Car Negotiation Coach

If you’ve been considering buying a new car, Memorial Day weekend might be a good time to do it.  Holiday weekends are often one of the best times of year to buy a car.  Salesmen typically offer special car sales over Memorial Day weekend for several reasons:

1. Gas Prices start increasing towards summer and the demand for gas guzzling SUV’s and all-wheel drive vehicles is down.
2. Dealers know that car shoppers that have been hibernating over the winter are heading outside to take advantage of the Spring weather to look for deals.
3. Three day weekends mean people have an extra day to shop.  So dealerships will ramp up their sales efforts with “events” and other promotions
4. Some dealerships will offer a bonus to the salesman who makes the most sales over a long weekend.
5. And most importantly, towards the end of every month car salesmen are trying to hit their monthly bonus targets and are more willing to make a deal on a single car to earn a big bonus check.

If you are looking for Memorial day car incentives, check out Edmund’s Deals of the Month.  And if you go to a car lot to see what’s on sale, just don’t buy anything at the dealership.  Head home to find the best car prices online to get the best deals this holiday.

Thanks to the expertise of my friend and long-time car salesman, James, the Bay Area Car Guy, today I’m able to show you what pictures you’ll need in order to sell your car on Craigslist, AutoTrader, or Vehix.

When posting a car ad online, you must present the right pictures of your car (and in the right order) to make it sell for the most money.  The more photos you use, and the higher quality, the better your chance of selling your car quickly and profitably.  When someone wants to buy a car on Craigslist or other used car website, they will quickly skip over any listings without photos or poor quality photos (even if the car is a good value).

Make sure your car sparkles both inside and out before taking pictures.  Photos of a dirty, cluttered car will do more harm than good. Spend a few hours cleaning or pay for detailing and it will make a big difference in how much money you make selling your car.

Most Important Car Photo Angle

The photo you should always display first is the Primary Exterior Photo.  This is an angled photo that shows the front and driver’s side door.  Take this photo at a 45-degree angle and make sure the steering wheel is turned all the way to the right so the front wheel is exposed.

Primary Exterior Car Photo

Second Most Important Car Photo Angles

Different websites like Craigslist, AutoTrader, or Vehix each have their own rules for how many photos you can upload.  Some even charge more based on the number of photos (giving more evidence to the statement that more photos means a higher likelihood of a sale).

In addition to the primary photo, here are a few of the most important shots you can include if the website limits you to a small number of images.

Driver’s Side Interior Photo

Steering Wheel and Gauges Photo

Navigation – GPS Photo

Supplemental Car Photo Angles

If you are posting on a website that allows you to upload more pictures of your car, here are some extra angles and shots you can use.  They are displayed in priority order below.  Use as many of these photo angles as you are allowed, starting with the images at the top and working your way down.

This post is brought to you by Tinting Australia, a car tinting business in Sydney.

Top Tips to Remember When Assessing Your Car Tinting Quotes

Price isn’t necessarily everything.

The price for car tinting can vary dramatically from $150 to $450 or more. Some vehicles are harder to tint than others resulting in different prices for different vehicles.

Also, price can be affected between various makes and models, diverse window sizes, curvature of glass and trim removal time.

Rubber seals around the edge of the windows increase difficulty and require more time to apply film, therefore an older vehicle will often have a greater car tinting price associated with it.

Whether it’s a trainee tinting your car or an experienced window tinter remember, you get what you pay for.

What about the quality and type of film?

There is different quality and types of film on the market, your cheaper films are dye based, while your higher quality films are carbon, ceramic or metallised based films.

Dye based films may look and seem good at the beginning, but they can fail to block the summer heat, fade, turn purple, or bubble within 1-2 years after installation when exposed to sunlight often. The higher quality tint will hold up to more punishment, offer greater performance and have a lifetime warranty. These films are worth the higher price you’ll pay.

What about Car Tinting Warranties?

Warranties can last from one-year up to a lifetime. Lifetime warranties refer to your ownership of the vehicle, so once the vehicle is sold the warranty is void, unless it is a transferable warranty.

Are all warranties the same?

