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Actual prices paid ONLY - comments will be deleted

710K views 2K replies 933 participants last post by  steve44 
#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
As some of us prepare to enter negotiations with dealers, it would be really helpful to share some key information here to help others:

(YYYY)Trim Level (RT, RTS, Sport, RTL, RTL-T, RTL-E, Black Edition)
Exterior Color
City (County) and State of Purchase
Final Price Before Tax and Trade-in
Incentives and Discounts​
Trade-in Involved (yes/no)

Reason to ask if there is a trade-in involved is that makes it really hard to determine the actual price paid for the new vehicle. Getting some sense of whether people are paying MSRP, above, or below, especially where no trade-in is involved, will help others in their negotiations.

Thanks!
 
#1,220 ·
As some of us prepare to enter negotiations with dealers, it would be really helpful to share some key information here to help others:

Trim Level (RT, RTS, Sport, RTL, RTL-T, RTL-E, Black Edition)
Exterior Color
City (County) and State of Purchase
Final Price Before Tax and Trade-in
Trade-in Involved (yes/no)

Reason to ask if there is a trade-in involved is that makes it really hard to determine the actual price paid for the new vehicle. Getting some sense of whether people are paying MSRP, above, or below, especially where no trade-in is involved, will help others in their negotiations.

Thanks! View attachment 395509
I just paid $34,500 for a perfect 2018 black edition, 14,000 miles.
It has had ceramic coating treatment in /out, lighted running boards and bed cover.
Private deal, i paid cash.
It is a good buy and a beautiful truck.?
 
#1,223 ·
Be careful when shopping for a Ridgeline whether new or used. You probably know more than the dealer much of the time. For example: Here is a used 2019 Ridgeline RTL-E in Forest Mist with black interior for $40,000. I don't have to worry about anyone snapping this one up before I can get to Ft. Collins.

That does not look like Forest Mist to me, and it certainly does not have a black interior.
Land vehicle Vehicle Car Pickup truck Product
 
#1,226 ·
I bought my 2017 RTL- AWD in April of this year. It had 26,8xx miles on it. The carfax was perfect and the truck was well taken care of. I watched 2 different trucks online since January. Both prices were steadily declining as time went on. I emailed one of the salesman and told him 26k. We went back and forth for about a week and settled on 27,000. I think I did well. They were trying to dump it...
 
#1,227 · (Edited)
FROM A FORMER CAR FLEET MANAGER:
I know this isn’t how all dealers do it, but the extras and accessories (wheel locks, LoJack, paint and interior protection, VIN Etching, tint...) are always negotiable, or removable—physically or monetarily.

The retail dealer always makes money on the sale, regardless of the add ons and warranties. Those are just icing. The manufacturers give silent incentives, even reimbursing the dealer for interest charges (dealers usually don’t pay cash for cars themselves) and many back end kickbacks that change month-to-month. These amounts can be $300, to $10,000 depending on the vehicle and circumstances. The manufacturer will always look out for a good dealer. Also, customer service/satisfaction has become a key ‘commission’ payment direct from the manufacturers themselves for salespeople. My how it’s changed! For the better I’d say.

Back to the accessories-These accessories can be major profit centers for dealers, but truth be told, a good dealer will let these go for free if the deal requires it, because they never paid ‘cost’ for them to begin with. BUYER TIP: If the dealers say they can’t remove it, just take the deal sheet and leave the accessories on there, but deduct the accessories price from the vehicle price instead. Sometimes they’ll say ‘I’ll do it at cost’ which is a joke. *Full disclosure: don’t let this get in the way of a deal though, if you have to pay say $80 for the $400 window tint, or $50 for the $200 wheel locks, just do it.
The LoJack (there are many names) recovery GPS things are added to most new cars, or dealers will simply add them to every car. They have deals with the vendors to get the physical GPS (it’s basically a cell phone without a screen) for free and the vendor installs them all. It’s quick too, mostly they plug them into a power plug made for some uninstalled feature (like the seat heaters—your car didn’t come with seat heaters but the wiring harness for all this vehicles has an unused plug under your seat). If someone pays for it, they activate the tracker and the dealer gets a kickback from the vendor. These no-name GPS trackers are super cheapo too, $10 printed circuit boards where any good car thief will rip out and toss out the window as they speed away in your whip. If you feel you need one in your Ferrari, then buy the car and have a genuine LoJack installed later.
Same is true for ‘paint and cloth protection/underbody seal’. They spray (and mostly it washes off quickly) it on every car and the vendor will pay the dealer if they sell it, but the dealer just has buckets of the ‘spray’. VIN etching? Same thing too, all of those dealer’s new cars are ‘etched’, whether people end up paying for it or not.

