[backstabber]

Some background -

We are shopping for a 12k/year, 36-month lease on a 2020 Z4 M40i to replace wife's leased M240i.

The M240i still has 2 months left on the lease, so we need to do a lease pull-ahead (yes, we heard there's no official BMW pull-ahead program at the moment)

We went to a dealership in DC suburb to check out a new Z4 that matches what we are looking for and when the sales manager asked what it'd take for us to take the car home today, we asked for 15% off MSRP(including $2500 incentives), no markup on money factor, and lease pull-ahead (the balance is roughly $1150). They didn't give us the deal, instead they wasted hours manipulating numbers trying to convince us to take a crappy deal.

We left without taking the Z4.


Is 15% off too aggressive? What's good percent off to target?

[psuibmw]

If you count incentives in, then that's not impossible! Have you tried Passport, they seem the most straight forward in the area

[backstabber]

Originally Posted by psuibmw

If you count incentives in, then that's not impossible! Have you tried Passport, they seem the most straight forward in the area

Well... I didn't want to name names, but that's exactly where we went...

To be fair, our salesperson was great. This would've been our second car from the same sales rep. The challenge was with the finance dept.

I will spare you the boring details and just give you the highlights -

First, the lease term was changed from 36 months to 42 to create the appearance of a low monthly payment. (I will admit it was my fault for not asking for the breakdown right away, otherwise we'd have noticed this discrepancy sooner). Once we agreed to proceed, under the guise of "speeding things up", they started doing all the paperwork EXCEPT the actual lease agreement. After they got the new car ready, drove away our old car, and moved our personal belonging to the new car, they asked us back into the office to sign the final paperwork.

This is when they "discovered" the monthly payment was for a 42-month lease. After they fixed the "mistake", the monthly payment went up by almost $100 and the finance manager insisted that's going to be our payment. Mind you, this was after getting stuck at the dealership all afternoon and it was getting close to their closing time. We had no energy to restart the negotiation so we said we were not going through with the deal.

We asked them to bring our old car around so we could start moving our stuff back. And if that was not possible we were ready to call an Uber. Before we left the office they gave us their final numbers, which had a lower monthly payment, but turned out we had to pay additional down payment. Of course, this additional amount was sneaked in, because we told them from the get-go we only wanted to pay fees and taxes up front.

So essentially, the deal was the same all along, they just manipulated one number after another to make the monthly payment look enticing.

They said they will reach out later this week to see if we want to proceed but I am not sure how I want to proceed after getting played like a fool.

The sad part is on our way to the dealership my wife and I were actually talking about referring our friends to get their next BMWs there, but now we are going to tell them to stay away.

[psuibmw]

I have noticed similar negative behavior from a dealer where I bought 5 or more Bimmers from before ... dealers are getting bad nowaday! I wish BMW can allow us to buy their cars online

[backstabber]

Yep, a quick search on Yelp indicates they have subject at least one other customer to the same tactics.

[ejm3]

Wait until the end of the month.

If people are still worried about Corona Virus instead of buying cars you might be able to get a better deal to help them make their Q1 sales numbers.

[STR3T]

Definitely wait...auto sales are dropping. Those guys should've made you happy...they'll come around or another dealer will shortly. Markets are tanking, rates are tanking...consumer spending will be curtailed near-term. Go back in two weeks and ask for 20% off...

[backstabber]

Yes, I am leaning toward waiting to see what kind of incentives April brings.

On a related note, I was checking my quotes from BMW of Silver Spring where we have gotten 2 leases from and their discount from the get go is on par with what we are looking for. The money factor is not the buy rate, but that's OK since I don't expect them to give us everything they've got before we even start negotiating.

[QueueCumber]

I ended up at around 10% off after a test drive and discussion with the sales person and manager. Worked for me. I guess it depends on how badly you want the car and how quickly you want it (I drove it home that day!).

If you are all about saving as much money as possible, wait a year or two and buy one with 5-10k miles on it at a steep discount. That’s what I generally do with cars that are over $150k retail (unless they’re collectible and appreciating in value...).

[jeffp1105]

I bought mine used CPO with <700 miles for 22% below MSRP. Original owner had purchased 3 years maintenance which transferred. Every option option I wanted except for exterior color (interior and wheels were what I wanted). Couldn't justify $15,000 for a color choice. THRILLED.

[ejm3]

Doesn't it make you wonder/concerned why someone would get rid of the car after 700 miles?
It wasn't a demo because then it could be sold as new.

[jeffp1105]

EJM3,

Of course. I did all the due diligence I could. Had it checked at local BMW shop here. Traced the vehicle from manufacture to port to dealer to registration. Same dealer sold and took back as a trade 3 months later. I can't verify the following but when I asked why he said "the owner had too many cars"....

Anyway, it's covered by CPO and what I could check I did. Really just an extreme example of QUEUECUMBER's comment that if you're really price sensitive buy a lightly used car. A 1-2 yo off lease is probably good for 30-50% of MSRP (just a guess).

[backstabber]

Originally Posted by jeffp1105

EJM3,

Anyway, it's covered by CPO and what I could check I did. Really just an extreme example of QUEUECUMBER's comment that if you're really price sensitive buy a lightly used car. A 1-2 yo off lease is probably good for 30-50% of MSRP (just a guess).

I agree. We don't have any problems with getting a retired loaner or executive demo. In fact, we'd prefer that since they offer substantial saving and still qualify for BMW incentives. The problem is no dealer near us has a M40i as loaner. We prefer to lease so unless we can find a good leasing program for used cars we are stuck with getting new.