Having only bought used cars privately in Korea, does any Korean Stinger owners have any advice when approaching a dealership?
I can only speak for my own experience, but here is how I did.
Firstly, the dealer discount.
When you buy a car from a dealer, there are things he/she can do for you.
Most of the time, they will suggest to pay for your window tint and
dash cam (2 channel), but the products they will use are cheap.
If you want to have a better tint from a particular brand, and chose a decent
dash cam, you must refuse these and ask for discounts in cash.
The discounts in cash are from the dealer, not from Kia.
Kia does sometimes official discounts on cars, but when I bought the car there was zero discount (I bought the car in June last year).
Discounts from the dealers are not reported to the car maker and sometimes are even prohibited.
They are still willing to make discounts because every one is doing it and better make little than having the car sale go to another dealer.
But one need to understand that making discount means that they reduce their margin which is basically their income, because their base salary is quite low.
So anyway, so I was looking for these dealer discounts that vary from one to another.
I searched online and found that the deals people got ranged from 500,000KRW to 1,500,000 KRW.
1,5M was a bit extreme, and people seem to agree on the fact that if you don't get at least 1M discount, you should change to another dealer. (at that time!)
So, hoping to find a dealer willing to make at least 1M in discount, I went to 3-4 dealerships around my area.
I asked if there were any discounts possible. First answer I got was a no, because officially there are no discounts.
So I asked if there was any service they could do for me (tint etc..) and they said they would do this and that...
So I asked if I didn't want all those things and wanted the cash instead, how much would they be willing to give me and then they gave me a number (not happy about me asking!).
But all I got was very low discount numbers compared to what I have seen online!!!
I was looking for 1M but the best I found was 0.7M after 20min of talking, and the average was even lower...
So I said I read online that some people got over a million in discount, and then most of the dealers got angry when I said that.
It is hard to distinguish if this is genuine or if it is because they expected to make a better deal because I am a (naive) foreigner.
Hard to know unless you're going along with a knowledgeable Korean friend.
In the 3~4 dealerships I went to, 1M seemed impossible to me. At that time, the Stinger was in high demand and you had to wait up to 2~3 months depending on the specs.
So I went online and searched for a dealer, asking people who got good deals if they were willing to share their dealer info.
Like that, I got to contact the dealer who I used to buy my Stinger. He said he could do 3% on the pretax value of the car, which translates to about 1.3M.
I have never met the guy and only texted/called him.
Obviously, dealers that do transactions on the internet can do more sales per day, thus the higher discount, but this is against the rules of the car company.
Anyways, that's it for the dealer discount.
[Additional] In stock vs. produced on demand.
Later in the year, some people got even more discount by buying a car that they have already in stock at the factory.
They call it '재고할인', and at times when the Stinger doesn't sell well it can be huge like 5~7M.
No such thing was heard of when I bought mine but it does limit your freedom of choice for the specs. (I wanted a 3.3 RWD without sunroof, and that is not so common)
This discount is done by the car maker and not the dealer, so maybe it can add up with a dealer discount but I expect them to try to convince you otherwise.
[Additional] The cashback.
On top of that, if you're paying cash you can get a "cashback". I don't remember the exact amount but it was something like 2~3%.
You need to search online for the card company that will give you the most cashback. At the time of my purchase, it Kookmin Bank was the most advantageous.
It varies so it may be different nowadays.
So my advice would be:
1) Define your specs
2) Find if you can have a discount for a car in stock (in case you don't mind your car sitting few weeks in the factory parking lot)
3) Find out if there are any deals done by the car maker
4) Find out how much discount your dealer is willing to make, and compare to what other people are getting these days.
-> If too small of a discount, find another dealer.
5) If you pay cash, find out what bank offers the best cashback rate.
6) Finally, you will have to chose between getting a delivery or to pick it up at the factory.
> Delivery pros: You can have it delivered at the tint shop and have everything done there including car inspection. If something is wrong, they will maybe notice it better than you.
> Delivery cons: If something is wrong, you have to refuse the car and it complicates things a lot, which ends up in giving up on small details.
> Factory pick up pros: If something is wrong (panel gap, paint defect, etc.), you can have it redone on the spot. They take the car back inside the factory and redo the specific part you requested.
> Factory pick up cons: The factory may be far from your home (it is in 소하리 nearby Seoul) and you have to drive it to the tint shop (takes some of your time), and you may also not be an expert at car inspection.
