Been car shopping lately, and learned a couple of valuable lessons about dealing with car dealers.

1. Car dealers are a strange species of human.
2. Car dealers selling Audis generally aren’t interested in selling you their car

When #1 and #2 combine, you’ve got a pretty bad shopping experience at hand. Mind you, some of this is more true for car dealers than private parties. Private parties can be a mixed bag, but I’ve had better luck going down that road lately.

General car shopping tips:

1. You don’t have to tell a dealer anything: you don’t have to reveal your price point in mind (”price is not a factor, the right car is”), you don’t have to reveal your purchase time frame (”when I find the right car, I’ll pull the trigger”), you don’t have to give them your contact details (”do you have a card? I’ll call you”)
2. A lot of car buying is about finding bargaining chips: Study the car and identify the options, trim levels, bells and whistles. Know them. Identify the subset you care about, the set you need to have, the ones you can live without. Don’t let the car dealer spend too much time talking about what the car has; be sure to identify all things it doesn’t have (even pre-negotiation). Some of the non-Audi car dealers who have Audis on the lot have no knowledge of the configurations, and this can be an advantage.
3. Understand the prevailing price range: this is a multi-dimensional study involving geography, year, mileage and options. After a looking at it for a while, you should be familiar with what an ‘06 in the east coast with 20,000 miles should be worth. You should be using Excel with formulas and sorts.
4. Nobody buys at KBB: nearly all deals are done 2~3k under KBB price. KBB is based on sales transactions too, mind you.
5. Tools like TrueCar are more useful. Most of the Tier-1 auto websites pull KBB data so don’t be mislead.
6. Don’t ignore your gut. If something feels off, think about it.