Did you negotiate your price under MSRP ?

[Kakkerlak]

I realize that the Focus Electric is a very limited production vehicle and there are more than the usual complexities of dealer participation and local market pressures involved in pricing the car.

I've read everything from TonySpice's "Forget about the sticker and prepare to get dirty" and Abelgoddard's "[dealer] dropped $2400 in ten minutes" to Hybridbear's "dealers can demand sticker price or higher" and jachady's "I paid the same as you guys even though I'm a new car manager at a Ford dealership".

TrueCar.com describes the FFE MSRP as $35,995, which is Ford's published base price of $35,170 plus $825 destination (freight) charge.

TrueCar then says that the average paid for an FFE in my ZIP code is $28,969, which is $7026 under sticker price.

We can account for $6000 as the big Retail Customer Cash discount.

So the way I read it, the average customer is negotiating to about $1026 under the sticker price. I know the "invoice price" is $2373 below sticker.

So far I've had very little luck negotiating with dealers. I've been told "we sell them at sticker, no markup". One salesman said, with a straight face, that the sticker price was their cost and the $4995 "Additional Dealer Markup" was their profit. I'm pretty confident this is not the case.

Obviously they're not going to start budging until I'm standing in the lot with a checkbook in my hand and have answered "yes" to the "will you buy it today ?" question.

So my question to the MyFocusElectric community is: "Did you pay sticker ? If not, how much of a discount did you negotiate" ?

I'm particularly interested in the experience of buyers in the Seattle area, where demand is relatively high but supply is lower than in Oregon and California.

 

[davideos]

I used Costco. Not necessarily the best price, but if you don't like to haggle, the Costco route is not too bad. The price is pre-negotiated and printed out for you. The print-out, provided by the dealer contact, shows the dealer invoice and the cost to the Costco member. No negotiation, no hassle, no obligation. At least, use that as a starting point rather than starting at sticker / MSRP. I believe mine was list price -$200, or something like that...and that's before Ford's incentives....which for me at the time was less $2000.

Similar deals can be had by using other auto buying programs like AAA or even Edmunds.com. With any of these methods, you talk to the internet/fleet sales guy, not your standard sales guy. I find these guys much easier to talk with. I've done this with Honda once and Ford 2 times and definitely a better experience than the traditional route.

These methods also require that you give your contact information, but as I said, there is no pressure. Meet with them at the dealer and get the price. Walk or talk, it is easy since the price is already set.

 

[empowah]

Purchase from a high-volume California dealer. I leased mine for $500 below invoice plus all applicable rebates. At the dealer, the internet sales manager asked if I was a Costco member, and when I said yes, he offered that price right off the bat.

 

[JohnGarland]

I used true car and then simply played the dealers against each other. Got about $1,200 under MSRP minus the Ford rebate. I did it all in one day, in person, at each dealership so I was fresh in the mind of each salesman. I also called out of state dealerships but they were not competitive once you accounted for shipping. Your Millage May Vary.

 

[Kakkerlak]

Edmunds Price Promise steered me only to the dealer that adds $4995 to MSRP, then gave me a "Price Promise" that was based on that inflated price, so it was MSRP + $2610, and they didn't apply the $6000 Ford incentive. I'd say that the Edmunds algorithm failed in this case.

Costco says that they have no Auto Program dealers in my area. There are 10 FFE's at the Ford dealer in Costco's headquarters city of Kirkland, but I suppose that doesn't matter.

Thanks for the feedback, folks. I'm a little envious that some of you had a fairly easy time buying your FFE.

If anyone's from the Seattle area here on MyFocusElectric and is willing to share their purchase experience, I'd love to hear from them.

 

[longschlng22]

I didn't buy at the time, but a couple weeks back I was offered 1100 under invoice through the Costco program. Didn't like what they offered me in one lease trade-in, so I was going to wait until the lease was up at the end of the year to try again.

This was in North County San Diego. I believe one person had it shipped from this dealership to Arizona and leased as well.

 

[Snowball 14]

I realize that the Focus Electric is a very limited production vehicle and there are more than the usual complexities of dealer participation and local market pressures involved in pricing the car.

I've read everything from TonySpice's "Forget about the sticker and prepare to get dirty" and Abelgoddard's "[dealer] dropped $2400 in ten minutes" to Hybridbear's "dealers can demand sticker price or higher" and jachady's "I paid the same as you guys even though I'm a new car manager at a Ford dealership".

TrueCar.com describes the FFE MSRP as $35,995, which is Ford's published base price of $35,170 plus $825 destination (freight) charge.

TrueCar then says that the average paid for an FFE in my ZIP code is $28,969, which is $7026 under sticker price.

