Virginia Infiniti Car Dealers

Hi likestodrive, I leased the exact same car (only illuminated kickplates additional) for $37,900 in Feb. My understanding is that there is an additional $1.5k incentive for buying (as opposed to leasing). This was from the DC area. Best of luck!

If you look at recent car sales data they if is clear that there are a LOT of people buying cars for much more than what TMV is. I am sure you love them and I guess a lot of them are also happy with you. Good for you and good for them. Those are clearly not the people who are on these forums looking for prices and lease terms. This forum is for people who want to optimize the outcome and get the best deal possible. You will clearly not make a whole lot of money from them, at least in an honest fashion. And these kinds of dealer tricks are exactly what people here to know about (reminds me of when an Edmund editor went undercover to work for a car dealer a few years back). So why even waste time trying to convince these people who are predisposed to not be completely susceptible to your methods? And what I faced is certainly of a lot of interest to people asking for lease terms here. If the dealer with change those terms at will anyway then what is the point of those terms at all? I can understand your resistance, with forums like these and services like TMV (as opposed to the completely rigged KBB values), it is becoming more difficult to overcharge customers compared to when you would have started your career. A lot of dealer "tricks" are already in the public domain now and people are increasingly wary of those. This is my attempt to add to that knowledge base. At the end of the day, a new car is a commodity and in a fairly liquid market, so there should be absolutely NO price differences between dealers. By using their political muscle and keeping big box retailers out of the business of retail car sales, dealers have managed to still keep some scope for price discrepancies. But as more information seeps out, it will be more difficult for make those margins.

"BTW - I don't consider it cheating or stealing - we go over every bit of the contracts in detail" Read my post again. I never said that there was documentary fraud. However, here is what msot reasonable people who go to lease a car think. 1) You get the lease terms from this board 2) The dealer quotes you a price 3) You agree and ask him to calculate the monthly payment Now, here the normal person assumes that financing terms are set by Infiniti Financial and they are a factor of credit alone. So if I am top tier credit - I get whatever I know the terms are for the month and I trust the dealer to apply the terms, do the simple math and give me the monthly payment. Selectively altering the terms for different buyers in this step is most certainly deceptive. That too, using completely unpublished assumptions. You may very well put the revised terms in the contract, but you are trying to pick off people here. Your 15 years in a car dealership may have blinded you to this.

Wow... That was some lengthy justification for cheating! What next? Dealer sells you the car and then switches new tires for old ones because he has to make money to feed the kids? There is a reason that "bait and switch" is not considered to be a positive thing and ponzi schemes are considered to be bad things. After reading the entire post, I am still unable to nail down the exact justification. Is it "Neiman Marcus charges 19.99% on their credit card hence it is ok for the dealer to slyly add .5% to the lease APR for non-discerning customers" or is it "All dealers were send low quotes so we also do that and fleece the customer on the back-end?" or is it "running a car dealership is a low volume business so it is ok to cheat customers?" Being in the money making business myself, I fully understand the need for and process of making money. Nowhere did I rant against the dealership for making money. This was not a tree hugger rant against the evil money men. I carry Amex charge cards that carry 24.99% APR (I pay off every month though so no issues over there) and understand the concept of paying up for good service - the reason I am a platinum member on Continental, Starwoods and Hilton. I do not scan the internet for the cheapest air tickets always because I am ready to pay up for my preferred airline in return for some level of service. Once again, I have nothing against people making money. I do it and I totally support others doing it. Cheating is altogether another matter. I guess you would also justify someone robbing a rich person's house by saying that the burglar has to make money and the rich person anyway has too much money? Tell me the terms upfront and I am ready to pay for it. As a matter of fact, I leased the same car from another dealer for a slightly higher price and they were outstanding guys. Sorry to say so, there are honest people in this world too. ' Trust me, life wouldn't be as much fun if all people started doing what you are claiming the dealers are justified in doing. You would then buy milk at the grocery store and go home to see that you had been charges 10c for "shopping cart usage." I do business every day and negotiate with people often. Cheating, however, is not something that is appreciated absolutely anywhere. Most car dealers live in a bubble where decades of politically enabled business practices have made them lose sense of what is fraud and what is not. When you buy a TV from best buy, they tell you the price, the APR and try to make money by selling HDMI cables worth $5 for $50. But EVERY customer sees the same price. Car dealers - as per your own description - try to first rip people off on the price and when that doesn't work out they try to pick off the uninformed by arbitrarily changing the financing terms. That my friend is called cheating. It is not called making money. I am glad though that all car dealers are not the same. The dealer I bought from - Sheehy Infiniti Annapolis - was upright throughout. Some other local dealers (King's Infiniti Brooklyn) gave me a high quote upfront as well as the leasing terms and told me that they would not budge. I respect that. But fraudulent behavior and bait and switch has never been respectable or acceptable and neither will ever be. Oh, as Gov Christie recently told a union teacher - if you dont like the pay then you dont have to do it. Similarly, if you dont like the economics of running a car dealership - then no one is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to do it so give the rent/utility/salary costs a rest. And for the nth time, none of that is justification for cheating/lying/defrauding/stealing.

joelana, Are you buying or leasing? If you are buying then Sheehy Infiniti of Annapolis MD was offering the same car to me for over 1k less than that. I leased the car for roughly the same price as what you have quoted (there is an additional 1.5k incentive from Infiniti for purchases). Hope that helps.