Our fleet vehicles were always delivered thru dealers (manufacturers rules) and these vehicles didn’t get the accessories installed, but sometimes they forgot.
I remember years ago I added a subwoofer to my wife’s Honda Fit and was wiring the power to the wiring loom under the passenger seat (Unused seat warmer ;) and discovered the cheapo GPS tracker (it’ll have a sticker with an IMEI# like your cell phone) zip tied there. It’s just sitting there, and I almost guarantee one is in your car too-along with another for your wife to check on you ;)
Before GPS they’d sell us on security systems, and I remember my 1994 Toyota had this strange electrical problem and I took the center console apart and found the old-school, poorly-wired, Chinese RF security system that I remembered they tried to sell me, I said no way, and they ‘said’ they’d remove it. They never did and it sat there for the 23 years I owned the truck. They just never gave me the key-ring remote for the security system, that’s what they do folks.

Another secret on used vehicles: It’s been a decade, but I orbited in bulk vehicle purchasing for a large fleet company for years and you’d be shocked at how cheap companies like lease and rental companies get brand-new cars. In most cases these former leases and rentals are the ‘Certified Pre-Owned’ or dealership used cars or CarMax cars. You may be driving an old rental car, and not know it, but honestly with today’s vehicle reliability they’re actually not bad deals or automatically assumed to be abused. If we had a smashed/totaled, any front-end impact or abused vehicle, it’d get auctioned, not sold to a reputable dealer. Believe it or not, CarMax and most dealers only want the best cars.

I’ll just say one example, and these are numbers I still remember verbatim: It’s June 2013 and we get next year’s model 2004 Corolla LE. MSRP was $15,300. We paid Fleet price, which was $8900! You heard me right. We’d lease or rent it for a year, pull it with 15-30k miles (before factory warranty ran out) and sell it to a used car lot or major name dealer for $10-$11k. Remember, it’s still a 2004 model, just with higher mileage in summer/fall 2004, so it’s very attractive for dealers to do this. That $1-2k was effectively our only profit. BTW, rental/lease make money on the end sale, That price you’re paying for that convertible rental in Hawaii—that just pays for the depreciation, so don’t feel bad. Yes, they make a little on prepaid gas and the ‘insurance’ damage waiver, but not much so don’t feel bad.

So just remember, seeing these used 2018, or even 2019 vehicles* on a dealer lot—think of me? Don’t get me wrong, they can still be good deals and save you the depreciation you’d lose by driving a new car off the lot, but you may find it interesting that that fleet dealer still paid thousands less for it new than what you’re paying for it used a year or 18 months later.

*I’ll close with this, the Ridgeline-and Honda’s in general make awful fleet cars because Honda doesn’t do much fleet sales, so you won’t see them as rentals or leases (try to find a Ridgeline factory lease—you can’t). Manufacturers and Fleet companies make their biggest profit in genuine body-on-frame trucks. That $1-2k profit I mentioned on a Corolla, try $5-$15,000 profit on a Chevy Silverado. Multiply that by thousands of trucks and cars and you have the fleet biz. We Ridgeline owners should be lucky, they hold their value very well, but they aren’t selling well. The reason is fleet sales. With fleet sales included, they sell 5 F150s for every one Ridgeline. If Honda knows it can keep the supply in line, then the retail customer (non-fleet) demand will be steady and loyal and the residual value will be insane. End of diatribe- the Ridgeline is actually a not-half-bad vehicle investment.
 