Most warranties only cover problems such as hazing, bubbling and peeling. Most high quality films carry a “Non-Fading Warranty” giving you peace of mind that if the colour of your tint ever discolours, fades or changes, it will be replaced.

Try to look for a car tinting brand that offers a nation-wide warranty, then your vehicle will always be covered.

Don’t get caught out by dealerships

It’s a common myth that dealerships offer a better quality film because of the prices they charge. This is false, and should be known that over 80% of dealerships subcontract work out to car tinting shops, and then add 100 – 300% on top of what they are charged.

But they are throwing it in for free…

Dealerships are notorious for throwing in window tint as a freebie when purchasing a new vehicle. Be wary of this, as nothing is ever for free, especially in this day and age. It just means that money will be made somewhere else in the deal.

According to the IRS, if you use your car in your business, you can deduct car expenses. If you use your car for both business and personal purposes, you must divide your expenses based on actual mileage. And commuting to your regular workplace is not considered business travel.

What car expenses can you deduct?

The IRS gives you two options to deduct the business use of your car:

1. Deduct car expenses using the standard mileage rate. The standard business mileage rate in 2011 changed mid-year.  The business mileage rate from January 1 – June 30, 2011 is 51 cents per mile.  The business mileage rate from July 1 – December 30, 2011 is 55.5 cents per mile.  This changes from year to year (and sometimes mid-year like 2011 and 2008) so be sure to check the IRS mileage rates.  On top of the standard mileage rate, you can deduct tolls and parking.
2. Deduct car expenses using actual expenses.   Actual vehicle expenses include lease payments, gas, oil, depreciation, license and registration fees, insurance, repairs, tolls, and parking.

Lease payments can serve as one of your biggest tax deductions.  In my opinion, if you can deduct business use lease payments, that is the only time that leasing makes good financial sense.  Here’s more to help you decide whether to buy or lease a car.

And in order to qualify for either option you must also keep detailed records of your business use of the car in a mileage log showing the date, business purposes, and number of miles driven.  Keep in mind the second option is considerably more difficult to document.  And just because it is more challenging does not necessarily mean you’ll end up with a larger deduction.  Before deciding, try to estimate your annual savings under both options or check with a tax professional.

For more details on deducting car expenses refer to the IRS website.

CarWoo is a fantastic tool for negotiating with car dealers.  But to get the absolute best car price, you must know how to use CarWoo properly!   In my last post I reviewed how CarWoo works and  today I’m sharing my tips for using CarWoo to get the best possible deal.

First off, never make a counter offer!  I’ll explain why, but first I’ll show you a few other tips to get the best prices from car dealers on CarWoo.

Follow the 10 tips below to get the best deal using CarWoo:

1. Start your CarWoo negotiation the last week of the month.  The best time to buy a car is when car dealers are trying to make their monthly sales quotas.
2. Figure out the ONE make and model of car you want before starting a negotiation.  On CarWoo, car prices are free on for the first vehicle you choose.  If you change your mind and decide to negotiate a second or third type of car it costs $89.  While that’s not much in the scheme of things, every dollar matters.
3. When you request car prices, you can select up to 15 dealerships to hear from. That’s 10 more dealerships than any other service offers so take advantage. Make sure all 15 dealerships are checked.  There is no reason to limit yourself to only a few dealerships since CarWoo manages the process for you.  The more dealers you include, the lower the price you’ll get.
        
4. CarWoo guarantees you’ll hear from at least 3 dealerships, however you probably won’t get prices from all 15 you check.  Ideally you want around eight quotes to get a good price. Anything less than 5 quotes is not competitive enough!  If this happens, make sure you get additional car prices from dealerships that may not be signed up for CarWoo.
5. After, you create an account and click Receive Offers, you’ll be taken to the Summary of Your Offers page. Scroll to the bottom and click, Change your preferences for this car.
     
