Hey! Been spending a lot of time on here and on LeaseHackr trying to gauge a discount on a custom order with a ton of options ($57k). I'm aiming for 12% based on other posts on here.. two places already told me impossible.. do I keep trying? Thanks!

 

Curious about the same but for an AMG 35. Is 5% a pipe dream?

 

I think it's largely depends on where you are. I saw the same comments regarding 10% to 12% percent discount and only could get 8% off in NY, and that was negotiating between NY, NJ, and CT dealers.

 

Was able to get 5% on a custom AMG 35 order.

 

No,12% is not at all impossible on an ordered car. The difficulty is in getting the dealer to accept that level of a discount. And, yes, people are very correct that there seem to be regional differences (I’ve always heard that NY, NJ, and CT are rough).

I received a substantial discount ($7,000 discount plus an additional $2500 rebate) on a $57K GLB, but I was only able to get offers in that range once I had an offer at 11%. Saying I had an offer of 11% got me offers at 12%. Credibly saying I had multiple offers at 12% got me an offer at 12.5%. Walking into a dealer and just saying "I want 12% off" would probably be a non-starter. They seemed to need a justification to give me that much off (i.e., that another dealer was willing to give me that). There was no difference in offers as to whether it was a custom order or buying an existing car on their lot.

After screwing around and talking to tons of dealers, I learned that saying something like the following was most effective “I have an offer of 11% that I am looking to beat. If you can do 12%, I will come in today/tomorrow and sign the paper work.” When I was definitive like that, the salespeople did not waste my time. They would respond “I can’t match/beat that” or they would offer to match. If they pushed back (saying that the offer I received wasn't real, I would name the dealers who had given better offers and also would send them copies of posts from this forum showing that people had gotten between 10 and 12%). A friend in sales gave me that language -- he said it shows you are ready and able to close the deal.

Generally speaking, I was much more successful when it was clear to the salesperson that I knew exactly that I wanted, that I was fully aware that there were few cars in the country with all of the options that I wanted, and that I was not interested in any chit chat. I knew EVERYTHING about the car -- what wheels came on what models, what options were port installed, everything. So, in the end, speaking to dealers was like calling up Best Buy or Target and asking if they have the model iPhone you’re looking for, with the memory that you want, and the colour that you want. And dealers started to interact with me like that Best Buy salesperson, the answer was yes or no, and we could move forward.

I don’t know what options you’re looking for, but what is helpful (but not easy to get) is information on cars that are currently in production/ready for shipping. It can be the case that there is a car exactly with the options that you want that was built yesterday and is sitting in Mexico waiting to be shipped. That “allocation” belongs to the specific dealer who ordered it, but they are often willing to give up the allocation to your local dealer. I don’t have any visibility into the financial and motivations among dealers, so I don’t know what factors lead a dealer to be willing to trade its allocation. The upside of getting an allocation as opposed to a custom order is that you can sometimes get the car you want faster. The upside of an allocation over getting a car from a dealer that is outside of your local area is that you save on the shipping costs. So if a dealer takes over an allocation that was destined for Ohio and you're in NY, the car is delivered directly from the port to the dealer in NYC. If the car were already in Ohio, someone would be trying to get you to pay the costs of moving the car from Ohio to NYC.

Unfortunately, you have to rely on the salesperson to tell you what cars are currently in production (and not tied to a specific customer). Salespeople regularly told me that there was “no” car in production that had the options that I wanted. That was always untrue. Because I don’t know anything about their system, I don’t know if their search terms were bad, or whether they were limiting their searches to their particular region. Or maybe they just lied, hoping that I would buy a car currently on their lot. The car in production that I ended up buying was from another region that I (not the salesperson) had located. I called him, gave him the VIN# and asked him to get it.

I found Autotrader and Cargurus to be good sites for locating cars around the country. The search is a bit time consuming because those sites often don't accurately reflect the options on the car. Generally speaking, you have to do a broad search that only includes price, colour, and whether it 4matic, and then go through the cars one by one (you have an idea based on price whether the car is likely to have the options you want). The best dealers post the MSRP build sheet on their website so you can quickly see if the car would work for you, but some dealers refuse to list the options so that they can force you into a direct contact.

The Autonation site is also very helpful. Unlike Autotrader and Cargurus which include cars from multiple, unrelated, dealers, Autonation only lists cars from Autonation dealerships. Autonation has hundreds of dealerships around the country and their website does an excellent job of listing all of the options on each car. That said, I found that negotiating through the Autonation website to be less than fruitful. In my experience, if you got to the dealer through the Autonation site, they were unwilling to discount more than 7 or 8%. I sometimes did better contacting the dealer through its local website, but it was still hit or miss. It was just more productive to find a car on Autonation and give the Vin# to my dealer after we had agreed on the discount I would receive. A word of caution: if you contact an out of town dealer yourself that has a car or allocation you are interested in, you will decrease your chances that the dealer will be willing to trade that car to your local dealer because he will register your contact as “interest” in the car.

I know is is more than you asked, but I hope this is helpful to you or others who are in the market for a GLB 250.