Sam’s Club/Costco purchasing programs?

[loneryder]

Using the Costco program is a good starting place. You are only supposed to talk to one person at the specified dealer. Different makes offer different discounts. Go to the dealer at the end of a month. You don't really have to negotiate, just hesitate on the price they give you. In our case we were looking at a Honda Accord and the Hyundai Sonata. This was the year the Sonata was a new design. Honda dealer would only give $500 off and was arrogant. We told him we were going to look at the Sonata and stated that we would be back. We drove a new off the truck Sonata with everything on it. They had to pull the plastic off of it. It was just as nice as the Accord. The Costco price was about $1k off. We hesitated and said we would think about it. They kept going lower until we walked out with $3k off sticker. She put about 75k trouble free miles on it. I was amazed at the quality of a first year completely new model. Don't know if this would be true today. I believe it came out of a brand new factory in Al.

 

[ArrestMeRedZ]

The Costco and Sam's Club programs operate in a similar manner to Truecar. I've used Truecar twice. Once with a 2011 Silverado when they beat the GM employees price, the second with a Mazda 6 with the almost impossible to find M6 transmission. The Mazda purchase left a bad taste in my mouth. Overall a decent price, but had to take the dealer's package that charged for no value added PACs.
Like anything else, do your homework. Realize getting a Truecar/Sam's Club/Costco quote from the dealer you use will probably result in an added expense to the dealer that may be passed on to you, even if you don't use the service for your final negotiated deal. It's kind of a referral fee the dealer has to pay if you buy a vehicle from them.

 

[John105]

Nearly all of these purchasing programs work the same.

The first thing to understand is that dealerships are individually owned, meaning that where own dealer might honor the Costco/Sam's Club pricing, others may not. They are not being forcibly held to anything. It all comes down to how badly the dealership wants to sell a car. You won't know until you go to the dealer and ask them to honor the price. I will say, from 2021 until just recently, pretty much all dealers in my neck of the woods would refuse to honor those program's pricing, as they were charging MSRP+.

The second thing is that, while it's often a better deal than what's shown on the window sticker, it's not the best/lowest price the dealer would necessarily take. It guarantees a good price when you find a dealer who will honor it, but it's not the lowest price you could find.

If you're considering a Costco membership just for this one purchase, I'd save yourself the $60 or whatever a membership costs these days. You can get yourself, potentially, an even better deal if you're willing to put in a little bit of elbow grease and work the negotiation.

A Honda dealer didn’t honor my dads price he obtained on edmunds.com. That was the first time I realized they simply don’t have to.

Yesterday, Costco was $3.399 for regular, Wawa was $3.629. Not much of a wait at Costco, Thu at 1 pm. I got 15 gallons.

I still believe gas alone justifies a membership.

 

[totegoat]

Just ask the dealer what the Costco price is.