone.

- They also could've dropped a pretty penny into getting it up to snuff (new tires, servicing, detailing rock chips, refinishing scuffed rims, painting / replacing bumper(s), etc) - or not.

In my experience with two separate stealers that were 2K mi apart and representing two different auto mfg brands, the service dept was run independently from the used car lot meaning that both were out to show a year-end profit. Service wasn't incentivized to pass along any work at cost. It might be shortsighted since it's all one team at the end of the day, but this dynamic played into the cost of car.