danrjones said:
But SCE also had a deal with Nissan where you could get X amount off a Leaf or Y amount off a Leaf plus, separate from the rebate. I had a flyer for it at the time.
BUT it was a bit of a scam / promotion BS. It turned out it was "X amount off MSRP". Well since I was WAY below MSRP, the dealers would not take it.
To clarify, the utility company rebate may be a promotion, but it's not a scam. It's a legit rebate offered by Nissan to qualifying customers (meaning customers of those partnered utilities). What
is a scam is the dealer telling you that they can't discount any more because you're using the rebate.
It's true that the
Nissan rebate can't be combined with any other incentives out of Nissan's pocket, since they want to limit what they are forking out to the dealer, but the dealer's pricing is completely independent of anything Nissan may or may not do. The same protectionist laws that keep manufacturers from selling directly also prohibit manufacturers from dictating the price that the dealer is selling at. If the dealer only wants to sell every car at MSRP or above, they can, and if the dealer wants to sell every car at only $1 more than their actual cost and make it up in volume, they can do that as well.
Now, in your case, if the dealer was already discounting their sales price significantly and couldn't use any other Nissan incentives to get it lower since you had the utility rebate, then what they said might make sense. But otherwise, it sounds like them trying to trick you into thinking there's no other room to move when the dealer's sitting on a
huge potential profit on the sale. Good on you for walking. It's better that they learn that it's more profitable in the long run to be honest for a decent profit than to be deceptive for the occasional fat one.
I just purchased a Leaf last month with the $3500 utility rebate and a nice healthy dealer discount. Dealer was happy with the sale, as was I, so there's definitely better dealers out there.