I'm bad at haggling

Yesterday I had the inspection done on the ’07 Prius. It was done by the very fine mechanics at Everybody's Auto Service, who are awesome and whom I heartily recommend (unlike the people at Bucky's Shoreline; I'm 85% sure they ripped me off last winter when fixing my Subaru's exhaust system). They found a few routine things and two big red marks on the inspection checklist, including the critical component of a Prius, the hybrid battery.

The car had been presented to me by the used car dealership as having had its hybrid battery replaced with a new one in 2021 and thus had years of life left in it. That was one of its main appeals over other cars I had been considering, and finding out it's actually either still the original battery from 2006 or just as bad as that is a deal-breaker. The car also has some suspension issues that are less critical but should be addressed sometime.

Anyway, the Everybody's guys quoted me a very good price for parts and labor, but still nearly $3,000 to remedy these problems. So I had to decide whether to keep the car or exercise my option to return it and reclaim my Subaru while I still could. But I decided to try a middle ground first and see if the seller would kick in for the repairs.

That is what happened in the end, but not before I gave myself a fair amount of unnecessary stress and anxiety.

As I said before, I have very little experience with the subspecies of humans known as car salesmen. But I know their reputation, and as much as I would like to discard any prejudicial thinking, it was there and being reinforced; I resented having been pressured into buying the car before an inspection and was irked about the misrepresentation of a new battery and was thus casting aspersions in my head on the men who sold me the car.

But I still wanted to get this whole transaction completed in a satisfactory way, so I thought about how to approach the dealer about covering repair costs. I called the dealership and left a message that the inspection wasn't satisfactory and we could negotiate further or I would negate the deal, then waited for them to respond. Meanwhile, I was arguing both sides in my head—I want this, they would counter with, well, that isn't really our responsibility; I'd say, you would have to do these repairs if I returned the car anyway, and you do want my Subaru, right? They'd say, well, we'll cover the suspension repair, the rest is usual expectations; I'd insist the hybrid battery is critical and they promised it was new, they'd say it wasn't us that promised anything of the kind, the notation of battery replacement was from before we took possession. This went on and on in my head.

I reached a conclusion—totally one-sided, mind you, with no input whatsoever from the dealer—that I could probably get them to pay for parts and beyond that would involve a tense back-and-forth that would ultimately depend on how badly they wanted the Subaru.

They didn't get back to me until around noon today, so my subconscious continued to plague me as I slept. I had dreams about telling off car dealers, about having to steal back the Subaru because they wouldn't honor their opt-out guarantee, about an endless feud of pettiness between me and the city of Monroe, where the dealership is. This was my state of mind when I heard back from them.

The actual conversation with the dealership went like this:

Me: "The inspection turned up $3,000 worth of repairs, I would not have agreed to the contract had I been made aware of these issues."

Car salesman: "I understand, that's why we offered you the opt-out."

Me: "If you guys would kick in for a good percentage of the repairs, we can call the deal sealed, otherwise I'll be back to see you in an hour to reclaim my Subaru."

Salesman: "Well, what would you want from us, what do you think is fair?"

Me (somewhat indignantly): "That you pay for replacement parts, that's about half the estimate from my mechanic."

Salesman: "OK, we can do that. We'll cut you a check."

So, I learned nothing from the trade-in conversation on Friday, when I clearly had the leverage and lowballed myself asking for just $100 more than their increased offer. I still don't think they'd have agreed to pay the whole $3k, but I might have been able to get $2k out of them? Ultimately, I'll get $1,350, which is the cost of parts, exactly what I asked them for based on nothing more than my inexperienced and uninformed self-arguments.

I'm not sure if this is a failing or not, really. I mean, I realize that negotiation strategy says to start by asking for more than you think you'll get and trade figures downward until you reach unacceptable levels, but that goes against the grain for me, especially when I'm at the contextual disadvantage. So I was straightforward in asking for what I thought was the minimally fair result in both cases (trade-in and repair), intending to end it right there if it wasn't agreed to; the other party is under no obligation of any sort to tell me if my interpretation of fair was lower than theirs. So do I think of it as integrity or playing myself for a sucker?

Right now I fee like it's both.

But ultimately I have the car. It will, after repair, have cost me an amount only slightly outside the budget I'd given myself. I still have to get the repairs done, which I have a request out to Everybody's to schedule. After that I can move on. Literally, and using less than half the gasoline as before.