A government incentive program offering $4500 trade-in for our 1994 Jeep we paid $2000 for over 3 years ago.
And looking all over DFW for a dealership that still had one in stock on the last day of the program.
We finally got a brand-spanking new car w/ only 5 miles on the odemeter. It's a Toyota Rav4. Now - I do admit I use to think these cars were funny looking - but now that they've re-designed - I actually like better than the CR-V and they get better gas mileage. Plus, I'm a sucker for deals so the special Toyota was running definitely helped.
Really...I'm not much of a car person so I could less about one kind of car I drove...but I DO love it!!
But the car negotiating process, I HATE! Being an accountant, it makes it hard to talk about the "details" with people who have absolutely no clue. You say, tell me the interest rate, and they say, "Well, you're driving the car not the montly payment." And then they use the same line over and over no matter what your question is. Because they have no FREAKING clue so they don't know how else to respond. When we thought we found a half-way decent person they still managed to mis-calculate the price quote 3 times, and when we finally agreed and were signing the papers, they still had the wrong amount written. And it's not like we negoiated a super great deal - we still paid full "sticker" price for the car - but they happened to charge us TWICE for all the dealer add ons. So when we FINALLY left the dealership HOURS later...we realized we never paid them the $2000 down. The "finace guy" was so FRAZZLED by not getting the price right they never asked us for the moo-lah - and we had both assumed the other person had done it.
Did we go back? No. But our conscious got the better of us and we did call - in which case the salesperson decided to make a "personal delivery" to our home to return the missing garage down opener right away so he - of course - could pick up the check.
Date: August 22 2009
