[jehrler]

maybe I should re-word this....without giving all the details, one should not premise this thread touting numbers that scream "embellishment"....because walking into a dealer and driving out with a straight up $4000 discount does NOT happen, and readers should not be lead to belive it will...is that better? Dont want to come off as confrontational...but I beleive a full explanation is warranted...

I want to second this thought.

Personally, I think I got a great deal using Costco for $200 under invoice, $1,000 in rebates and $750 in private cash for a walkaway sale of nearly $2,000 under invoice.

So I guess I could shout that, hey, I negotiated the dealer down to $2,000 below invoice. I am the bomb!

BUT, 1750 of that was Ford Corporate's money, *not* the dealer. Could I have not used Costco and banged down the dealer another couple hundred. Probably but my time and the relationship with a good dealer was worth more than that (and, in fact, I have already been paid dividends, in cash, of nearly $300 due to the dealer making me whole on some errors of theirs). And, even if it weren't, based on the invoice and holdback numbers floating around in this forum and on line, it would make no sense for the dealer to give up the higher numbers (by an order of magnitude) that Split-S claims.

I run my own business. We make a great product (ursawagon.com, see reviews on amazon.com) here in MN and ship it all over North America. Since it is a *quality* product it is much more expensive than a lot of the junk that is imported and sold at big box retailers. But we give our customers 60 days to prove to themselves that our product is worth the money or we refund their purchase in full.

Still, we constantly get people offering us "deals" to buy a few wagons at prices they consider reasonable but reflect no understanding of the cost differences between imported junk and high quality product (bearings not bushings, stainless hardware, cold resistant resins).

Occasionally they even get huffy when I explain that, I'm sorry, but we can't do the deal at that price. They tell me they are going to go to Big Box and buy them there. They try to get me into a bidding war and all I say is thank you for looking at our offering and enjoy your Big Box product.

I won't get into a bidding war for business that we can not afford to have. While I do deals at trade shows and during sales, I don't do sales at a loss. Why would I or any businessman unless they were one step ahead of the collection agency and needed to raise cash fast?