I thought bait & switch was gone, apparently Mark Mazda still does it

So, I was searching around and had come across a CX-5 Signature that looked to have decent discount on it. Going to their website to use their 100% online purchase experience, it displays this pricing information when you select the 0% financing option.

Mark Mazda Finance Details.PNG
Note the clearly called out Mark Mazda Price of $35588.

So, I start emailing with a sales rep to get more details on the seemingly high registration & fees and find out about trip/travel permits for out of state purchases. I ask for their best price and he comes back with this:
Market Value
38,605.00​
Discount Savings
-1,597.00​
Vehicle Price
37,008.00​
Rebate Savings
-500.00​
Veh.Price(Net after Rebate)
36,508.00
Accessories*
1,498.00​
Documentation Prep Fee
598.00​
License / Title
125.00​
Sales Tax (8.05%)
3,059.48​
Total
41,788.48​

Note that now the Price is $920 higher than the website quote. The $3017 dealer discount shown on their web site shrunk to only $2097. And, magically, $1498 of accessories were added on that I never asked for nor are shown on their web site listing of the vehicle's details.

On a side note, who charges $598 doc fee? That seems absurdly high, but a freat way for dealers to deceive customers in to thinking they got a deal. Most others dealers I've dealt with charge $150 tops. And a few have offered to do $0 doc fee to close a sale.

I replied asking if he would honor the advertised pricing from the website but he went on about how incentives were different for 0% financing vs cash purchase or standard rate financing (which is correct, but his numbers were still way off). I went back to their site to double check that I had correctly selected the 0% on their website. According to the website, their price was $34088 for cash purchase and $35588 for finance purchase. I asked a second time for him to honor the web pricing but he would not, only telling me the rebates are different for finance vs cash. On the accessories he only said he would see if he could drop one of them. He never provided any better price though.

I just gave up and decided I was done with deceptive people like that. Not worth the time or frustration, and definitely not worth giving them a sale with their deceptive actions.
 
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- I know I've talked about my deal ad-nauseum, but I'm bringing it up here specifically to respond/refute the post about Mark Mazda

Sorry about your experience with Mark Mazda, I loved my experience, that's where I got my net deal of $33,093 before TTL in my Signature - and that already had their "included" add-ons. (yes, I know I had some incentives that may not be going on now_.

I'll tell you this, it's all in the negotiation, and I'm not an intimidating guy. I say this in all my responses to people asking about pricing/negotiating - I don't negotiate. Just one text saying, "I'll ready to buy the car at this price now, otherwise I have to take a week to think about it". Assuming they won't loose money, they'll take your offer or come back with simething significantly less than their listing price. - You have to realize that you only 'want' to buy a car, while they 'need' to sell a car.

And yes, $598 is a high doc fee, but the $150 you mentioned has been gone for years in Phoenix, almost all are right around $500

Short version - Know what you want to pay and by pass 2 hours of negotiating. There's only one reason dealerships operate on the edge of deception - because they can. You don't have to allow it to happen. Related -A female friend of mine asked me "why are men jerks"? I answered "because there are girls who will date them")

oh, and did you end up buying something/somewhere else?

IMG_20200802_054135.jpg
copped invoice totals.jpg
 
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It's a game, always has been, always will be.
Bait and switch is alive and well in our consumer world, and I don't mean just in the car selling business.

hal2 is right. Stand your ground. Let them know what you want to spend, and stick to it.
I also recommend nowadays (if you can), is to play one dealer against the other.
I did that when I bought my 6. Once a dealer knows you're cross shopping, they'll adjust their attitude.
At least they did for me. Neither dealer wanted the other one to get my business.
I also paid cash for my car, which I understand not everyone can do, but it helped with the negotiating in that the whole conversation around financing, interest rates etc., was eliminated.
It was all about the bottom line.
The other area I find that dealers are quick to bend on are the accessories.
Dealers know that accessories are a gold mine, and once you tell them that you know that, you can use that to your advantage to get a better price.
 
I live in California and we get reamed for everything. Tax on vehicles is anywhere from 7.75% to 9% depending upon where you buy, and license and registration fees are the highest in the country.

But the one thing that we have in our favor is the so called Documentation Fees are capped at $85. That's because the legislators know that the dealers will rip off their customers with high doc fees for additional profit for a procedure that only takes about a half hour at most.

Dealer added accessories are another profit center with huge markups. There is some good advice above. Dealers need to make a fair profit in order to stay in business and you just need to find one of those instead of dealers who try and play the three card Monty on cost.
 
Regarding those BS accessories like $600 window tint, or $1,200 paint shield that they claim "they already put on the car" and can't take off, in that case I tell them, "all right, I'll wait for your next one to come in before you put that stuff on" I think my all-time favorite is either the paint shield which they say you come in for every 6 months to have refreshed for three years, or the security etching or other Anti-Theft device
 
Actually, we create the problem ourselves. I can't count how many people here said "I liked his offer and I didn't want to take the time/hassle to try to get a better deal. If you're happy with the deal that's what counts, but like I said, they act the way they do because they can. Imagine how many people just Lay Down for a dealer. - By the way, they used to call a customer a Larry Doyle, referring to those that simply Lay Down. Think of that at your next deal.

