Car Dealers' Nightmare: A Professional Haggler

“February was looking like a slow month for car sales, and Tomi Mikula smelled opportunity.

 

Sitting in his Harry Potter-themed office near Charlotte, N.C., he picked up the phone and dialed the first of a long string of calls to car dealers. "Hi, I just want to see if you have a car available," he said. "I have the stock number if it's helpful."

 

On this last business day of the month, he set a goal of closing 30 car purchases for the clients who had hired his firm as their professional negotiator.

 

Mikula, 33 years old, spent more than a decade selling cars and auto financing at dealerships. Now he deploys his fluency in car-dealer speak and his encyclopedic knowledge of dealer inventory to try to talk down the sticker prices. Some dealers hate him enough that they won't take his calls. Others relish the chance to go toe-to-toe with a dealmaking foe.

 

Negotiating a car price has become something of a lost art, but it is one Mikula has become practiced at in the three years since he started his business. For a flat fee of $1,000, he negotiates on a buyer's behalf. He also livestreams some of his conversations to 600,000 subscribers across TikTok and YouTube.

 

In Mikula's view, car buying has become so absurd that what he's doing makes perfect sense, even if it is a little offbeat. "You're hiring a middleman to deal with the middleman to make the middleman more efficient," he said.

 

One in five buyers committed to monthly car payments of $1,000 or more at the end of last year, the highest share on record, according to Edmunds. There are also high borrowing costs, which he sometimes figures out for clients, too, after they have settled on the sticker price. Then there are add-ons like extended warranties, tire protection and GAP insurance that can inflate the final price by as much as 30%.

 

Mikula runs most of his negotiations from his home, and that is a matter of strategy. He prefers working the phone. Buyers who spend hours at a showroom start to feel like they have invested too much time to walk away.

 

When salespeople push him to come in, he has a ready response. "I've already driven one. I really want it. Gotta have it. I'm just trying to get a good deal today," he said.

 

Mikula started his business, called Delivrd, by negotiating deals free for strangers he met on Reddit. He closed about 50 deals before putting a price tag on his services. Now the company has a team of five professional negotiators and makes about $200,000 in revenue a month. He makes a little extra from social media.

 

Payam Amiri spent weeks studying Mikula's videos before walking into a dealership to buy his first new car. Once there, he focused on negotiating the out-the-door price, instead of debating monthly payments, which can obscure the true cost of a vehicle.

 

When a salesperson told him discounts would be slim because the model was popular, Amiri pulled up local inventory on his phone and pointed out that dozens of similar vehicles sat on lots within 50 miles. The discount got bigger.

 

He ended up driving away with a new 2026 Mazda CX-50 Premium for $4,000 less than the asking price.

 

To make his end-of-February deal marathon more entertaining, Mikula pulled up a bingo card with self-imposed challenges in each space like calling 50 dealerships for quotes on one car. He promised to get triple bingo before the end of the day. If he failed, he owed his followers a 24-hour stream.

 

Several dealers recognized him before he got through his script. "Wait, is this Delivrd?" one salesman said, suddenly aware he was on speakerphone in front of an audience. "I watch your streams all the time."

 

Mikula smiled. "Are we doing deals today?" he asked.

 

While the salesperson promised to call him back, Mikula was seeking out competing offers. He approaches several dealerships to get quotes on the same car even if he gets a bargain on his first call. Pitting dealers against each other forces them to cut into their own margins to win business, rather than simply passing along standard rebates funded by automakers.

 

Professional negotiators don't always uncover dramatic savings. Most deals turn on timing, inventory and local competition. For example, when a client says they want to hire him to get a deal on a popular model like the Lexus GX550, Mikula advises that they would be lucky to get that vehicle at the sticker price.

 

Armed with competing quotes and market data, many negotiations end quickly once a dealer agrees to compete on price. The fireworks in Mikula's viral clips are the exception.

 

In the most heated exchanges, dealers accuse him of misrepresenting himself. He and his negotiators frequently claim to be from the same state as their clients to simplify conversations -- even adopting local accents at times -- but some sales representatives notice the area code doesn't match.

 

"Nothing about you feels like good business," one dealer told Mikula during a recorded negotiation.

 

As his videos have grown more popular, several dealers have started to hang up on him after recognizing his voice.

 

Others are eager to work with him, hoping a good relationship will lead to higher volume.

 

By the eighth hour of the livestream, Mikula was losing steam. His delivery sounded less confident. His family dropped off wings, burgers and fries, but the food got cold before he ate it. "Dinner is for closers," he told viewers.

 

Then an alert popped up: a client had accepted a deal on a Ford Raptor. It was his 18th deal, short of the 30 he set out to do. But Mikula checked off the final square he needed to hit triple bingo. He abruptly ended the stream.

 

"Thirty was always ambitious," Mikula later said.” [1]

 

1. Car Dealers' Nightmare: A Professional Haggler. Moise, Imani.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 17 Mar 2026: A1.