For $1K, He'll Battle Car Dealers on Price for You

Car dealers have a new kind of repeat customer: A guy whose entire job is to make them earn less on their sales. The Wall Street Journal profiles 33-year-old Tomi Mikula, who parlayed a 10-plus-year career handling sales and financing at car dealerships into Delivrd. For a $1,000 fee, his service haggles with dealerships for car buyers who don't want to—or don't know how to—bargain. Mikula works the phones from his Charlotte, NC-area home office, which Imani Moise writes "is a matter of strategy. ... Buyers who spend hours at a showroom start to feel like they have invested too much time to walk away."

Mikula's approach keeps it purely about the numbers; he relies on competing quotes—he typically calls a number of dealerships to quote the same car—and market data. Moise details how Mikula has turned his niche into a business whose five professional negotiators rake in about $200,000 a month. He makes a bit more by livestreaming some of his calls on social media.

Moise details how one would-be buyer gave himself a crash-course in negotiating by watching those videos, went to a dealership armed with details on the model's availability at other dealerships, and ended up getting a 2026 Mazda CX-50 Premium for $4,000 below asking. Read the full story for more, including why Mikula is thinking about using a voice changer on his calls.