   Then scroll to the bottom again and say you want to finance through the dealer.   
   This does not commit you to anything, but car dealers are more apt to give you a better price if they think there’s a chance you’ll finance through them.  Car dealers don’t want you to pay cash because they make money through financing.  And you won’t be lying to them.  You should give car dealers a chance to provide you financing, but only take it if they can beat the best rate you find online.
6. After getting quotes, wait at least 48 hours before negotiating.  This gives more dealers time to see each other’s prices and provide you with competitive offers.  You can wait even longer if you like.  All dealers put expiration dates on their quotes, so you can always see if any offers are close to expiring.
7. Even though there’s a very slick option to speak to a car dealer without providing your phone number, DO NOT call any car dealers.  When you talk to a dealer on the phone, their main goal is to convince you to come to the dealership.  They are seasoned negotiators and know all the tricks to get you in the door.  Avoid any conversations and stick to the facts by only communicating via comments.
8. Unlike some services, CarWoo does not tell you average prices paid for cars in your area.  So make sure you know what you should pay for your new car before accepting an offer.  At the start of any negotiation, it’s important to have a target price in mind so you know what to consider a good deal.
9. And the most important point:   DO NOT make a counter offer! You may be tempted to enter a price and click the big Send Counter Offer button, but don’t do it.  Why?  As soon as you throw out a number to a salesman, you’ve set a price floor for yourself and they will not go below that number.  Why give them a price they won’t beat?  This can end up costing you hundreds of dollars.  Don’t prevent yourself from getting the best possible car price.
         
   Instead of making an offer, type in a comment and ask them to beat your lowest price. I’ve created an email template you can use for this purpose, and at CarWoo, you can just copy and paste the text into the Comment area.   Go into every offer and ask each dealer to beat the best price that you have.  The key is to ask them to provide you with new offers instead of throwing out a number yourself.
10. Lastly, CarWoo does not handle your Financing or Trade-in.   Once you get a great car price it’s not time to rest, you’ve only finished 1/3 of the deal.  When you get to the dealership to sign for your car you’ll still need to negotiate your trade-in and auto financing on your own.

CarWoo sounds like an innocent and friendly name, but don’t let that fool you.  It’s a powerful new service that turns car buyers into fierce negotiators.  Car dealers who don’t embrace Internet-savvy, comparison shoppers will become dinosaurs. And car buyers will love the CarWoo experience that puts them in control of negotiations.

In my new car buying strategy I detail how to make car dealers compete with each other.  But I’ll admit, it takes work to send emails and keep track of car dealer responses.  CarWoo eliminates much of that manual effort by tracking dealer offers for you and allowing car dealers to see each other’s offers.

The CarWoo website is like a reverse auction for car buyers, but there’s no set time period and you don’t have to buy if you don’t find a deal you like.  Instead of prices going up, car dealers lower their prices while you sit back and watch.  In this post I’ll review how CarWoo works and in my next post I provide detailed tips on how to correctly use CarWoo to avoid leaving any money on the table (or in the dealer’s wallet).

What is CarWoo? And why is it one of the best ways to buy a car?

CarWoo is not like any other Internet car pricing service.   All other car price services require you to enter a phone number and email address that’s passed along to dealerships.  You can expect to be bombarded with calls and emails interrupting your day. In fact, I usually recommend creating new email and Google Voice accounts specifically to sort through the spam from car dealers.

But CarWoo is different, they keep you completely anonymous.  You provide contact details when you sign up, but they are never shared with car dealers until you want to talk to them.

Dealers send you offers through CarWoo’s website, instead of sending you emails.  You just logon and watch the offers roll in.  Each dealer can see their competitors’ prices, so they usually reduce their offers in order to beat other dealers.  After a couple days of sitting back and relaxing, your car price should be much lower than where it started.

How does CarWoo Work?

1- First you select a make and model car and check all the dealerships you’d like to send you car prices.

2- Then you create a CarWoo account (Don’t worry, your contact information is not shared with car dealers unless you allow it).

3- Within a few hours you should start receiving offers that will look like this (I grayed out dealer names):

4- Over the course of a couple days, car dealers will try to beat each other’s prices.  And you get to choose the lowest offer.

5- You can make a counter offer any time, but you should never use this feature!!—I’ll explain why that’s a big mistake in my next post.

6- After you get a price you like, you can accept the offer and print a CarWoo Official Claim Certificate.  This gives you something to take to the dealership as proof when you go to pick-up and pay for your car.

