The Invaluable Service That Will Give You the True Dealer’s Cost

From: Jeff Radich

This little-known, but invaluable service will tell you the true invoice price for any RV, new or used. I stumbled upon it practically by accident.

When I purchased my RV, I was determined to find the true dealer’s cost. I spent several hours doing research on the Internet; to my surprise, I found three services that offered to provide the dealer invoicing cost of a new RV. This was amazing to me because neither NADA nor Kelley Blue Book offered prices on the current year models.

I was a little bit skeptical that they could really give me the true values, and I was curious to see how similar they would be, so I bought all three services just to compare their numbers. I figured that if they were close, this might be a legitimate service I could take advantage of, but if the numbers had a wide gap, then maybe it wasn’t true.

I was surprised to see that the figures from all three services were very close – within a couple hundred dollars of each other. This showed me that there was something to the service, and it made me confident that through them it was possible for me to uncover the actual dealer cost for the RV I wanted.

Basically, the services work like this. You provide them with the make and the model of the RV you want to price, along with the MSRP if it is a new model, and they provide the dealer cost. Although the numbers were close, there were some very substantial differences between what the three services provided. Two of them sent me a one-page document that outlined the dealer invoice cost.

However, one service, RVGuru.com, was very different, even though the cost was no higher. The owner of RVGuru.com, David Grasunis, called me back on the phone and gave me a comprehensive RV deal evaluation, which told me the zero–profit, bottom-line cost for the dealer. Surprisingly, his service is very inexpensive.

I have spent several hours picking David’s brain since then; I have learned about the RV industry from the inside out because David sold RVs at a dealership for 17 years. His service is invaluable, and I urge anyone who is going to spend thousands of dollars on an RV to spend just a few more dollars to find out the true value of that RV.

This service will pay for itself many times over. It gives you a starting point for where to begin your negotiations. It gave me a tremendous amount of confidence to know what the starting point was for my RV. From there, I was able to decide how much I was willing to pay.

Armed with the true dealer’s cost, which is probably much less than they have been claiming, you can now determine how much to offer the dealer for the RV of your dreams.

Always negotiate from the dealer cost upward, not from the MSRP downward. One rule of thumb is to offer 4-6% over cost. That's 6% over the dealer's cost. Even at that low price, if the dealer knows you are savvy and that you won’t be persuaded, he is very likely to take the deal.

Make your offer, and stick to it. If they make a counteroffer for a higher price (and they probably will), don't budge. Tell them that's the deal, take it or take it, and be ready to walk away. Keep in mind that you might have to walk away in order to get the deal you want.

Jeff Radich is a professional research writer and active RV enthusiast.