[jjs89yj]

Hey guys- I'm going to be ordering a rubicon unlimited here in a month or so and I have a few questions for you guys that have gone the tread lightly and ordering route. 1- for the guys that have used the treadlightly and gotten below the -1% of invoice, what were some of your negotiating tactics? Did you bring up the treadlightly at the very end or at the very beginning? 2- When you order the jeep, does financing need to be set up then or upon delivery? What kind of downpayment have you guys been giving?

This will be my first purchase from a dealership so I appologize if my questions are basic. Thanks!

[222Doc]

Ordered mine 3 weeks ago. 1k down to order. The rest is what you can get in your area012's might be hard to get under MSRP. I went to our bank(Chase) got a pre aproved loan. about 3.56% . I hope to finance about 12k. I heard that the build time is longer now since the are selling well. 7-10 weeks.

[panthermark]

Originally Posted by 222Doc

Ordered mine 3 weeks ago. 1k down to order. The rest is what you can get in your area012's might be hard to get under MSRP. I went to our bank(Chase) got a pre aproved loan. about 3.56% . I hope to finance about 12k. I heard that the build time is longer now since the are selling well. 7-10 weeks.

Tread Lightly (or other Affiliate programs) guarantee you at least 1% below invoice. Did you mean invoice instead of MSRP?

[Keiff]

I didn't have to put down any deposit. I used TreadLightly but just told them I had an affiliate code and gave them my control number; didn't mention the word "TreadLightly". I squared away all of my financing beforehand and already knew my price. All that was done at the dealer was adding TT&L and declining all their warranty offers and I was on my way. The order was accepted by the factory on August 11th. I was driving home from the dealership on September 13th.

JKUR price was $38,200 after TT&L. Put 10k down and financed the rest. Payment is $480/mo.

[jjs89yj]

Keiff, when you say you knew your price beforehand, do you mean you went online and built the jeep just as you wanted it and this gave you the invoice price? Also, did you have financing in place before placing the order or when signing the papers at delivery?

[Keiff]

Well... when I got the itch, I made sure the wife mod was in agreement and squared away financing. About 3 weeks later, (after congress got off their arse about the debt ceiling crap) I called the dealership and ordered the vehicle to the specs I wanted. At that time, I also mentioned that I had an affiliate code and provided them with my control number. The sales person then sent me my order sheet via email, which showed MSRP and Invoice prices next to the model I had chosen and each of the options I had selected. At the bottom, the Total price was listed for both MSRP and Invoice, then "FFP" (Friends and Family Pricing) and "EP" (Employee Pricing). They indicated that the FFP price was mine.

Funny thing is... they didn't require a down payment of any type and, a couple of days prior to the vehicle's arrival, I discovered my financing offer had expired... so I went through that song and dance again and ended up with a better rate. The day it arrived, I showed up with a cashier's check for my down payment, had my financing wired to the dealership and drove away. So in the end, it was my observation that as long as you have any down payment they might require, you don't need to have your financing locked down when you place the order.

[jjs89yj]

Thanks Keiff. thats very helpful. I've been working on getting the wife to agree for sometime now, but she's finally given it the stamp of approval.

[badtux]

My case worked something of the same, except it was one of those things where I'd looked at their list of Jeeps on their on-line inventory, realized they had a *lot* of Jeeps exactly like the one I'd like and that it was extremely likely that at least one of those Jeeps was still on the dealer lot (most Jeep dealers update their on-line inventory sporadically), and there you go. I pre-arranged financing with the credit union via their on-line application, assembled the documentation needed for financing, grabbed my treadlightly discount letter and got my affiliate code, and headed down to the dealership. They tried to sell me some upmarket Jeeps and one with some aftermarket accessories on it that aren't covered by the affiliate discount, I refused to bite and kept saying "no, I want a Rubicon with automatic and power windows and dual top group and 4.10 gers and that's it", then they tried to bump up my amount financed so they could get more money from the finance company, then they tried selling me extended warranty and so forth, then they tried to trick me into using their finance company rather than my credit union, then they tried to interfere with me getting financing with the credit union by snarfing up my original paycheck stub and stuffing it into their own files (something I discovered that evening when assembling the documentation but I had a *newer* paycheck stub that was all the credit union needed so heh!), and finally they gave up and gave me the Jeep at the affiliate price and took the check from the credit union and that's that.

I was somewhat amused by the tricks they tried to play, but I knew what I wanted, I knew how I was paying for it, and I didn't argue or anything, I just kept saying "No, I'm doing it this way" whenever they tried to talk me into something. So even though they were borderline to being outright crooks, I got my Jeep, I got the Jeep I wanted, for the price I wanted, and that's all that counts .

