I'm curious... does anyone know... when buying a second-hand car in France from a second-hand car dealer, roughly what price margin negotiation is customary? For example, in the US, where we just moved from, if the price in the car window says $10,000, I could expect to negotiate that price down to $8,500 to $9,500, depending on the popularity of the car. Any sense of the range here in the Languedoc? (FYI, we will likely buy in Beziers, though we're shopping around 5,000 euros.)
My OH got it in her price, but then the car was overpriced but being a regular customer he wanted to keep her for services and next car no doubt. My Laguna was quite a bit, but then compared with the price...
yep, not a huge amount, depends on the fiscal power rating, my OH's panda didn't cost much, my stilo cost over 200€, tractor was only 57€ !
That's what I meant, but the carte gris is only a trifle more.
Brian, all second hand car dealers sort out the carte grise for you as they have access to the new computerised carte grise system meaning you no longer have to go to the préfecture but most get you to pay for it. And as you've both said, dealers are pretty hard headed in France and are difficult to negotiate with. I've bought a couple of times through dealers and sold privately, bought privately too which I far prefer because you can negotiate much better deals (but don't have any guarantee of course!)
Carte gris you should get anyway, other stuff I don't know. Yes, sounds like you got as fair as it goes.
Hey Brian, Thanks so much for your input! I had written this post on Wednesday, but only had a chance to post it today as I could not remember my login to the SFN site.
We actually bought a car in Beziers yesterday. It was priced at 5,900 euros, (and even without benefit of SFN feedback, we went into it blind), we somehow managed to get them to include the carte de grise and imatriculation and prefecture paperwork in that price, after an hour+ of negotiating.
But as you say, it was not easy, and we had no idea whether we were truly being offensive or not.
But based on your input, I would then say we did pretty well, so I can let go of worry. We did do a lot of research on the make and model beforehand, and it did seem a fair price in all.
We've tried it and get sour looks... They expect what they are asking in this part of world. Both cars we bought, we got a reasonably good deal on the two near on dead cars we traded in though.