My Wife's Negotiation Tips For Buying a RV

If you are like me, you are not comfortable negotiating or haggling over prices. Sorry, it is just not in my nature to do this. You need to do what I do, find another member of your family or a friend that is an expert at negotiating and have them perform this important task for you at the RV shows or dealerships.

In our household, my dear wife is the family's Chief Negotiator. Why? Because she is good at it. I mean really good. When it comes to buying a house, car, RV or major appliances, she is the one that does it. Our whole family is in awe of her haggling abilities.

You have heard the phrase that "you can't get blood from a Turnip". I guarantee you that my wife could get at least a half a gallon of blood from any Turnip.

When it is time to make a major purchase in our household, we unleash my wife on the unsuspecting salesperson. I also go along on these purchasing journeys. My main role during these negotiations is to sit next to my wife, keep my mouth shut while smiling and nodding in agreement with whatever she says to the salesperson (I might add that I am excellent at performing this task).

I have literally watched salespeople crumble within a matter of minutes of her beginning the negotiations. At the end of these sessions, the salesperson's eyes are usually glazed over and they have no idea what just hit them.

The end result for us has always been that we have gotten a great discounted price on these major items.
A good example of how good my wife is at negotiating is the purchase of our most recent RV. We took our three kids to one of the RV shows in our area and by the time my wife got done negotiating, we came back with only two kids and a great Class A Motorhome (OK calm down it's only a joke, we didn't trade in one of our kids for a Motorhome, really we didn't!).

Anyway, who better to give you some Tips on Negotiating than our family's Chief Negotiator my wife. Here are my Wife's 8 Negotiation Tips For Buying A RV.

Negotiation Tip 1: If you are going to have to finance the purchase of the RV, arrange your financing in advance of the actual negotiating. This way you will know exactly how much you can spend on your new RV.

Negotiation Tip 2: When you have found the RV make and model you want, just don't buy it from the first dealer you talk to. If you are at one of the RV shows that take place around the U.S. check all of the dealers that are there and see if they also have the same make and model you want. If they do, you can now play one dealer against the other. Especially if they are the type of dealer that says that they will beat anybody else's price. The more dealers that have your make and model the better. Remember the bigger RV shows will have more dealers.

Negotiation Tip 3: If fuel prices are high when you are ready to buy a RV, don't let that stop you from buying one. It is to your advantage to buy an RV when fuel is high. Why? A lot of people let the fuel prices scare them off from buying a RV. That's good for you. With less people in the market to buy an RV, you will find RV dealers more willing to sell you an RV at a lower price, so they don't have to keep it on the lot and pay the holding costs.

Remember the basic concept of Supply and Demand (also known as price and demand) you learned in your Economics class in high school (if you are like me you probably can't even remember high school). To put it in RV terms, when fuel is high, the demand for RVs goes down, with less demand, the RV dealers are going to do everything they can to get rid of those RVs (in other words they will accept less money for them). Depending on what type of RV you are going to buy, the money you save on the purchase price could pay for your fuel for the next couple of years.

Negotiation Tip 4: Before you start negotiating with any RV dealer, you need to do a background check on them. That's right, check them out before you waste your time negotiating with them. Believe it or not there are some unscrupulous (shysters, crooks, thieves or just plain bad) RV dealers out there. Luckily, they are very few and far between.