#1,231 ·
FROM A FORMER CAR FLEET MANAGER:
I know this isn’t how all dealers do it, but the extras and accessories (wheel locks, LoJack, paint and interior protection, VIN Etching, tint...) are always negotiable, or removable—physically or monetarily.

The retail dealer always makes money on the sale, regardless of the add ons and warranties. Those are just icing. The manufacturers give silent incentives, even reimbursing the dealer for interest charges (dealers usually don’t pay cash for cars themselves) and many back end kickbacks that change month-to-month. These amounts can be $300, to $10,000 depending on the vehicle and circumstances. The manufacturer will always look out for a good dealer. Also, customer service/satisfaction has become a key ‘commission’ payment direct from the manufacturers themselves for salespeople. My how it’s changed! For the better I’d say.

Back to the accessories-These accessories can be major profit centers for dealers, but truth be told, a good dealer will let these go for free if the deal requires it, because they never paid ‘cost’ for them to begin with. BUYER TIP: If the dealers say they can’t remove it, just take the deal sheet and leave the accessories on there, but deduct the accessories price from the vehicle price instead. Sometimes they’ll say ‘I’ll do it at cost’ which is a joke. *Full disclosure: don’t let this get in the way of a deal though, if you have to pay say $80 for the $400 window tint, or $50 for the $200 wheel locks, just do it.
The LoJack (there are many names) recovery GPS things are added to most new cars, or dealers will simply add them to every car. They have deals with the vendors to get the physical GPS (it’s basically a cell phone without a screen) for free and the vendor installs them all. It’s quick too, mostly they plug them into a power plug made for some uninstalled feature (like the seat heaters—your car didn’t come with seat heaters but the wiring harness for all this vehicles has an unused plug under your seat). If someone pays for it, they activate the tracker and the dealer gets a kickback from the vendor. These no-name GPS trackers are super cheapo too, $10 printed circuit boards where any good car thief will rip out and toss out the window as they speed away in your whip. If you feel you need one in your Ferrari, then buy the car and have a genuine LoJack installed later.
Same is true for ‘paint and cloth protection/underbody seal’. They spray (and mostly it washes off quickly) it on every car and the vendor will pay the dealer if they sell it, but the dealer just has buckets of the ‘spray’. VIN etching? Same thing too, all of those dealer’s new cars are ‘etched’, whether people end up paying for it or not.

Our fleet vehicles were always delivered thru dealers (manufacturers rules) and these vehicles didn’t get the accessories installed, but sometimes they forgot.
I remember years ago I added a subwoofer to my wife’s Honda Fit and was wiring the power to the wiring loom under the passenger seat (Unused seat warmer ;) and discovered the cheapo GPS tracker (it’ll have a sticker with an IMEI# like your cell phone) zip tied there. It’s just sitting there, and I almost guarantee one is in your car too-along with another for your wife to check on you ;)
Before GPS they’d sell us on security systems, and I remember my 1994 Toyota had this strange electrical problem and I took the center console apart and found the old-school, poorly-wired, Chinese RF security system that I remembered they tried to sell me, I said no way, and they ‘said’ they’d remove it. They never did and it sat there for the 23 years I owned the truck. They just never gave me the key-ring remote for the security system, that’s what they do folks.

Another secret on used vehicles: It’s been a decade, but I orbited in bulk vehicle purchasing for a large fleet company for years and you’d be shocked at how cheap companies like lease and rental companies get brand-new cars. In most cases these former leases and rentals are the ‘Certified Pre-Owned’ or dealership used cars or CarMax cars. You may be driving an old rental car, and not know it, but honestly with today’s vehicle reliability they’re actually not bad deals or automatically assumed to be abused. If we had a smashed/totaled, any front-end impact or abused vehicle, it’d get auctioned, not sold to a reputable dealer. Believe it or not, CarMax and most dealers only want the best cars.

