My i3 purchase experience and Mystery down payment

[EVMan]

Its been some time , since i purchased by i3.
But really , i never understood my experience , but i want to understand , what really happened, and was i fooled ?

I dont buy cars often , and dont understand all the incentives , but , when the new 2018 model was launched, i understand , there were some additional incentives for the outgoing remaining few stock left , and so i just insisted

"If you give me a car at 20K off MRP , i will buy it. else thanks" The i3 had 10K discount thru my employer , and i said combine everything else , and give me for 20K off

and my dealer agreed to it.
I wanted to pay all cash , to keep things simple , but he said you have to take a loan, but you can pay it in 6 months. I had to agree
He told me lot of incorrect info , about loan , and how i should opt for the least down payment or 2k , and it will not make any difference to my total loan. Which clearly was false , and hard to believe. . In the end , he said , max i can down-pay was 10K , and i agreed
I also learned, they are not trustworthy.

Now the funny part starts, which i still do not understand
I only paid like 10k of down payment , but my he gave me some stuff for free ( 4th year service, windshield insurance ) and also put other stuff like accessories etc ( which he did not give me ) and the purchase agreement said i paid 16K down payment

I asked why, he said , you got your deal, dont bother
I was exhausted and very confused. I said, yes i got my deal, i want to go home

And i just paid him 10k down and got my car for 6K less than purchase agreement
Now the purchase agreement has manufacturers discount as 6K listed, but total down payment as 16K.
So i am not sure why total down payment is 16K if BMW paid the remaining ?.

So what really happened here ??? Why he inflated purchase agreement ?
Did he fool me ? How ?
From my side, i got my deal and free 4th year service and windshield insurance

I realize, i ended up paying more tax too , due to inflated price.

 

[theothertom]

i'm not exactly sure why dealers do this but in a couple of cases when I bought a car, the finance dept. inflated the "purchase" price but then increased the discount so that the bottom line was what we agreed to. Maybe it has something to do with not reporting a "reduced" purchase price because car gurus and other sites might pick up on this when they average prices. Or maybe, like you say, it has something to do with taxes. I just don't know, but it's happened to me at least twice.

 

[AndrewDebbie]

Don't worry about it. You signed the paperwork and drove the car off the lot. Enjoy your i3.




Next time, do the homework ahead of time and go in knowing what all the numbers should be.

BMW NA leases are complex, with money factor discounts and add ons, various dealer fees and who knows what.

I always made up a spread sheet in Excel and printed out a hard copy to take with me.

There used to be help on bimmerfest with figuring out leases. Probably still is.

Personally my BMW NA deals always came out within a few pennies of the spread sheet. I had a Mazda that was off by several hundred dollars. The error was in the dealer's favour, so I handed over my print out and asked them to double check the numbers. About 20 minutes later they came back saying they'd made an honest mistake entering in the numbers to their system. Honest or not, I would not have gotten it fixed if I hadn't come in with print out.


Our first new car in the UK was also way off. I had a quote which I double checked at home. UK finance is different. I had a lot of terminology to learn before I could make up the spread sheet. When I got there, our sales person was nowhere to be found. Instead their finance guy said, "We had to change the deal, but this one is much better for you." It wasn't. Not even close. They wouldn't fix it so we walked. We really walked since we didn't have a car. They thought they me in a corner since I didn't have a car to get home in. Too greedy.

Ended up getting a better deal elsewhere, so it worked out in the end. The crazy thing was during the 2008 crash. Nobody was buying new cars. I'd think they would have bent over backwards to keep the sale.