A Man Must Negotiate

Perhaps part of the reason cars are so over-priced at the dealer is because the dealers know that people come in expecting to negotiate and won't feel good unless they cut a significant amount off the sticker . . . and while I am not usually one for haggling (I was notoriously bad at it when I lived in the Middle East . . . I always seemed to end up purchasing two items instead of one) I was determined to get a good price on a minivan-- so I did my homework, made my phone-calles, visited dealerships and went through all that "let me go talk to my manager" negotiating, and then, after I got them down, I walked out-- because you've got to walk out . . . I told them I was a teacher with plenty of free time, and that this was my "summer project," to shop for a minivan, and that I was in "no hurry" . . . and by this time I had gotten the 21,995 dollar sticker price down to 17,000 -- but without the Toyota certified used car warranty-- but then I made some calls to far-flung Toyota dealerships and found a van with only 26,000 miles on it and got them down to 16,500 with the certification . . . and I found this too good to be true for a 2008 van . . . and it was, the information on the web page didn't match the CarFax, and so I called them, and they realized it was a typo . . . but before they changed the web page, I called the local Toyota dealership, made them pull up the page with the typo, told them the deal that Autoland Toyota offered me, and had them match it . . . and then I raced over there and bought the van before they realized that I had used a specious advertisement . . . but they were quite happy for my business, so I'm wondering if I could have got them even lower . . . but it doesn't matter, I got them low enough that I felt heroically macho in my haggling-- that I felt like I got one over on them and got a good deal, and that's all that matters, right?