When buying a car through a dealership, you can do all the negogiations via email. This is sometimes called the “Internet Sales Department”, but there’s usually not a real department or online link you have to follow. To do this, you just email the dealership and say “I want to buy X for Y dollars. I don’t need any financing or other services.” Dealerships may not advertise this, but this is normal and has been common for years.
The two advantages are that you avoid the discomfort and time of haggling in-person, and the person responding to internet offers plausibly has more of an incentive to acheive high-volumn sales, rather than high-price.
Another non-obvious tidbit for new cars: Car manufactuers sometimes manipulate the composition of their products at dealership by offering rebates to the dealership (and not to the consumer directly). For example, Honda was recently offering $1500 to dealerships when they sold a 2014 Accord (the 2015 is just coming out). This is another reason to research prices online (at a site like edmunds.com). This may effect the offer you can make.
YMMV, but my experience is that dealerships do not offer you nearly as good a deal by email vs negotiating in person, getting close, then getting up ready to walk out (and often walking out, leaving your contact phone number behind). The reasons are
that they do not see you as serious buyer until you are there and ready to sign,
that they are very reluctant to put their best offer in writing likely to be used for leverage elsewhere,
and that they do not have the sunk cost of the time and effort spend negotiating to pull them toward the deal.
The two advantages are that you avoid the discomfort and time of haggling in-person, and the person responding to internet offers plausibly has more of an incentive to acheive high-volumn sales, rather than high-price.
The third—a rather major—advantage is that negotiating through email is efficient enough for you to negotiate with multiple dealerships simultaneously and, in particular, play them against each other. Phrases like “I am talking to a few other dealerships and your price is not competitive” are highly useful.
(US specific)
When buying a car through a dealership, you can do all the negogiations via email. This is sometimes called the “Internet Sales Department”, but there’s usually not a real department or online link you have to follow. To do this, you just email the dealership and say “I want to buy X for Y dollars. I don’t need any financing or other services.” Dealerships may not advertise this, but this is normal and has been common for years.
The two advantages are that you avoid the discomfort and time of haggling in-person, and the person responding to internet offers plausibly has more of an incentive to acheive high-volumn sales, rather than high-price.
Another non-obvious tidbit for new cars: Car manufactuers sometimes manipulate the composition of their products at dealership by offering rebates to the dealership (and not to the consumer directly). For example, Honda was recently offering $1500 to dealerships when they sold a 2014 Accord (the 2015 is just coming out). This is another reason to research prices online (at a site like edmunds.com). This may effect the offer you can make.
YMMV, but my experience is that dealerships do not offer you nearly as good a deal by email vs negotiating in person, getting close, then getting up ready to walk out (and often walking out, leaving your contact phone number behind). The reasons are
that they do not see you as serious buyer until you are there and ready to sign,
that they are very reluctant to put their best offer in writing likely to be used for leverage elsewhere,
and that they do not have the sunk cost of the time and effort spend negotiating to pull them toward the deal.
The third—a rather major—advantage is that negotiating through email is efficient enough for you to negotiate with multiple dealerships simultaneously and, in particular, play them against each other. Phrases like “I am talking to a few other dealerships and your price is not competitive” are highly useful.
This study: http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=itscm_facpubs indicates that sellers don’t trust email communication as much as face-to-face communication.
This study: http://www.coppead.ufrj.br/upload/publicacoes/05983421_1.pdf recommends avoiding an unreasonably low offer as that can kill the negotiation.