How much does CarWoo Cost?

• It’s completely free to get competitive offers on a single make and model car through CarWoo.
• If you want to get offers on 2 or 3 different makes and models, then it costs $89.  So what’s the lesson here?  Figure out exactly the type of car you want before starting a negotiation so you won’t have to pay the fee!

CarWoo Review

Here’s what I like about CarWoo

• Anonymous negotiating so you don’t have to provide your contact info. to dealers!
• I love the “out-the-door” estimator. They independently provide an estimate of additional costs (like tax, title, and license). This is calculated for you automatically with each dealer offer – so no guessing if the dealer included it.
• Phone support – This is the only service I’m aware of that actually takes your calls and helps you negotiate.
• You can potentially get competitive car prices from up to 15 car dealers.  All other car price services will give you a maximum of 5.
• Their website is very intuitive and extremely easy to use.

Here are the only things I don’t like about CarWoo

• CarWoo is growing quickly, but is not yet the largest of dealer networks.  They say you will get offers from at least 3 dealers, but how many more than that varies based on how many dealers are signed up in your area.  I recommend getting car prices from at least 8 dealers to get a truly competitive price.  However, if you do not get enough offers, you can always check these places for more new car prices.
• You can see CarWoo user reviews and ratings of dealerships from other readers, but that’s only effective if enough people have left feedback.  I’ve found that car dealer reviews are sparse, but that should change as CarWoo becomes more popular.
• On the offer page, there is a big button to “Send a Counter Offer”.  As mentioned above, it is a mistake to use this feature as you will only set a price floor for yourself that dealers will never go below.  I explain how to get around this in my next post.

If you’re one of the millions of Americans who have bad credit, it’s important to know that you still have options when trying to find money to buy a car.  You’re likely to pay a lot more in interest than a borrower with good credit, but you don’t have to be stuck in a bad credit loan forever.  Let’s take a look at your available financing options, and then how to get out of a bad credit car loan.

Keep in mind that when you have good credit, you have the luxury of focusing on the car first and the financing second.  Unfortunately, when you have bad credit you’re seen as high risk.  This means you may have to discuss financing with a dealer before selecting a car so they can find a lender willing to work with you.

You may already know why it’s important to have a good credit score.  But life happens, and when you need a car now but have poor credit, here are your options.

7 Ways you can buy a car with bad credit

1. Your local credit union: According to Clark Howard, credit unions have more than doubled the loan approval rate in recent years for people with damaged credit.  And credit unions will usually write the loans at 1.5 points below the banks and 4 points below what you’d pay at a dealership.
2. Private party car loan:  In other words, borrow from a friend or family member.  Most people will tell you this is the quickest way to lose a friend or alienate your parents, but sometimes it’s simply the best option.  Just be dead serious about paying on time.  And to prove it, use documentation and include interest to make it worth their while.  You’ll want to setup a promissory note to make it official.
3. Find a cosigner you trust (or more importantly one that trusts you): This is similar to the last item, but not quite the same. You’ll ask a friend to put their credit on the line and cosign your loan, but you’ll borrow money from the lender, not them.  The catch is that if you are unable to payback the loan, you’ll damage their credit and likely your friendship.
4. Use an online lender specializing in bad credit loans:
   1. MyAutoloan offers bad credit loans that you can take to a dealership like a cash customer.
   2. You may know CarsDirect because they provide online car prices, but they also handle bad credit car loans.  The difference between CarsDirect and MyAutoloan is that CarsDirect starts out by putting you in touch with a local car dealer who will help you find a vehicle that fits your budget.
5. Rent a car instead:  If you have trouble getting a loan, consider renting a car instead.  You can rent when you need it or find a long term rental program and ask for a discounted rate (a month at a time).  This will cost you more in the long run (similar to leasing), but if you’re out of options it can be a good short term solution.  An added benefit is that you won’t need to worry about maintenance costs or resale value.
6. Pay cash:  If you’re reading this post, this probably isn’t an option, but I feel obligated to mention it.  Consider lowering your standards for the type of vehicle you buy.  Older used cars that will get you from point A to point B and can still be found inexpensively.
7. Buy Here, Pay Here used car dealerships: I recommend against these dealerships but I do want to address them. The L.A. Times describes these programs as sign, drive, default, repossess and resell. This type of used car dealer takes advantage of low income buyers and sells used cars with horrible interest rates (averaging 30%).  Sticker prices are rarely negotiable and down payments are always required. To top it off, Buy Here, Pay Here car lots rarely report your payment history to the credit bureaus, resulting in no benefit to your credit score.
      