I’ll just say one example, and these are numbers I still remember verbatim: It’s June 2013 and we get next year’s model 2004 Corolla LE. MSRP was $15,300. We paid Fleet price, which was $8900! You heard me right. We’d lease or rent it for a year, pull it with 15-30k miles (before factory warranty ran out) and sell it to a used car lot or major name dealer for $10-$11k. Remember, it’s still a 2004 model, just with higher mileage in summer/fall 2004, so it’s very attractive for dealers to do this. That $1-2k was effectively our only profit. BTW, rental/lease make money on the end sale, That price you’re paying for that convertible rental in Hawaii—that just pays for the depreciation, so don’t feel bad. Yes, they make a little on prepaid gas and the ‘insurance’ damage waiver, but not much so don’t feel bad.

So just remember, seeing these used 2018, or even 2019 vehicles* on a dealer lot—think of me? Don’t get me wrong, they can still be good deals and save you the depreciation you’d lose by driving a new car off the lot, but you may find it interesting that that fleet dealer still paid thousands less for it new than what you’re paying for it used a year or 18 months later.

*I’ll close with this, the Ridgeline-and Honda’s in general make awful fleet cars because Honda doesn’t do much fleet sales, so you won’t see them as rentals or leases (try to find a Ridgeline factory lease—you can’t). Manufacturers and Fleet companies make their biggest profit in genuine body-on-frame trucks. That $1-2k profit I mentioned on a Corolla, try $5-$15,000 profit on a Chevy Silverado. Multiply that by thousands of trucks and cars and you have the fleet biz. We Ridgeline owners should be lucky, they hold their value very well, but they aren’t selling well. The reason is fleet sales. With fleet sales included, they sell 5 F150s for every one Ridgeline. If Honda knows it can keep the supply in line, then the retail customer (non-fleet) demand will be steady and loyal and the residual value will be insane. End of diatribe- the Ridgeline is actually a not-half-bad vehicle investment.
There's a lot of truth to what you say with a few exceptions...

"It’s quick too, mostly they plug them into a power plug made for some uninstalled feature (like the seat heaters—your car didn’t come with seat heaters but the wiring harness for all this vehicles has an unused plug under your seat)."

In a Honda, there are no unused connectors for factory options. Each market and trim variation gets unique harnesses.

"Don’t get me wrong, they can still be good deals and save you the depreciation you’d lose by driving a new car off the lot, but you may find it interesting that that fleet dealer still paid thousands less for it new than what you’re paying for it used a year or 18 months later. "

Individuals don't qualify for fleet pricing, so it doesn't really matter how much the fleet price was. A specific vehicle's value will be the same regardless of how much someone paid for it originally. The Corolla you gave in your example will be worth $10-11K whether it was originally purchased at full MSRP of $15,300 or at a fleet price of $8.900. If you buy a new Corvette for $60,000 and I win an identical Corvette at a casino, they'll both be worth the same amount a year later.

"I’ll close with this, the Ridgeline-and Honda’s in general make awful fleet cars because Honda doesn’t do much fleet sales, so you won’t see them as rentals or leases (try to find a Ridgeline factory lease—you can’t)."

Honda will lease any model including the Ridgeline.
 
#1,228 ·
Trying to see what folks are paying for RTL-E's these days and when they changed the whole platform here that seemed to disappear. Can never understand why every web site has to be completely over hauled every 6 months. Old one was just fine. Got to keep those web designers in work I guess.

Anyway... new 2019 RTL's here in Montana are internet priced around 39.5k. ( even though the salesman doesn't know that ) I'm wondering what some are getting before taxes as I don't pay sales tax here?
 
#1,229 ·
Trying to see what folks are paying for RTL-E's these days and when they changed the whole platform here that seemed to disappear. Can never understand why every web site has to be completely over hauled every 6 months. Old one was just fine. Got to keep those web designers in work I guess.

Anyway... new 2019 RTL's here in Montana are internet priced around 39.5k. ( even though the salesman doesn't know that ) I'm wondering what some are getting before taxes as I don't pay sales tax here?
I paid $38,975 in Milwaukee, WI.
 
#1,234 · (Edited)
$36,980 2019 RTL-E purchased in early June. Not sure if it made any difference but it was a cash deal and no trade involved. Destination was included, but I paid tax & fees in addition to the $36,980.

