6 Common Mistakes That Make Car Buying a Nightmare: How to Avoid Them

Want to know why car buying is so difficult? It's a very good possibility you're doing it to yourself. Take these six steps if you want car buying to be the easiest transaction you've ever done. Faster than being in a grocery store! 

1. Coming to a dealership too early or contacting a dealership too early.

When you are in the process of buying a new car, look at the market and do all research without contacting the dealership. Use the website True Car, Cars.com, or Car Gurus. These websites tell you information about the cars and information about the price of the cars before you ever have to step foot in the dealership or talk to anyone. 

2. You're picking the dealership but not picking the salesperson.

Dealerrater.com is a great tool to use when researching a dealership or their salespeople that will show you all the ratings so that you can pick the best salesperson for you as well as the correct dealership. Doing your research on both the dealership and the salesperson is so important. You don't want the person who sells two cars a month, you want the guy who sells 30 a month. 

3. Not being truthful. When you go to the dealership, you are typically within three days of buying a car, so be truthful with your salesperson.

Picking your salesperson allows you to be more truthful with them. Never lie to your salesperson because you're just hurting yourself in that process. 

4. Understand the math of buying a car.

When you look at a brand new Tahoe that MSRP's at $60,000, it is not going to be a $600 per month car. A quick and easy calculation to do is to take $20 for every $1000 the car is. So for our $60,000 tahoe, the price per month would be around $1,200. That is almost double what the customer is willing to spend, so we will regroup and look at something that is more within their budget. 

If you pulled out your calculator to do this math, you're already in the wrong direction. Mike's Car Store has a great payment calculator to use for this. To find it, please go to Mikescarstore.com

5. Go to the dealership when you have an appropriate amount of time to buy a car. Give yourself at least 90 minutes. Sometimes you can be there for 3 hours depending on how busy the dealership is. You come here to buy a car, don’t give yourself 10 minutes to do a car deal, it won’t be done.

6. If you have a trade in, bring it.

Anything that you think you need to bring to a car dealership; you do. Bring your lien release, your title, driver's license, insurance, or anything else you can think of. Never forget your trade in, don't go to the dealership without it. They can't appraise it when it is sitting in your driveway. 

The owner of Mike's Car Store, Mike "Chevy Dude" Davenport just bought a brand new Silverado ZR2. By using these tips, he was able to be in and out of the dealership within 30 minutes.