Plan to buy a YUKON, how to negotiate?

[JohnW]

Hi guys,

I am new here. I have been wanting a YUKON/Escalate for long time and finally decided to get one. Then I have several questions because I never dealt with YUKON before.

1) I searched online and noticed that 2015+ models have a severe viberation issue. How severe is it and do all cars have the issue? Why doesn't GM fix it?
2) What is a reasonable price for YUKON? How many percent or how much money off from MSRP is reasonable? I am not greedy and I understand dealers need a margin. I just don't want get robbed.

Thanks!

 

[AngelXL]

Are you buying used? You won't find a 2015 new... leasing or buying?
Cash or a loan?
If you are buying new with cash. Easily $10k to $12k

 

[JohnW]

Of course not 2015 LOL. I plan to get a 2016 or 2017. Loan with leasing or buying. Thanks for the tip.

 

[AngelXL]

Buying with cash is always best. You got the upper hand. I sold my truck on the outside and cash.
They alway want to kill you on the trade. I was offered $10k for my trade but waited and got $15k cash.

 

[WillCO]

Buying with cash is always best. You got the upper hand.

They don't really care about cash these days, since credit is relatively loose. You just have to realize that financing adds a lot of levers to a deal, any of which can be manipulated. It's especially so with leasing.

For sure, cruise this and other forums to get a feel for what people are paying. Check out the websites of the dealers who do volume business below invoice. I won't advertise for any of them here but they are easy to find. Check out TrueCar, Costco, USAA, and any other buying service to which you have access, to see what your tools are.

Get your financing approved by your lending institution in advance. Unless GM is running a promotion, they usually won't match credit union rates.

If you are leasing, you should take time to fully understand how leases work. There are special names for special parts of the lease equation - "money factor," "residual," and "sales tax capitalization" are a few. If you aren't fully aware of what is happening, a dealer can hide $100s in profit in any of several areas. Read a few articles. Read the Edmunds leasing forum where people on the inside will let the residuals slip.

I suggest you download the Leasematic app for your phone. It's very popular over in BMW world where everybody leases. It's a lease calculator that lets you do what-if analysis on every aspect of a lease deal, and it forces you to learn what each of the variables is and does. If you aren't comfortable with that app, you have no business negotiating an actual lease, IMO.

Finally, take all of this information and figure out the deal you want to make, before you go to the dealer. People on internet forums like to talk about how they convinced a dealer to give up all profit in every area of a deal as the dealer bowed down to their immense negotiation skills. But really, unless you buy 10 cars a year, be ready to let the dealer make some money on your deal. The internet will tell you what a good deal on a Yukon is; get that deal and be happy with it.

Tell the dealer what you are willing to do if they do what you want them to do. Then, be prepared to do what you said you were going to do. That's how deals get done.

Then, after you drive off the lot, don't second guess your deal and definitely don't come back here and ask us how you did because everyone will claim they could have done better. Just enjoy the awesome truck.

One other thing - don't trade your car at the dealer. Either sell it yourself or take it to CarMax. Dealers will absolutely rob you blind on your trade, and the information available to value your trade is much less objective.

My advice.

 

[04ctd]

be willing to walk out.

if it was me, I would go look at two different dealers, with your draft/loan approval paperwork IN HAND, and say "I want to do this, and pay with this" and low ball them enough that you are forced to walk out. and go LATE at night so you don't end up there four hours. quick in & out.

and FORCE THEM TO PRINT OUT A BUYERS ORDER. once you ask for that, they know you have some sort of knowledge, and you need to be able to review a buyers order & watch how they change the numbers (if they put too much into your trade, it increases their price in the traded vehicle, so they usually show you a low trade, and take money off the new vehicle) It's all semantics, but it means they can resell your trade without calling it a loss.

ask for a copy of the invoice too, some neat numbers on there. know what "holdback" is, and "floor plan"


once you get used to holding out & being able to walk away, it is a different game.

if you "fall in love" and can't walk away...they got you.

we got another $3500 off by being able to walk out...

like WillCo said, there's a LOT of money on the table, and you have to squeeze them to death.


we had our draft with our very low ball amount, and once we got into the Finance Dealer, he was like "well I can't make any money on you using my financing, or an extended warranty, since you only have a set amount on the draft"

and I said "I have the money for the extended warranty, going to write a personal check"
and we got the 7-72 warranty for about a grand, which is usually 2~3 grand.


with all that said, we still got BEAT DOWN on our trade, lost about $3k there..but of course, that could have been them just fudging the numbers around on the new vehicle price.

if you read the forums, I do not think you want a 2015/newer without the extended warranty. they are just poor quality products, "disposable" comes to mind if you read the forums...


----------------------

diff thought process:

on our NNBS, we got our draft several thousand below the price on the per-negotiated buyers order, and then we haggled the last few thousand, and paid the difference in cash. that worked GREAT, esp if you have a few grand.

Instead of "giving it away" as down payment at the front of negotiations, use it as leverage at the very end of negotiations.

 

[Burby]

Use the internet to research research research (I like Edmunds and Truecar). Know all your numbers going in - FICO score, current rates, average price paid. Use the awesome GM websites to find and compare. Find the lowest internet listed price with discount and before even going to the dealer confirm that they will honor that listed price or you walk. Put it all down on paper/write notes. Don't buy from a friend or family member that says they can get you a great deal. Test drive a ton of them until you resonate with the right vehicle. The dealer is an exceptional negotiator. You've got the sales guy, the sales manager and then the finance guy. The deck is stacked against all of us. Looking back on my awesome deal I can see all the negotiation tactics they used that I never even noticed at the time. But it was give and take and I'm super happy with my ride and what I paid.

 

[ssingh1975]

See if the dealer has any demo Denalis...we pulled the trigger last night on a demo 2017 Yukon Denali white frost with all options decked out for $65k and dealer extended warranty to 5 yr/75k for free. 1350 miles on it. They are changing out the tires/rims today, performing oil change (mainly for courtesy) then delivering to my house. Do note that we had a mixup/misunderstanding prior on another vehicle that was mis-advertised and dealer scrambled to give us a deal as we were about to walk out.

PS: We also got $1k more on our trade-in than what CarMax quoted us (we, of course, didn't tell the dealer but simply went with the flow).

 

[abond2014]

Im a finance manager for a car dealership and we prefer people not to pay cash, because banks will pay us for the loan. As a manager i would be more willing to give a better deal to someone financing over paying cash. I will still get the money whether it goes as paper or wire transfers into the dealers bank account.

 

[AngelXL]

On my case I waited for the end of the month, end of the day, end of everything! I had a sale men tell me one time... hey you don't want me to pay my mortgage this month. I hitting right back with better you than ME!. Bring your manager up here and let's cut the BS here is my cash $$ or walking... wait MR!