My wife and I had been considering buying a new car for about five or six months, and come early 2024, we decided the time was right.
We wanted a hybrid, preferable a small SUV. We also didn't want to spend too much — my target was to get a car under $30,000. This was hardly an easy goal in an environment where car prices have been rising much faster than inflation.
All those things, combined with a positive review by Consumer Reports, eventually led me to the Kia Sportage Hybrid. There are cheaper hybrids, but they're smaller. There are fancier ones, but they're pricy.
The retail price for this car sometimes showed up just below $30,000, whcih was encouraging. But in the strange world of new car shopping you don't really know what the price is until you try to buy one. In a buyer-friendly market, dealers will sometimes find rebates or other discounts to take the price well below MSRP.
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| 2024 Kia Sportage |
But as I was to discover, this was not a buyer-friendly market.
The car hunt began in earnest on a Friday, when I requested price quotes via the Consumer Reports and Edmunds websites. Very soon, my phone was ringing, texts were arriving and emails were tumbling into my inbox.
Usually, the first question of each salesperson was "When can you come in?" They want you to come in immediately, get you on their turf, and make a deal right away. Experienced buyers know that this is exactly the opposite of what you want. It's best to stay off the dealer's lot as long as possible. I wanted to do as much of the deal over email as I could.
That said, I do understand that salespeople want to know if you're a serious buyer — not just someone trolling casually for prices — and also that you're a real person. I don't doubt that there are bots out there "shopping" for cars. So I was willing to take one call from each saleperson early the process, to prove I was a genuinely interested buyer. But I tried to keep it short.
On the other hand, I did get a couple emails from bots, like one that said, "Hi Scott! I'm Diana, your virtual assistant at Garden Grove Kia. You've got an eye for excellent vehicles!" These seemed to be quick-response messages in advance of human contact..
Early on, I questioned my willingness to accept phone calls from dealers when I had an unpleasant conversation with Keenan, a salesman with Kia Glendale. He kept badgering me to name an exact day and time to come to dealership, while I kept telling him he needed to send me an offer by email. He eventually sent me just one email with only his contact information, but he never sent an offer, even after I specifically asked.
Some salespeople texted, but I tried to quickly steer them to email. This worked for most, but not all.
One of the stranger meanderings of negotiation was with Zammy of Kia of Carson. She emailed me early in the process on Friday. It took 10 emails back and forth but she soon offered a price of $37,331 "out the door."
I realized in this process that the out-the-door price — or "OTD" — was the best way to negotiate. If you only look at the base price, you're not just ignoring the sales taxes and registration fees, but also the many "accessories" and extra fees dealers will pile on.
I knew the sales tax and registration fees we're going to add around $3,500 to the purchase, but I was dismayed that a car that with a list price in the mid-$29,000s would actually cost run $37,300. I started to wonder if I should start looking at other models.
But I was encouraged when Zammy called and suggested a different car, one with a "base price of $30,000." OK, I thought, that might be around $34K OTD, which is getting closer. But when she emailed the offer it turned out to be $36,564. The base price she showed was not $30,000, but almost $31,000 ($30,988) and she added $895 for "accessories," which she said was Lojack.
I emailed her back, expressing my disappointment with the price. She said the only thing she could do was lower the price by $200. Hmmm. That's where we left it on Friday.
I mostly took the weekend off from car negotiations, but on Monday, Zammy and I again exchanged emails. Her new offer was $35,894. Then later the same day it was $35,675. It was nice that it was going down, but it was still far from what we wanted to spend.
There was a strange Groundhog Day aspect to communicating with Zammy. Even though we exchanged dozens of emails, she also sent six texts, four of which asked the exact same question, "Are you still in the market or do you have any questions?"
Then there was the confusing approach of the sales gang from Huntington Beach Kia. Over five days, these guys sent me 20 emails and a dozen texts. They came from an array of names: Christian, Cristan, Gustavo, Mario, Zaid. Just when I thought I knew who I was dealing with, a new name would pop into my inbox.
They may have all been the same person. A message from Zaid's email address was signed by Christian. A text from Gustavo Gutierrez said "I go by Christian."
It was pretty amateurish. One email sent to me was just blank. In another, Kia Huntington Beach alerted me to a newly priced Sportage, but the car actually was in Glendale, not Huntington Beach.
At one point, Cristian emailed me saying he had "great news" and I should call him. But when I called him, he had no news at all, just a question: When could I come in?
In all this time, they sent me exactly one offer: A $36,900 offer bloated with overpriced accessories. I rejected it quickly.
On Tuesday, Christian even called to try get me to send him the offers I was getting from other dealers. Sorry, dude, I'm not doing market research for you.
Then there was Sergio from Kia Irvine. Sergio texted me on Friday as I was launching my car hunt. I told him right away, like I did with the others, that I preferred email. He never seemed to get that message, continuing to text me even while I was responding by email.
