I was contacted by dealer about having a buyer that was interested in purchasing my car from me. I know this is a common sales tactic to get customers into the dealership but thought it couldn’t hurt to check out anyway.
I informed them from the start that I was not looking to get out of my lease, that they had initially contacted me, so I would only be willing to do it if the price made sense. I was clear with what I was looking for and at what price. On more than once occasion, I was told this was do-able. If they had just informed me that they couldn't meet the demands I was looking for initially, I would not have been upset. I understand that it is a business and if it doesn't make sense financially then there's no point in discussing it further. However, this didn't happen and I ended up going back to the dealership multiple times for no reason.
During one of the meetings I got a quote from them. It was much higher than what I was looking for. No problem, I figured that would end the transaction. I asked for a copy of the quote just in case I changed my mind. After a lot of back and forth I finally was able to take a picture of the quote. I wondered why they were so reluctant to allow me to have a copy of it, when I got home and ran the numbers for myself, I figured out why.
I still have the worksheet with the numbers given to me. It's much easier if you have it in front of you but I will do my best to explain. I was looking to lease so using those numbers (rounded for clarity). They were offering a price of $36k including taxes. Looking at the lease, they had worked the bi-weekly payments to roughly $300. This was on a 3-year lease financed at 0.99% with a residual of almost $17k. While I was at the dealership, I said no thanks can't afford that but they said they could offer me a discount and keeping everything the same except dropping the price to $235 bi-weekly.
When I ran the numbers for myself something didn't add up:
$36k (selling price/amount financed) minus $17k (residual) equals $19k
$19k divided by 78 (3 years of bi-weekly payments) equals $243.59
I then realized what they had done, using the numbers on the quote they gave me. The initial bi-weekly payments should have been $243.59, however they were inflated to just under $300. So when they were able to offer me a "discount" to $235, that is just what the initial bi-weekly payments should have been (roughly). So basically, they had used fake or overinflated bi-weekly payments and then pretended to give a substantial discount. When in reality, the second quote or “discount” was more or less what the payments should have been in the first place to equal the amount financed.
I even brought this issue up to them, and he accused me of not being able to calculate the payments properly. I reached out to the dealership directly going on about a year ago now. It seems as though they don't think this is an issue so I'm posting this to hopefully warn other customers of this trick, as well as finally see if my calculations are in fact correct.