I figured the savings easily paid for my extended warranty and some accessories & mods.









I
 
#1,237 ·
Your local honda salesman chiming in for educational purposes...

Honda has $1500 dealer cash on the RL at the moment. In our area Costco price is $300 under invoice (black edition $200 under) and then the $1500, so $1800 under invoice. Roughly, that means without any negotiation you can get an RTLE for about $37,600. Just always make sure you request the quote through Costco website. If you walk in and try to get it....the dealer does not get audited for in person requests so they are less likely to do it. (Under Costco, dealer has to include all factory to dealer cash in the deal.)

The more you know!
 
#1,239 ·

These numbers less the $1,500 dealer cash would be the zero profit starting point. I think $500 profit plus the opportunity to potentially make money on you with financing and additional products is fair, but Honda dealers, in my experience, are in general less likely to be fair than dealers for any other manufacturer.
 
#1,240 ·
These numbers less the $1,500 dealer cash would be the zero profit starting point.
Well, then there are volume bonuses, finance incentives, warranties, maintenance plans, accessories, fees, etc. that allow a dealer to sell a vehicle at cost and still make a fair profit. :)
 
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#1,243 ·
Right, I'm just trying to say what I think the minimum price a dealer would likely sell you a ridge is, and what I think you can feel good about paying. In the end you can demand whatever price you want, they just won't sell it to you if they don't think they can make something on you when the whole process is done. Dealers definitely have some negative deals, but in the end they have more winners than losers.
 
#1,245 ·
We have dealers charging $300 for electronic filing to the DMV. The DMV charges $20 for this fee.And this fee is on top of $900- The skies the limit here in GA and they always have a package on every vehicle like wheel locks and tint for a mere $600! And my favorite is the life time warranty for $1200 LOL
 
#1,246 ·
Take amounts that you see here with a grain of salt. People will neglect to mention the $1,000 dealer fees, the $1,000 rustproofing, $500 window etch, trade in, etc. Back in the day I sold Toyotas, and someone came to the dealership to get the same deal their neighbor did. I had to pull out the contract, the neighbor lied and said they paid $3,000 less than they really did. Everyone wants to say they are a master negotiator.
 
#1,263 ·
I do it every time I buy a new vehicle. My 2018 Sport AWD cost me $34,000 even out the door including tax and title. I made the offer and never backed down and got up 3 times to leave before it was accepted. I do pay cash but it is easy enough to have your financing in place before you buy. I tell them to hold my check for a few days while funds are being transferred usually. Never had any problems doing so.
 
#1,259 ·
I purchased a new RTL-E today. $36,168 + $150 dealer fee + TTL. We did hit a bump because the one we were told was available yesterday was actually sold, so they located exactly what we wanted at another dealer. The dealer they're getting our Ridgeline from adds tint, wheel locks, and paint/interior protection. I was firm but polite and told them I wasn't going to pay for the dealer adds because I don't do business with dealerships that add accessories or have excessive dealer fees and they ate the cost. I did pay $92 for the tailgate lock and they are going to install it for free.

I had a bump in the road, but they worked hard to make it right. They appreciated me not blowing up and being understanding. I'm a firm believer that stuff happens and what's important is how they resolve it. They have done well so far. Fingers crossed that all goes well later this week when we take delivery.

I'm very pleased with the deal.
 
#1,287 ·
I asked a salesperson how much a locate is and he said $200-$300. If it's not close they have to have a truck, trailer, insurance, etc. My local dealer kept acting disrespected about having to go get one for me - like it was a huge cost. The dealer I ended up going with was able to locate 3 and didn't even ask me about colors until after the sale. The one I'm getting was already another locate so will have about 200 miles on it but will be trailered. The other two they found the dealer refused to give up and one was a demo with a lot more miles. When I got my '12 Odyssey from my local dealer they located it but it was driven ~ 100 miles. Logic would dictate that a further distance would require more hours and fuel, but it's not really this huge cost that should stop a deal from happening.
 
#1,272 ·
great price!
 
#1,265 ·
$36,980 + tax & lic. Back in the first week of June, 2019 RTL-E
 
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