I had to prod Sergio a little to send me an actual offer (his early promise of "we can do Invoice price for you" was pretty vague), but when he did send one, on Monday, I got pretty excited. It was the best offer yet, at $32,400
Then I took a closer look. Even though I had told Sergio that I lived in Long Beach and he should base the sales tax calculation on that, it was quickly apparent that he had used Irvine instead. The difference is significant — the sale tax for us poor Long Beach residents is $700 more than if I lived in Irvine (don't get me started about the unfairness of that).
What's more, his offer didn't include all the required state registration fees. Sergio fixed the sales tax amount, but when I pointed out the incorrect registration fees, I got an abrupt response of "Those fees are generated on your zip code, those are non negotiable."
I wasn't trying to negotiate — if anything, I was pointing out that the dealership seemed to be volunteering to pay part of my registrations fees. If they wanted to do that, it's fine by me.
His response to this was, oddly, to send me an offer on a different vehicle. This was the best price yet, but had one problem: It was not a Kia Sportage Hybrid. Sigh.
With so many high-priced offers early in the process, I was getting discouraged, so we decided we would look at Toyota Camry Hybrids, too. But this just produced more frustration. Low-end Camry Hybrids were impossible to find and the models that were available were priced even higher than Sportages.
I also learned that the skill-level of the Toyota salespeople was no higher than the motley bunch from Kia. An email from someone at Beach Cities Toyota Westminster offered this eloquent message:
"Hybrid Camrys we sell before car hit over ground and we charge over MSRP. But if car stay on my low for few days , I can make you a deal. We will contact you when its happen." (All those typos are genuine.)
Would you really give $30,000-plus to someone who can't write a coherent sentence?
Fortunately, my experiences weren't all negative.
Eddie's offer was the best on the first day but still high for me. I waited a couple days until Monday, and then made my counter-offer: $31,500 OTD. I winced a little as I sent it, fearing that Eddie might just conclude we are too far apart, and stop responding.
But Eddie responded in less than an hour with $33,102. That was getting better. The same day, I asked for a "breakdown" of that price, and on his next email the OTD price became $32,992. (I liked that Eddie was the only one I dealt with from this dealership during the negotiation.)
That was good for me. And when Eddie agreed to take part of my payment — $2,900 — by credit card, we had a deal. (Eddie said that their maximum for credit cards was $2,500 but they'd allow the $2,900. Later, the finance guy told me their limit for credit cards was $5,000).
Still, there was one little wrinkle: My money. I had started moving money for this deal on Friday, but it takes a few days for the dollars to become available in my bank account. This deal had come together so fast that I didn't have the money quite ready. I was scrambling to get it in place.
While that was happening, I asked Eddie to email me a copy of the contract. He said he couldn't do that but sent me a picture of the financials from his screen.
He assured me, after I asked, that there would be no extra fees over the amount we'd agreed. Even so, I was skeptical. In my experience, car dealers always include extra fees at the last minute.
By Wednesday, my money was in place. I wanted to pay by bank transfer, but Eddie had told me already that they preferred cashier's check. I didn't love that, in part because I have to pay $15 for cashier's check at Bank of America, but but bit the bullet and got one Wednesday morning.
In the afternoon, my daughter and I drove to Kia of Cerritos. We met Eddie, who was friendly, and immediately suggested we drive the car around the block. As we did so, a seatbelt alert buzzer went off and, for a while, none of us could figure out how to it turn it off. In an instant, I wondered if this car was a lemon while Eddie (he admited later) saw his commission vanishing.
Then it turned out that Eddie, sitting in the back, was slightly sitting on the middle seat, setting of the alarm. That solved it and we all breathed a sigh of relief.
After the drive, we went back into the showroom and Eddie started bringing us a mountain of papers to sign. I gave credit to Eddie for having asked me email a photo of my driver license and my car insurance information ahead of our visit — this allowed them to input the info before we arrived and save us time.
Still, there were countless pieces of paper where I had to write down my name, address, phone number and email address. Why couldn't these have been pre-filled to save time?
After a bit of a wait, we were ushered into the office of Luis, the finance rep, to complete the deal. In my experience, this is one of the least-pleasant parts of the buying process, since it's the finance guy's job to try to squeeze a little more money out of you.
Luis wasn't particularly friendly, but not really unfriendly either. He asked for some information and had me sign a few more papers.
Then he got to the pitch for the extended warranty. I politiely declined, and he tried to goad me into a discussion. "Not for any amount, even just $500?," he asked. "Is this just a principle thing, or you don't like to save money?"
I could have taken the bait and explained how extended warranties are a bad deal for consumers (and almost pure proft for the dealership), but why even go there? I was under no obligation to justify my spending decisions to him. "No, thank you." I said. He grew cool, but we finished the paperwork and left.
In the end, the price was exactly what Eddie had said — there were no last-minute fees. Thank you, Eddie Favela and Kia of Cerritos.
We were ready to go. But the car wasn't. Eddie had sent it to get washed and gassed up. We had to wait about 25 minutes.
Eventually, the car showed up. My daughter headed home with our other car, while Eddie gave me a last rundown on key features. He nicely connected my phone to the entertainment systems, and answered a few more questions. And then soon, it was time to go. And I drove off the lot with our new car.
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