Buying Cars

I hate buying cars. It is unlike buying any other product. Normally, if I wanted to buy something, I look at the price and go from there. However, with a car,finding the actual price is like catching a leprechaun. Everyone knows the price on the sticker is artificially inflated to make room for negotiation. So, you are forced to ask a sales associate, who by this point won't be hard to find because they have likely been chasing you around or have potentially even attached themselves to your bumper. Of course when you ask them the price, I promise you the response they have will not be anything remotely close to a dollar figure describing the cost of the car. It will likely be a question regarding what type of payments you are hoping to have or if you had a budget in mind. This in no way answers the question you asked, but somehow this has become an acceptable standard. I e-mailed 4 salesman the other day with a simple question - Can you please tell me your most competitive price... I got 2 responses with no mentions of cars, simply giving me their phone numbers to call them (uhh, if I had time to call, I wouldn't have e-mailed), I got 1 response with no price letting me know they'd be excited to help me and for me to let them know when I could come to the lot (if I don't even call, I'm not coming down to the lot), and 1 telling me they price slightly over invoice with a $1,250 rebate (unfortunately, he couldn't find it in his heart to tell me what the invoice price was, so it was virtually no help). So, with very little useful info in tow, we set out to the dealership to find out whatever we could. After 3 hours of negotiations, we walked out proud owners of .... exactly the same car we showed up in. Ultimately, after multiple iterations of the shell game, and several trips to the boss's desk to "fight" for us, our salesman gave us the final price...it was just slightly more than we wanted to pay. Ironically, I would have been more inclined to pay that price if he simply would have given it to me when I asked for it rather than making me work so damn hard for it.