We can account for $6000 as the big Retail Customer Cash discount.

So the way I read it, the average customer is negotiating to about $1026 under the sticker price. I know the "invoice price" is $2373 below sticker.

So far I've had very little luck negotiating with dealers. I've been told "we sell them at sticker, no markup". One salesman said, with a straight face, that the sticker price was their cost and the $4995 "Additional Dealer Markup" was their profit. I'm pretty confident this is not the case.

Obviously they're not going to start budging until I'm standing in the lot with a checkbook in my hand and have answered "yes" to the "will you buy it today ?" question.

So my question to the MyFocusElectric community is: "Did you pay sticker ? If not, how much of a discount did you negotiate" ?

I'm particularly interested in the experience of buyers in the Seattle area, where demand is relatively high but supply is lower than in Oregon and California.

I went through Truecar and Cars.com to start my process. Using Truecar here in the Atlanta area my lowest price was $28200. With that the dealerships that it sent me to either didn't have them and tried to sell me on a C-Max or they were getting only two and wouldn't be able to honor the price. So I went on Cars.com and a dealer had the Lease price on their website which takes all the rebates off but we wanted to buy. Long story short we got a killer deal which is basically the Lease price for a purchase. Most dealerships here with the exception of maybe one only keep about three in stock at any given time.

 

[Kakkerlak]

I gave the dealership with the preposterous markup a chance to negotiate and they doubled down: "when we get them in, they sell immediately at our second sticker price of $41,985 plus tax, license, and $150 dealer doc fee". At least he admitted to Ford's $6000 incentive.

He proceeded to insist that the $7000 tax credit was "being phased out by the government".

BEVs don't pay sales tax in Washington, though I'm sure he could claim that the licensing fees are "taxes". And the Federal credit is $7500, not $7000, and it's years from being phased out, especially for Ford. And the "documentary service fee" was tripled five years ago in Washington, and is referred to as "voluntary" in the law.

Their sister dealership down the road just raised their prices to match, but only on the two highest-priced FFEs (leather + crystalline white) and not on the other four which are advertised at full sticker price.

I believe that the FFEs sell quickly in Seattle, but I don't believe that they sell quickly at inflated prices.

Maybe they're just driving customers toward the other Ford dealers in town, and they'll sell the FFEs to those dealers at transfer cost.

 

[Kakkerlak]

I've been watching the Cars.com website for a few weeks to search dealer inventory in my area. Four weeks ago when my closest local dealer sold both of theirs, there were just 10 within 100 miles of my zip code 98103.

The week after that it jumped to 20. Then 23... 25... 27... 30... now there are 40 in the area.

These must be the last production push for Ford for the 2014 model year. If they're selling just under 200 a month, and 30 of those got shipped to Washington, there must be some market demand here.

And yet the only dealership that's been willing to budge from full sticker price is one in Oregon.

 

[blownb310]

Seattle has their own economy. Something about having a much higher minumum wage than anywhere else in the country. I spoke with the EV sales and marketing guy at Nissan north america and he told me that LEAFs have been outselling Altimas 4 to 1 there.

 

[ElSupreme]

Two weeks of grueling negotiating and I only got $800 below sticker (plus the MFG incentives). If I would have ordered I could have done the true-car deal and gotten ~$1800 below sticker.

But in Atlanta there is basically one dealership that has FFEs in stock. They trade for all of them in the area and monopolize them. Then sit on them. They even told me that is what they do. As well as at least two other Ford dealerships. And since they don't have competition they don't come off sticker price at all. Not to mention they are located in a fairly affluent area of Atlanta, which doesn't hurt their tactics.

I will say buying the vehicle (other than negotiating) was great. And actually the best car buying experience I have ever had. But my credit was a part of that as well.

 

[triangles]

Like others have said, I started with the cars.com and truecar.com prices and started talking to electric certified dealers. The ones that told me sticker price only, I basically told them to piss off, I'd save thousands on a comparable Nissan Leaf before paying sticker for the Focus electric. At one point I almost went that route.

 

[TonySpice]

Golden rule of negotiating a car deal ... is the salesman upset with your first offer?

If he's not upset, you paid too much.

:lol:

Agree this is not for everyone though like sensitive types.

 

[fbitz777]

I paid MSRP on my 2014 FFE in mid July...but again I did no know Ford made and electric car the day before (was looking at LEAF) and was pleasantly surprised how quickly the Ford dealer responded with my Internet request.

Reason I did not bother to argue:

-Salesperson used to be a bartender at my restaurant and seemed very knowledgeable about FFE and would be able to get at least 3 different ones within a week.