[InTeRnEt_RyAn]

Originally Posted by jjs89yj

Hey guys- I'm going to be ordering a rubicon unlimited here in a month or so and I have a few questions for you guys that have gone the tread lightly and ordering route. 1- for the guys that have used the treadlightly and gotten below the -1% of invoice, what were some of your negotiating tactics? Did you bring up the treadlightly at the very end or at the very beginning? 2- When you order the jeep, does financing need to be set up then or upon delivery? What kind of downpayment have you guys been giving? This will be my first purchase from a dealership so I appologize if my questions are basic. Thanks!

On Friends & Family you can get a purchase price below the 1% below invoice price if there are rebates, dealers will sometimes go below that if you
1. Have a trade
2. If there is a rebate, like the 2011 that has $1,000 Consumer Cash
3. You just negotiate, they don't make a lot on Friends or Affiliate or Tread Lightly

Originally Posted by 222Doc

Ordered mine 3 weeks ago. 1k down to order. The rest is what you can get in your area012's might be hard to get under MSRP. I went to our bank(Chase) got a pre aproved loan. about 3.56% . I hope to finance about 12k. I heard that the build time is longer now since the are selling well. 7-10 weeks.

Nice rate, Chase is going strong after automative
THe build timeframe is November build right now, depending on dealer order allotment, assuming they have an allotment, they will build it next month, if they don't order too late. Usually by the 3rd week. That being said they can't build EVERY sold order first, ahead of other dealers, Wrangler is typically sold out of production so orders sometimes take at most 2 months to build. So in a sense 7-10 weeks is a safe bet.

Originally Posted by jjs89yj

Keiff, when you say you knew your price beforehand, do you mean you went online and built the jeep just as you wanted it and this gave you the invoice price? Also, did you have financing in place before placing the order or when signing the papers at delivery?

You can't get Invoice on Jeep.com but you can come close by multiplying by 89%

Originally Posted by Keiff

Well... when I got the itch, I made sure the wife mod was in agreement and squared away financing. About 3 weeks later, (after congress got off their arse about the debt ceiling crap) I called the dealership and ordered the vehicle to the specs I wanted. At that time, I also mentioned that I had an affiliate code and provided them with my control number. The sales person then sent me my order sheet via email, which showed MSRP and Invoice prices next to the model I had chosen and each of the options I had selected. At the bottom, the Total price was listed for both MSRP and Invoice, then "FFP" (Friends and Family Pricing) and "EP" (Employee Pricing). They indicated that the FFP price was mine.

Funny thing is... they didn't require a down payment of any type and, a couple of days prior to the vehicle's arrival, I discovered my financing offer had expired... so I went through that song and dance again and ended up with a better rate. The day it arrived, I showed up with a cashier's check for my down payment, had my financing wired to the dealership and drove away. So in the end, it was my observation that as long as you have any down payment they might require, you don't need to have your financing locked down when you place the order.

This is how it should work!

Originally Posted by badtux

My case worked something of the same, except it was one of those things where I'd looked at their list of Jeeps on their on-line inventory, realized they had a *lot* of Jeeps exactly like the one I'd like and that it was extremely likely that at least one of those Jeeps was still on the dealer lot (most Jeep dealers update their on-line inventory sporadically), and there you go. I pre-arranged financing with the credit union via their on-line application, assembled the documentation needed for financing, grabbed my treadlightly discount letter and got my affiliate code, and headed down to the dealership. They tried to sell me some upmarket Jeeps and one with some aftermarket accessories on it that aren't covered by the affiliate discount, I refused to bite and kept saying "no, I want a Rubicon with automatic and power windows and dual top group and 4.10 gers and that's it", then they tried to bump up my amount financed so they could get more money from the finance company, then they tried selling me extended warranty and so forth, then they tried to trick me into using their finance company rather than my credit union, then they tried to interfere with me getting financing with the credit union by snarfing up my original paycheck stub and stuffing it into their own files (something I discovered that evening when assembling the documentation but I had a *newer* paycheck stub that was all the credit union needed so heh!), and finally they gave up and gave me the Jeep at the affiliate price and took the check from the credit union and that's that.

I was somewhat amused by the tricks they tried to play, but I knew what I wanted, I knew how I was paying for it, and I didn't argue or anything, I just kept saying "No, I'm doing it this way" whenever they tried to talk me into something. So even though they were borderline to being outright crooks, I got my Jeep, I got the Jeep I wanted, for the price I wanted, and that's all that counts .

This is exactly how it SHOULDN'T work, I understand they want to SELL you financing as well, but seriously? snarf'n out your finances and hiding your pay stub is childish at best, if the customer doesn't care, then make a buck, but to block it is just insulting. Nice work

[badtux]

Yah, that dealership has a reputation for being crooks. And their service department sucks royally, as does their parts department. But they had the Jeep and the dealer I usually use in the area didn't, so I did my best to make sure they didn't walk away with anything other than the part of their holdback not eaten into by the affiliate discount. They were *not* happy campers at the end of the day .