Lastly, for now, good for you st8943 for not laying down for them.
 
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Regarding those BS accessories like $600 window tint, or $1,200 paint shield that they claim "they already put on the car" and can't take off, in that case I tell them, "all right, I'll wait for your next one to come in before you put that stuff on" I think my all-time favorite is either the paint shield which they say you come in for every 6 months to have refreshed for three years, or the security etching or other Anti-Theft device

Yeah, that window etching is a HUGE joke. My dealer tried to charge me extra for this.

I asked him if I had asked for this on my car? He said no, it's a service that the dealer supplies.

Oh really? A service that I have to pay for? Yep. I told him that the extra charge was a deal breaker for me and I got up to walk.

Salesman says wait, let me talk to my sales manager. (that old trick) He came back from his 'talk' with good news, manager says that they can 'throw' the etching in as a goodwill gesture.

Surprise!
 
Save yourself the aggravation and email 3 or 4 dealers and ask for quotes - ask for the out the door price, all in. I don't pay much attention to the line by line costs, I don't care really. Just focus on the bottom line.

Ignore any dealer that won't play ball.

Go on truecar or some other such site, see what price they give. Create a throwaway email and phone number so they don't start calling you. Use this number as the upper bound on your target price.

Once you have real quotes from dealers, let them all know who is winning and give everyone a chance to beat it. Keep doing this until you get a price you think is fair. Buy the car from whoever wins, or don't if they don't get to a number you like.
 
To be clear, the accessories & high doc fees are not the focus of my post. And neither is negotiating or how to get the best price.

They key issue is that Mark advertised a price and then they would not honor it. That is not just borderline deceptive, that is outright fraud and bait & switch. Of 5 dealers I'm working with, they are the only one who would not honor the online price (and, yes, the other 4 all came lower than online).

So, I will not give them any business and I would encourage others to avoid them, or any dealers acting in the same manner.
 
They key issue is that Mark advertised a price and then they would not honor it. That is not just borderline deceptive, that is outright fraud and bait & switch.
That's a deal breaker for sure. I've seen it before, plus there's another version that I've seen used: the old advertised low price for a stripped down base vehicle, which no dealer actually has or sells.
Tell them you want the no frills stripped down car that's advertised at the low price, and they'll tell you that it's not available or sometimes not even made.
The advertised car at the rock bottom price probably has no a/c, and crank windows....lol.
Then they start the upsell to a more expensive model with all the options.
 
How about the dealers that have their inventory on line (all do) with nmo price listed, rather, it says 'contact us for your price" - ugh. And that price is still just a 'get you in the door so we can talk' price, but I use it as just the starting point for my offer.

Unfortunately, is seems that Mark Mazda also used as a starting point - in the wrong direction.
 
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We bought a Miata last year and when it came time to sign closing papers and write a check the finance person tried to add $550 to the agreed upon out the door price. This was a bait and switch attempt but I insisted on the agreed upon price and they honored it, so we bought the car.
 
@ DG_1234: What was the extra $550 for? Just curious.

I was writing a check for the agreed upon OTD price and did not ask what the additional $550 was supposedly for, but just told the finance person sitting across her desk from me that I was paying what myself and the sales person had agreed to as my OTD price.
 
Keep looking. Some may find it easier to conduct their search via email quotes, telling the dealers that they are quoting multiple dealers and requesting the best OTD price. I just called 4 different dealers for the best price. Work the 2 best quotes against each other.

There is the classic tactic of waiting until the last few days of the month to make a deal, when dealers look for extra deals to make quotas.
 
I agree with the general thrust of the approach taken by hal2. First, research and pick your price. Pay no attention to things like doc fees, etc. TTL is a fixed cost nobody has any control over, so ignore that as well. You only care about the bottom line price so focus exclusively on that. Don't ask them to give you a price, tell them your price, since you are the one with all of the power in this transaction. All those other items on the invoice only there to give the dealer places where they can play games to your disadvantage and they always will if you allow them through that door. You must be willing to walk away if they won't meet the price you are happy with...assume that you will going in. That's really the only way these days to get a decent deal as far as I've been able to tell.
 
I guess it goes without saying too that you should never get sucked into negotiating a price based on monthly payments. That's a tactic used by a lot of dealers.

They sell you on a monthly payment that they think you will be comfortable with, as opposed to the actual price of the car.

Almost all car ads I see in the paper or on TV list the weekly, bi-weekly, or month;y payments, and the interest rate. Almost never the actual price. Hard to believe people still get sucked into this.
 
In the old days when they advertised in the newspaper, dealers would list a car at a super low price and when you went they said there was only one at that price and it was sold.
 
In the old days when they advertised in the newspaper, dealers would list a car at a super low price and when you went they said there was only one at that price and it was sold.
Now it’s only one at that price and cash only with no other applicable incentives.
 
In the old days when they advertised in the newspaper, dealers would list a car at a super low price and when you went they said there was only one at that price and it was sold.
Yup.
In reality, there was never a car available at that rock bottom price to begin with.
Classic bait and switch.
 
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