The Best Possible Deal?
(cont'd)

But the customer who is buying the car doesn't have to finance the deal through the dealership. They can go to a credit union or they can go to a bank and shop around.

Absolutely. It's telling the customer that you're gonna get him the best available rate and not doing it. That's the essence of this lawsuit, says Andrews, who adds that salesmen and finance managers are advised to tell customers that they are given the best deal. Its a written policy. Its in their training manual.

According to court transcripts, a United Auto Group training manual says "prospects will try and interrupt your presentation by asking questions about price, payments& interest rates, etc.

Memorize the following script: I'm glad you brought that up. What I'd like to do is not only get you the best price available, but also find out about the down payment & and the best terms that are available.

So what does it mean then, when a car salesman tells you that hes going to get you the best possible deal in finance? The best deal, the best rate, the best price, the best trade-in, is the best that you and the dealership can agree on, says Ritchey.

Will he be adding a few percentage points for himself? Every component of the transaction is negotiated. Every deal is negotiated differently, says Ritchey. Every individual has a different set of circumstances.

Ritchey says that most customers negotiate every aspect of the transaction, including the interest rate. But Ewing disagrees: Most? Probably none of them.

As finance managers, Barbee and Ewing say it was part of their job to keep it that way. They've testified that they were trained to be as vague as possible when discussing financing terms with customers, to quote the payment and not the interest rate, and discourage them from reading documents.

You wanted to get them to signing and you wanted to keep them going until you got to the contract and all the other stuff that actually had the numbers on them, says Ewing.

Go ahead and sign this right here, adds Barbee. Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving.

At Tennessee's Covington Pike Toyota, almost three out of four customers who arranged their loans through the dealership ended up paying dealer reserve. The average was around $800, but some paid much more.