Observationist, I'm sorry you haven't registered and "officially" joined the group. I've just been reading this thread so far, and, yep, there's been a fair amount of disagreement; most of which I'd attribute to misunderstanding or misinterpretation. I don't find much to disagree with on any of the posts. I'm old enough, and been on both sides of the coin long enough, to have seen excellent, good, fair, poor, bad, and atrocious dealers and customers./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif I'm not sure you can change anyone's mind, but personally I think it's been a good discussion, and hope no one is mad at anyone else.
When I go shopping, sure, I look for the best deal (and that's usually the lowest price, but not always). And when I was on the other side of the coin, I told the customer what I could do, and if he/she thought he/she could find a better deal, no hard feelings; hoped they'd give me a chance next time. Of course, my experience on the dealer side was not with cars, tractors, or other big ticket items, so while some negotiation took place, it was perhaps less than a lot of people do. It's too bad that more people cannot simply be honest about their deals (on both sides of the coin). I've bought two used vehicles from different dealers who, when I made my best offer, said that was less than their cost on the vehicle. In each case, I told them then that I wouldn't expect them to take my offer because I know they need to make a profit and didn't blame them a bit. But in each case, when I started to walk off, they called me back to take my offer, and when I insisted that I didn't want to do that to them, they insisted that I should./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif
