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Friday, May 10, 2019

Car buying is exhausting

Why is it so exhausting? I was at the Buick dealer for 3 1/2 hours yesterday. Another 3 hours today.

I have to think CarMax is faster. The no haggle thing has to be faster.

Not that we did haggle. I went through AARP to TrueCar. They give you a certificate with the total price + the dealer documentation fee. When we sat to do the numbers the documentation fee was more and they added on the costs for GM Certification and dealer prep. Aw heck no! When we asked what was the best price he could do, he took off the dealer prep fee (almost $1,000). But that certification fee (over $2,000) was still there. That’s when I got up and left the building. I called TrueCar Car Dispute Resolution. I went back inside and told the salesman he needed to take that off, it was not in the TrueCar price. He left for awhile, not sure if TrueCar had called him right away or not, but he removed the fee. Later in the transaction a mystery fee of $400 appeared. At this point I was beyond exhausted. I tried to get them to remove it but got double teamed by the salesman and the finance manager (he finishes the sale, no matter the method of payment and sells the extended warranty.) I tried. At that point it was either walk out, no car, no coming back or give in. I caved. Then came the extended warranty. This is what jacked the price up over what I planned on. 

I’m not broke, but we won’t be getting new central a/c. We’ll continue to deal with window units as we have since 2007 when the storm and tornado hit and zapped our central a/c. Oh well. It was important to me to not have to worry about future repairs. I really got burned badly with the van that has sat in my driveway for over 2 years as I still make payments. We have until the end of the month to sell it, I’m not paying insurance beyond that. We are covered until the end of the month, so that’s it, it goes. If we can get it running it will go to our mechanic to get checked over (so we know exactly what’s wrong with it and how that affects it’s value.) If we can’t get it running I’m screwed. I will definitely be upside down and have to pay instead of get paid. Praying we can get it running.

We spent 3 hours there today getting a tour of the vehicle, having all the electronics demonstrated, showing us what all the buttons did, how the remote start and the power liftgate work. Then our salesman set up our iPhones and then I had to play with the equalizer. I couldn’t get it to adjust the way I like. Our salesman was at lunch, so another volunteered, but ended up sending us to the service department. They ended up resetting it so I had to re-do the iPhone setups. Then we lost text to screen. I still haven’t figured that out. It worked before the service department did the reset. I’ll figure it out, I just hope I don’t have to read all the manual books in the glove box.

Am I happy with my purchase? 😎 Am I happy with the games with the price, no and if TrueCar calls me back I will tell them so. The extended warranty was more than I wanted to pay, but, it is bumper to bumper. About the only thing not covered is brakes. Roadside Assistance is included. That’s important to me because I can no longer change a tire due to my back injuries. There’s also a cool feature that not only is power seat memory, but when you exit the vehicle, you push a button and the seat moves back so you can easily swing your feet out to exit. On the Pilot I have to power the seat backwards myself. Ohh, and the front seats have lumbar support.

There was a lot of weirdness with the finance manager. Said my SS was required because of the Patriot Act and Identity Theft. I asked the salesman not to have my credit report run and he said they don’t. Well, the finance manager ran my credit report. I immediately got notified by my bank and went in to confront him. That’s when he told me that bs. So I told them I have to be who I say I am, or how would I get a notification and know they ran a credit report? Sheesh!

So Sunday is Mother’s Day. I may actually break my Sunday rule (I don’t leave the house at all on Sundays.) Maybe we’ll go for a nice ride.

Lola’s Diner cc 2008-2019


 
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