-I wanted leather and platinum white which involved them flat bedding the car 250 miles and she offered that for free (probably worth 400$)

Last week I played with TrueCar.com and I think I might have saved at most $1000 if I negotiated.

 

[Kakkerlak]

I finally signed a lease with Courtesy Ford in Portland, OR and drove the car away on Sunday night.

MSRP was $37,050 on a 2014 Ice Storm Metallic, with leather seats and a charger bag as the only options.

They offered a Costco buying program discount of $800, plus a dealer discount of $1943, in addition to the Ford Motor Credit incentive of $11,750.

There was no additional negotiation, so it's likely that I left a little cash on the table. I was happy with my price and satisfied with the process.

On a 36 month, 36,000 mile lease, I got 0.25% APR interest and a residual value of $14,820 (40%).

I put down $2,500 in cash as a down payment, which covered $850 worth of fees, including the $645 Ford Motor Credit lease acquisition fee and the $75 Oregon-limited dealer doc fee. $100 of that will be refunded to me as part of the Oregon -> Washington tax collection paperwork.

I'll be responsible for all the title and license fees when I register the car in Washington. I expect this to be about $247.

Sales tax is not charged on battery-electric vehicles in Washington State until July 1, 2015, so no taxes were included.

Because of my down payment, my monthly payments will be just $177.74. If I'd done zero down, the monthly payments would be about $246.

Anthony Ashley is the salesman who took care of me at Courtesy Ford. After my bad experiences with some local salesmen I was a little harder on him than I would have been otherwise. He handled it well, and I would recommend him to anyone else in the Northwest looking for a straightforward deal on an FFE.

I would not, however, recommend doing a roadtrip home if you live out of range. Pay somebody to flatbed your car and deliver it, shiny and new, to your home or office.

 

[zolorin]

We just got ice storm metallic with leather whose MSRP was 36,990. We visited the dealership that was high volume just to test drive. The guy said that he will be able to do below MSRP plus the $6500 cash back. After telling him that we are planning to do Costco he lowered the price to 1000 below invoice and then after few haggling we set at 3000 below MSRP plus 6500 cash back.

 

[hybridbear]

Anthony Ashley is the salesman who took care of me at Courtesy Ford. After my bad experiences with some local salesmen I was a little harder on him than I would have been otherwise. He handled it well, and I would recommend him to anyone else in the Northwest looking for a straightforward deal on an FFE.

Seriously!?!? Before we ended up taking over the lease I contacted Courtesy Ford and Anthony Ashley helped me as well. I saved all those e-mails and I just went back to look at what they quoted me.

I found out that the maximum cap cost reduction is 25% which is actually exceeded with the $11k rebate.

FMCC actually has to make an exception to their lease rule in order to put the entire rebate into the lease structure. What does this mean? It means you can’t put any cash down on the lease!

Your 10,500 mile per year payment on 36-months is $368.95.
Your 12,000 mile per year payment on 36-months is $380.00.
That the price is the lowest you can get with leather.

When I commented that the payment was very high I was told:

Many dealers are selling them with additional dealer mark-up over msrp.

 

[Kakkerlak]

Interesting. Maybe buying right at the end of the month made a big difference.

We had a discussion about the "you can't put cash down on the lease" in my case, too, and I argued that the national lease advertisement starts with $2640 down. The finance manager made a bunch of bluster about that deal involving average tax rates and different rules, and told me I couldn't put more than $1000 down. They eventually relented and took my $2500 but applied $850 of it to the lease acquisition fee and other fees.

In the end, Mr. Ashley was straightforward with my pricing, but he's still a car salesman whose job is to maximize what he gets for each car. And it's true that some dealerships are putting a "second sticker" markup on Focus Electrics, which is why I was 180 miles from home to buy one.

It always frustrates me when car sales "plays dumb" and pretends that your particular transaction involves unique variables that they can't be troubled to explain.

The finance guy complained "we don't lease many of these", and I countered with "except for the one yesterday".

"Huh ?" he said.

"Sunday you had three. Today you have two. So you sold one yesterday."

"Um, that was... um... must have been... well, that guy didn't put any money down."

 

[hybridbear]

Interesting. Maybe buying right at the end of the month made a big difference.

I don't know. I was doing my searching in late May, right around Memorial Day. At that point they had at least 5 in stock because I did a cars.com search and contacted any dealers with 5 or more FFEs in stock to get a lease quote. So they must sell quite a few of them. In fact, one of Anthony's comments in another e-mail was about how many of them they sell and how they had more in transit if I wanted a different color.

 

[Kakkerlak]

"You knew what I was when you picked me up", said the scorpion to the frog.