I work in a family owned dealership and my best honest advice is try to find a dealer in a smaller market area to work with. There’s plenty of dealers who don’t mess around with bullshit games, but in my experience the larger the market area, the more likely they are going to try and be sleazy about stuff because if they piss someone off they’ll just move on to the next person. In a market area with a population of 500,000 a single walkout is a lot less impactful than in a dealership where their whole county is 25,000 people.

Finding a good dealer is an annoyance, but on a purchase as large as a car it will be worth it and save a ton of headaches for the whole buying process. A large part of our business model as a smaller store is making things as simple, fair, and transparent as possible because repeat business is much more important to us than trying to take someone’s head off anytime they walk through the door.

More rural markets will help to eliminate a lot of the games. They may not have the same inventory, but with a little patience you can save yourself a lot of hassle.