"Etiquette" here is that you need to balance your interest - getting the lowest price and best deal/value form the right dealer for you - with your relationship and integrity with all of the dealers in the running.
Directly showing or disclosing the bids to each of the dealers is only fair if:
1. They all knew ahead of time that this would be an "open" bidding process. Usually, a purchase like this is assumed to be somewhat of a "closed" bidding process where bids are submitted with the understanding that the pricing information will not be imparted to the other sellers. As long as they know ahead of time that you plan to shop around for the best deal in an "open" process, I can't see anything wrong with it.
If you soplicit and accept bids under the premise of a "closed" process and then switch on them to an open process, it gets sticky.
Also, some sellers prefer to work on a closed basis, and others on an open basis, so they may not all agree on the same process and its up to you to compromise.
Any dealer that claims to "have the best price", or "will beat anybody's price", in my mind is already inviting an open process, so they should not mind being told they are higher, or having their price told to other dealers in comparison when it is the lowest so far.
2. Most dealers will be interested to know how their pricing stacks up against the competition, even if they don't get the sale. Again this is appropriate only in an "open" bidding process. It feels a lot better to lose a sale for a good known reason like "my price was too high and I chose not to come down", vs. the customer didn't like us but didn't say why.
3. The "open" process is only fair if the dealers all do the same amount of work in the pre-sale phase. If you spend hours and hours at one dealer, test-drive his demo equipment, and take all his literature and free promotional goodies, and THEN announce that great, you have sold me on this tractor, but I am now going to bid you against everybody else, you have dealt in bad faith with that dealer. If such situation is un-avoidable, you can perhaps give that dealer some "credit" on their bid to help compensate (like the $200 mentioned).
On the other hand, if you already know what you want (perhaps from reading TBN, perhaps from MFG web-sites, etc), and call around to three dealers for them to bid in an open manner with each getting to know the best bid so far until one is left standing, its fair to everybody.
When buying my wife's new Ford, I called several local dealers and gave them all the chance to give me their best price on the exact same vehicle (there was only one in town with the exact features I wanted, and the Ford web-site had already located it by VIN at one of the dealers).
Two of the dealers said they would "beat anybody's price by $50" on the exact same truck, even if they had to buy it from the other dealer who had the one I wanted! One was unable to hold up that promise when faced with the other prices, and gracefully congratulated me on such a good price. The other became angry at me for trying to hold them to their promise saying I was taking advantage of them - well they offered to bid openly!
Be careful about letting yourself get carried away with "etiquette" because its a two-way thing, and there are lots of people whoi willt ake advantage of your good manners in a way that will cost you real money.
As long as you are honest and up-front about things, I see nothing wrong with the open process.
- Rick
