Buying a Car
We're buying a car, and this time we mean it. We started looking at cars well over a year ago, but kept putting it off. We're leaning more towards buying from a private seller but today we decided to look at a few dealerships just so we could look at a few cars in person and see what we really like. After stopping by a few small places we decided to look at Dick Hannah simply because they had a lot of cars. Two hours later we left, never shall we return.
As soon as we exited our humble Geo,we were greated by a salesman. We told him we just wanted to look around. He heard "Please hold my hand a walk me around the lot". I didn't mind that he showed us American cars even though we told him we wanted Japanese as we were wanting to get a feel for all of what was out there. I did mind that he would say "just joking" after showing us cars completely off of want we told him we wanted.
After a good look around the place we thanked him for his time and we were about to leave... BUT WAIT... he told us there possibly might be one more car but he'd have to go inside and check. We should have left then, silly us. We he returned a young salesman was with him. We had been handed off, it was time for the hard sell. We were led around to look at a few more cars, all of which we had no interest in. I didn't really mind the tricky sales tactics, I found them funny and interesting at first. We still wanted to leave, but he lured us inside because we were very cold, he had coffee/hot chocolate and there was that promise of that one car that he wasn't sure if he could sell that he had to check on.
After waiting a few minutes he returned and informed us that he'd know about the car in a few days. We gave him our number and we're about to leave. We had dismissed the offer of a lease already, but he brought it up one more time. Since we knew very little about them we decided to ask about them. I should have left immediately when he pulled up Internet Explorer to look at kbb.com (blue book). :)
It sounded less horrible than we thought so we let him babble on about the whole deal. (first of all we would never buy a brand new car for 23,000!!!! but he slyly tricked us into running a check just to make sure we were eligible. We weren't eligible for the best rate which he had been pitching to us which didn't stop him from trying to get us to get the package way out of what we could spend. We had him on the ropes, we stood up and thanked him. He tried his hardest to get us to sign the deal despite telling him many times that we absolutely didn't want to buy a car today. We told him that there was NO way that we were making a decision on something we just now heard about. But I guess there are lots of suckers out there who buckle and give in with the salesman's persistence, so he kept at it.
We then made our final mistake. We went to the bathroom. After we emerged from the bathroom, our salesman was waiting for us, but he wasn't alone. ANOTHER SALES MAN WAS WITH HIM! We were hungry and we needed to get back to Dahlia who was waiting at Gwen's parents. Salesman number three repeated the same information about how wonderful leases are and how we really should do it. I felt like we were just going to have to start literally running to get out of there!
We did end up leaving shortly after that, but we were in a very sour mood at that point. We felt completely ignored, they showed us cars we didn't want. We told them we wanted to spend 8000-10,000, they pretended that 10,000 was our starting point. They did everything they could to keep us there even though they knew we needed to leave. They didn't lie to us really, but they did talk down private sellers a bit much. They came up blank when we asked them if there were any other dealers with cars more in our price range. And the hot chocolate wasn't even very good.
I don't know if any other dealers are any better, but we're done with them. Certainly the large ones. Have any of you had similar experiences or know of one that is better?
As soon as we exited our humble Geo,we were greated by a salesman. We told him we just wanted to look around. He heard "Please hold my hand a walk me around the lot". I didn't mind that he showed us American cars even though we told him we wanted Japanese as we were wanting to get a feel for all of what was out there. I did mind that he would say "just joking" after showing us cars completely off of want we told him we wanted.
After a good look around the place we thanked him for his time and we were about to leave... BUT WAIT... he told us there possibly might be one more car but he'd have to go inside and check. We should have left then, silly us. We he returned a young salesman was with him. We had been handed off, it was time for the hard sell. We were led around to look at a few more cars, all of which we had no interest in. I didn't really mind the tricky sales tactics, I found them funny and interesting at first. We still wanted to leave, but he lured us inside because we were very cold, he had coffee/hot chocolate and there was that promise of that one car that he wasn't sure if he could sell that he had to check on.
After waiting a few minutes he returned and informed us that he'd know about the car in a few days. We gave him our number and we're about to leave. We had dismissed the offer of a lease already, but he brought it up one more time. Since we knew very little about them we decided to ask about them. I should have left immediately when he pulled up Internet Explorer to look at kbb.com (blue book). :)
It sounded less horrible than we thought so we let him babble on about the whole deal. (first of all we would never buy a brand new car for 23,000!!!! but he slyly tricked us into running a check just to make sure we were eligible. We weren't eligible for the best rate which he had been pitching to us which didn't stop him from trying to get us to get the package way out of what we could spend. We had him on the ropes, we stood up and thanked him. He tried his hardest to get us to sign the deal despite telling him many times that we absolutely didn't want to buy a car today. We told him that there was NO way that we were making a decision on something we just now heard about. But I guess there are lots of suckers out there who buckle and give in with the salesman's persistence, so he kept at it.
We then made our final mistake. We went to the bathroom. After we emerged from the bathroom, our salesman was waiting for us, but he wasn't alone. ANOTHER SALES MAN WAS WITH HIM! We were hungry and we needed to get back to Dahlia who was waiting at Gwen's parents. Salesman number three repeated the same information about how wonderful leases are and how we really should do it. I felt like we were just going to have to start literally running to get out of there!
We did end up leaving shortly after that, but we were in a very sour mood at that point. We felt completely ignored, they showed us cars we didn't want. We told them we wanted to spend 8000-10,000, they pretended that 10,000 was our starting point. They did everything they could to keep us there even though they knew we needed to leave. They didn't lie to us really, but they did talk down private sellers a bit much. They came up blank when we asked them if there were any other dealers with cars more in our price range. And the hot chocolate wasn't even very good.
I don't know if any other dealers are any better, but we're done with them. Certainly the large ones. Have any of you had similar experiences or know of one that is better?