   If you’re still not convinced why you shouldn’t go to a Buy Here Pay Here lot, watch this video:

Getting out of a bad credit loan

If you’re able to get a loan with poor credit, your interest rate is likely to be sky high and your car payments huge.  That makes getting out of debt a challenge but you need to focus on one thing: raising your credit score.   To do this, having any loan (even a bad one) and making payments on time is one of the best things you can do.  Do whatever you can to suck it up and make those payments for a year or two and prove you’re credit worthy.  Once your score goes up from “poor” to “fair”, you’ll have these options to get out of a bad car loan:

1. Refinance: Houses aren’t the only thing you can refinance, you can get a better rate on your car loan too.  Once you’ve established six months or more of on-time payments, you may be able to find lenders who will refinance your remaining auto loan balance at more reasonable rates. Banks who might not have touched your business before will become possibilities. Check with your credit union or an online lender that allows refinancing like RateGenius or up2drive.
2. Peer to peer loan: Did you know you can crowdsource car financing?  Most peer to peer lenders won’t accept borrowers with poor credit, but if you have fair credit you can refinance your car loan through Prosper (for credit scores of 640 and above ) or Lending Club (for credit scores of 600 and above).
3. Trade-in your car for another with a new loan and better interest rate.
4. Pay the car off early with a line of credit. Going more in debt is usually a bad idea, unless you can pay off the car loan with debt that has a better interest rate.  Just try not to extend the life of the loan and keep making regular payments for at least the same amount.
5. Pay extra with each car payment: If you can afford to chip in a little extra scratch with each monthly payment, you’ll pay off the principal earlier which means less interest paid over the life of the loan and you’ll end payments sooner.
6. Pay the car off early with cash. If you’re lucky enough to be able to save up a little money, consider paying off your car loan early to avoid the crazy amount of interest you’ll be paying through a bad credit loan.  Paying off just a year early could save you hundreds of dollars.

If you’ve been thinking about buying a new car, this weekend might be a good time to finally pull the trigger.  Presidents’ Day weekend is historically one of the best times to buy a car.  Dealerships offer great deals on cars over the long weekend for several reasons:

1. It’s still the cold winter and dealers are desperate to lure car shoppers onto their lots before Spring.
2. Three day weekends mean people have an extra day to shop so dealerships usually ramp up their sales efforts with “events” and other promotions.
3. Dealers are still trying to clear out their prior year’s inventory and close-out models.
4. Often times a dealership will offer a bonus to the salesman who makes the most sales over a long weekend.
5. And most importantly, towards the end of every month car salesmen are trying to hit their monthly bonus targets and are more willing to make a deal on a single car to earn a big bonus check.

If you are car shopping this weekend, don’t buy anything while you walk around the lot and test drive.  Be sure to head home and get the best car prices on the Internet to find the best car deals.

And while you’re here, check out a few car buying posts from my friends:

• Are Electric Cars Worse for the Planet? (Beating Broke)
• The Real Reason Nobody is Buying Electric Cars (Sustainable Personal Finance)
• Energy Smart Car Buying (Financially Consumed)
• Is Filling the Tank Emptying Your Wallet (Prairie EcoThrifter)
• 5 Useless Car Options to Avoid When Purchasing a New Car (Money Green Life)
• Is a Used Car Really a Better Value? (Free From Broke)
• Paying Cash for a Car (The Family CEO)
• Do You Need Gap Insurance (So Over Debt)
• We Have 1.2 cars….How Many Cars Do you Have? (Super Frugalette)
• When to Switch to a Hybrid (Frugal Zeitgeist)