It's been forever since I did any kind of post, but I have some material that I can't pass up. I've recently been getting the itch to get myself a new car, the Optima is now just over 2 1/2 years old so it's about time. The only problem is of course that 2 1/2 years into a five year purchase will probably leave me under water a bit on the car loan. I've been doing some looking around and getting a feel for where I am at if I were to trade in the Optima but I want to skip over all that detail for now and get to my recent BMW visit.
I saw they had $3,000 off a demo on their lot so figured I would check it out. I got some numbers on the demo and it worked out like this:
Car price before tax - $56,740
Less discount - $3,500 (they bumped it up from $3,000)
Financed amount - $53,240
Residual - $23,150 (for four year lease)
Rate - 1.9%
Payment - $687 + $89 HST = $776
As usual it is not humanly possible to work out the lease payment manually and this was about $100 more than the website payment per month. I could see the residual was about $1,000 lower on the dealer calculation, they had excess wear coverage included which was about $1,200, $595 dealer admin fee and other misc items like window tint, wheel locks and all weather mats. They also probably just jack the price up above MSRP for some additional profit margin. So I could almost see where the difference was coming from. As usual with Newfoundland car monopolies you were going to pay through the nose.
The next step was to get a ballpark figure on my trade. He figured it would come in around 13-14 k which was what I heard elsewhere but that was too low to make the BMW worth my while at this point. Before I left he figured he could squeeze out $14.5 k which was still too low but he told me he would send me a revised quote with the trade worked in. When I got the quote I was shocked, the trade was in at $16,500 and on top of that I get the tax savings on the trade so I was at about $18,650, leaving me out only a small amount on the Optima. He also snuck out the excess wear coverage to make the payment exactly the same as it was before the trade was worked in, making it seem like I was losing nothing on the Optima.
In the meanwhile I had taken the car out for a test drive and absolutely loved it. It was a silver 2014 BMW 328i xdrive with the sport and premium packages. It had significant kms on it though since it was a demo, 11,000. I figured that's why they came up in the trade, they needed to get rid of it ASAP. I'd give more details on the car but it's not the important part of this post. Needless to say it was awesome.
The deal wasn't fantastic but it seemed reasonably fair with the trade at $16,500 so off I went with every intention of getting the car. I had also double checked the trade amount and the salesman assured me it was correct. So I went in, took a second test drive and started the paperwork. The salesman went off to finalize the deal and came back saying HE MADE A MISTAKE ON THE TRADE. Yes the trade was actually $14,500 meaning I was out $2,600 with the tax savings. I was upset beyond belief, I'd like to think this was an honest mistake but I'm not sure it was. He tried to tell me it was only $X more a month but I just got up told him I was very disappointed and left. It would seem like he manipulated the numbers to get me in hoping I wouldn't leave..... but I'm hoping that wasn't the case.....
Oh well.... close but no cigar!
