Choosing a dealer?

[SkiTundra]

There are 15 Nissan dealers within a single charge drive of my house. To me it's a simple choice of lowest price. As far as I know none have a better Leaf than any of the others (though one did say he could get factory leather on a 2012 , I'm paying cash so financing is a non-issue, I assume the dealer closest to my house will provide service regardless of where I buy it, and delivery time is not an issue to me. So, eliminating the clueless or misleading factory leather guy, is there any reason to choose one dealer over another based on anything other than price?

BTW, one dealer told me that the Leafs had already been allocated to the dealers and that if I wanted an actual Leaf rather than an empty promise that I'd need to reserve one through him since they have a bunch coming. He said that the online reservation meant nothing.

 

[kubel]

That one dealer is correct, dealerships have only a limited number of allocations available per month. They should be able to tell you how many they have available for that month before you place your order.

 

[garsh]

That one dealer is correct, dealerships have only a limited number of allocations available per month.

But that dealer was incorrect when he said that the online reservation meant nothing. You want to check with each of the dealers to make sure that they have some remaining allocation, but then you still need to reserve a vehicle online. Assuming you're worried about getting your Leaf ASAP.

 

[coqui]

I'd choose it based on service. My dealer's "Leaf experts" were clueless, but it was the only one with allocations within range.

 

[redLEAF]

+1 on the service; although the car should not need much ... as I'm in a Tier 2 state (IL) most of our Nissan dealers although we have tons around Chicago were initially slow to get 'LEAF certified' and when it came time to make a reservation there was only one nearby me, I'm sure that's changed a bit now as we have Chicagoland forum members from several dealers. Besides the actual car discount, and you didn't mention it, what about the trade-in (if any)? The way I looked at it, the dealer was making enough on my new car purchase (no discount in my case, full MSRP) so why not a little flexibility on the trade-in? Of course you can try and sell it yourself, but the trade off (at least in IL) is that you'll only pay sales tax on the new car less the trade so it's worth it to factor that in when dealing with private individuals and/or a Carmax outright purchase (who would be a great resource to get a decent wholesale/trade-in value to negotiate a bit with the dealer if they lowball you). As we've only had our LEAF three months this coming Friday, we only took it in for service once (for the snow bracket and firmware update) but the dealer was great on this (convenient free loaner vehicle and they fixed a crooked steering wheel and squeaky hatch while they were at it) so we're quite pleased with their service dept. -- I'm waiting for what they'll charge for other things later on (like the brake fluid flush, etc.) but will call first on these before simply bringing the car in. My main post warranty service guy that I use on our other older cars can probably do the brake stuff much less expensive as he'll let me know what actual condition the brake fluid is before changing it versus 'spec's' -- that single service seems to be the most costly of any down the road.

 

[SkiTundra]

Thanks for the input. This will be a 3rd car for my wife & I (I spend a bit over $5k/yr for gas for my SUV and could drive a Leaf for over 80% of that), so a cash purchase, no trade-in.

I'm not sure how important it is for purchase dealer to be the same as servicing dealer. I'll likely take it to my closest dealer for service regardless of where I purchase so I think the purchase is pretty much a commodity decision of lowest quote gets my business. I wouldn't expect to be given worse service because I hadn't purchased from them.