Want a new Tracer 700 which has a list price of £6299. I have no qualms about haggling on the price of a car, nor using brokers like DriveTheDeal to get a substantial discount on list, but having never bought a brand new bike before I’m not sure what the deal is with negotiating on price.
Not interested in getting any ‘extras’ thrown in as I’m going to run the bike stock initially, and I have all the clothing, gloves, tank-bags etc etc I need. Just interested in knowing from members who buy their bikes new whether it’s usually feasible to negotiate a discount on the list price.
As I’m currently doing some work in Scotland, there’s a Yamaha dealer in Edinburgh who are offering the bike at list, but including 3 yrs warranty, 2 yrs breakdown, and 3 yrs (18k miles) servicing. I’m not bothered about the extra yr of ‘dealer’ warranty, nor the free servicing, as I’ll likely be bringing the bike back to the London area in the not too distant future. Will travel ANYWHERE in the UK for the right deal, so if I walk into a Yamaha dealer and say I’ve got £6k (or whatever) ready to lay out right now, am I likely to get the deal or likely to get a point-blank ‘No’?
What have you got to lose ?
Nowt
If they dont want to lower price i would still aim for the extra warranty and free servicing but with a caveat that you can use any yamaha dealer not just the one you buy from .
If you can carry that amount of cash on you and lay it out …
^^ Ok… on the card it is :) Either way, I want to visit the dealer to buy there & then. Can’t be bothered with motor dealers and the whole bullshit dance of his price, my price, his price, my price, need to check with the Sales Manager, then repeat over & over.
Haggle and you can pay cash, best done via bank transfer. Expect to achieve at least £500 off that and be prepared to walk away.
When haggling it helps to ask at least three times
1) Ask what their lowest on the road price would be.
Whatever they offer tell them you want no frills, no extras just their lowest on the road price.
When you feel you have their lowest on the road price question it and ask if that is really their lowest on the road price.
You could go on and offer them £100 less than their lowest on the road price. Note from the sales perspective some sales are better to have than to have not.
I know in the car dealing world, main dealers have monthly targets and will be more flexible near month end when they desperately need to hit targets. Maybe shifting bikes is a similar target driven business.
I’d definitely go lower than 6k for the first offer. I don’t think there’s the margins they once had, but you may struggle getting a discount on the Tracer as it seems to be selling ok.
Maybe try at the end of the month as the salesperson might need to bump their sales and could take a hit on his commission to get a unit shifted.
When I had my own dealership, I could offer a better discount for those who signed up on a finance deal than those who paid cash.
Reason? On finance, the dealer gets paid commission, and often quite a substantial commisssion even if it is on a zero % deal. So, the retail value could be reduced as we knew that the difference would be made up on the commission payment, whereas with a cash payment it is a lump sum .
Even if you pay off the finance at the end of the first month, the dealer still gets the commission. We used to average up to £1500 depending on the value of the bike we were selling.
It has been a few years since I had my own delaership I know, so things may have changed a bit, but it may be a way of getting a decent discount and may be worth exploring.
^^ Thanks T.C. I should have thought about that. The Tracer is currently on Yamaha Finance at 8.8% APR (which is pretty poor given that my bank will do me 3.99%). Presumably the lower the initial deposit the customer makes, and the longer the term, then the greater the commission for the dealer?
Using Yamaha’s representative example on their website, I could finance the bike, make my first monthly payment of £159, then phone the finance company to request my settlement figure and pay this off in one go. Am I right in thinking then, that the interest is front-loaded, so if I did this then whatever discount I receive on the bike has to be materially greater than the cost of the initial (largely interest) £159 monthly payment & the price of any doc fees involved in settling the finance?
If so, then perhaps I’m best laying out as little deposit as I can and making the term as long as I can in order to gain the max discount on the bike, then just settling the full bhuna after month 1
^^ You can probably tell this is a bit new to me. I was always brought up to believe ‘If you can’t afford it, you don’t buy it’. However as the dealers are increasingly steering buyers towards finance, I suppose it’s incumbent on buyers to play the system a bit to suit their needs.
They push finance because you pay more for the bike in the long run. Therefore they get more money; companies like it as they get constant revenue in etc… Ofcause 0% finance is different.
As @Serrisan has said - there’s normally an early repayment charge to these things.
Got no inside info, but I can’t see anything other than an increase in prices next year with the £ devaluing. (On Japanese bikes) So would suggest definitely getting in there for an autumn bike rather than waiting for a spring one when the prices are likely to increase.
