How to buy a car

My inspiration: How to buy a new car, FWF style

I am on the East Coast of Florida (Central Florida) so I wanted to set a radius to capture some of the larger markets. I choose 150 miles from my zip code. I used dealerrater.com to create the list of Toyota dealers within 150 miles. They don't offer a 150 mile increment but it you choose a mileage other than the standard you can change the mileage in the URL (address bar). This gave me 40 which is too many so I set dealerships with at least a average rating of 4 out of 5. I created a excel sheet with these 30 dealerships with the following columns for sorting: # (chronological rating order from dealerrater.com), Dealership (name of dealership), Website (hyperlinked), Location (city and state), Distance (from me), Date/Time (email request sent). Most the dealerships do not offer a direct email address to make initial contact they use web forms instead. I downloaded RoboForms to make the web forms as painless as possible. It took 1 hour to configure RoboForms and message all 30 dealerships. The text below is what I included with the initial contact.

I created a disposbe gmail account just for this process. I created a sub folder for each dealer to organize their emails. I also create a disposable phone number for this purpose, some of the dealers web forms required a phone number. The disposable phone number was set to go straight to voice mail. About half the dealers replied via email with a price the other half called. I listen to the first few messages and they were bs tactics to get you into a sales pitch on the phone, I never listen to any more after the first few. I never called any dealerships except the one that won my business. All dealerships that provided a real bid I emailed thanking them for their business and they I was proceeding with the low dealer. I had three that were low and within $100 of each other. One of the low dealers that wasn't selected emailed me back asking how he was not lowest. I told him that he and two other were within $100 of each other, he proceeded to try to beat them out how ever possible. The dealer I selected was prompt, courteous and never tried to force a telephone call. For $100 I wanted to deal with a business minded person not a at all cost sales person. He was not giving up so I stopped responding to his emails. The dealership I selected handled everything via email and phone. I went and met up last night and in less than an hour was out the door.

I got my financing through Alliant Credit Union at 1.49% for 72 months: Best Car Loans

The VoIP service I use to setup a temp number is anveo.com. They offer 5 day truely disposable number but I bought a monthly number ($1 month, 3 month minimum).

I purchased a vehicle pricing report from fightingchance.com.

I test drove the car at local dealership and offered them $23k OTD prior to soliciting the other dealers.

2013 Prius Two right under $23k OTD.

*They also included the factory carpeted mats, $299 retail on their paperwork, $100 on ebay.

 

I PMed you the dealership.

 

Why is that?