Buying a vehicle through AAA, Costco, etc?

[SCBillandJane]

Just curious. AAA, Costco, and others claim that they can that they can get a buyer a better price on a vehicle than an individual buying a vehicle directly from a dealership. Has anyone tried them when buying a tow vehicle?

[rvcycleguy]

How does this work? They act as your sales agent? I'm sure there is a fee for the service. Might be comparable to the difference in purchase price.

[MudDog]

There's a write-up on the Costco program here:

http://money.msn.com/car-buying/shou...o-huffman.aspx

I used Costco to get my Tacoma and thought the price was good. May have been able to do a little bit better on my own if I was willing to spend the time going from dealer to dealer and siiting in a sales office for days.

It was a good experience - no haggling. Knew the price before I went to the dealer and nothing changed after I got there. In most dealerships you start directly with the fleet sales manager or sales manager rather than one of the reps hovering around the parking lot.

[hsannerud]

I have purchased three vehicles through the Costco program at three different dealers.....most recently a new Acadia.....Having compared prices etc. I couldn''t be happier...very positive non hassle experiences both past and present...

[SCBillandJane]

Thanks for sharing your experiences. I will try it.
Bill

We went through a buying service. Whatever fee was paid by the dealer. The actual purchase was amazing...we made an appointment with the fleet manager, arrived to find all of our paperwork organized and spread out on his desk. Signed a few docs and were quickly out the door. The price was about $2,000 less than I could get anywhere else. Pretty darn successful experience!

[B_and_D]

We purchased our 2001 Honda Accord through the Costco program, but I also got an internet quote from another dealer and a print out of the quote, which was a couple of hundred less than the Costco quote. The Costco dealer met the price.

This year we used the Costco program again to buy our Prius. The dealer really didn't conform to the Costco guidelines, and their quote wasn't that great. I found a great deal on Craigslist, it was an ad from a fleet salesman and we got a great deal from him.

We bought our 2012 Tacoma through the buying service. We spent quite a lot of time with one Toyota dealership in Memphis and were not happy with they would do for us. We bought through Costco at a different Memphis Toyota dealership with no hassles, excellent attention and about $2000 less. I would try them again if I needed another vehicle. My son is in the car business locally, a ford dealership, and was impressed with what we were able to do with the Costco program at Toyota.

If I recall correctly, the prices in the dealers book, lowest to highest, were:

employee
vendor
invoice
retail (sticker)

My employer has an agreement with Ford, Dodge and GM that allows me to get the vendor price. No haggle.

When I bought my 2008 GMC there was a special promotion where everyone gets employee pricing. I just checked KBB, which claims that in 4 years I have lost 2k in value.

Try asking what employee and vendor prices are. You probably will not get an answer. That being the case the best you can probably do is work up from invoice. Never work down from sticker.

If they won't tell you what invoice is then just look it up online.