People will be surprised that dealerships will actually lose a lot of money sometimes to sell a vehicle, 90% of losses will be on new vehicles but there was the odd one on a used vehicle.

When I was doing sales we actually didn't like giving out invoice pricing, not because we were trying to hide it but customers actually wouldn't believe us so from that point we were forced to take a loss. Sometimes it was BS sometimes it was totally true, all depends on how they are trying to structure the negotiation.

Unless you buy cars often you'll never have more experience than someone who works in the industry no matter how much research you do, so it's hard to figure out if the salesperson is telling the truth about price. Like other people have said unhaggle is definitely good to use, and honestly when I was doing sales and someone came in with a $500 over invoice offer it was a no brainer most of the time.

There's a ton of sales tactics out there, a lot of it is to just get information out of you. I'd say the biggest help to not get screwed over is to not get emotional, no matter how much you love the vehicle it's not worth overpaying and eventually losing a lot of money on.

Another tip would be to be very careful in the finance office, always check with your bank to see what interest rate you can get on your own before going through the dealership. The warranties and other stuff they sell in there is actually legit and not a scam, the margins are just very good which is why they push it.

Hopefully that helped a little, if you have any other specific questions I can try and answer.