And now what did you do TODAY?

[HeadphoneAddict]

7 minutes ago, Craig Sawyers said:

When the bone is mended will they take out the metalwork?

 

18 minutes ago, dsavitsk said:

Ouch. And isn't there some sort of medical Loctite?

No and no. 

[shellylh]

Went by my old house to find out that someone had sent me a pecan pie for the holidays.   Unfortunately, I hadn't been sitting on my front porch for a few days.  Too bad since I like pecan pie.  

[jvlgato]

Bummer. I love pecan pie.

[skullguise]

No Pecan Pie Forwarding Service?  What kind of hick town is that?!

Another Pecan Pie fan, sorry you missed it Shelly.

[Salt Peanuts]

Battled with defective/leaking ink cartridges.  Now Amazon wants me to send back the defective cartridges, which I've already discarded for obvious reasons, for return/refund process.

[Dreadhead]

Installed a 30+ sensors and got our new home security system installed. Very slick once it worked.

Also discovered that the dumbass people who installed our garage door forgot a nut and to tighten some bolts. No more thunk it opens. 3rd thing they did wrong on the installation that I have fixed.

[crappyjones123]

Julie needed a car pretty badly - the old one was about to fall apart any day. For the last 5 days I had been traveling between some 12 dealerships all of whom promised me prices on cars on the phone and ended up coming up with a significantly higher price by the time we were done talking. Today we walked in with a truecar.com certificate hoping to make matters simple. Turned out the dealer didn't accept those. Using that as a starting point, we negotiated and agreed upon a price that was fair (not great). We shook hands on it, Julie signed the appropriate papers and then we waited 4 hours to speak with the finance people. This was Julie while we waited. 

 

We walk in the door to the finance lady's office and she is the happy funny person making jokes left and right. Then she tried to pull fast ones on me saying that I didn't understand the math (lol) and was making simple errors none of which she could explain. The price that was on the computer was $3800 higher than what we signed. I politely said that no way in hell was I paying more than the sticker price for the car. On top of that they were charging a 5.69% interest for the financing of the car even though Julie qualified for 0%. We were told that we could either get the 0% interest or we could get the price discounted. Again, I was told that the arithmetic was over my head and that I didn't understand financial math. This was Julie when the lady left the room to go grab her boss because I refused to continue talking to her. 

PS. The boss "restructured" the deal as a favor to us and ended up with a price that was $500 more than what was agreed upon, forced me to sign it saying that there were 5 other customers waiting to pay for their cars. I calmly got up and said, "you are more than welcome to take them. I am sorry to have taken your time. I will think about your offer and get back to you in a few days." He circled the number we had agreed upon, wrote down 0% next to it and smashed the pen into my hand. I signed it. Julie walked out with keys to a brand new fully equipped 2016 Toyota Corolla LE. 

Once we got out of the dealership  This was the first time in her life she was driving a brand new car and she more than deserves it. 

 

 

 

Edited December 21, 2015 by crappyjones123

[HeadphoneAddict]

 We have not been treated like that by a car dealership since 2001, But what you guys went through sounds very similar to what they did to us on a 2001 Dodge Durango, switching prices and financing mid-way, and we walked out.

In 2008 we had less comparable experience where they tried to get a new demo GMC Acadia for us from Denver, with 1,200 miles on it for a big discount. But when it showed up at the local dealer it had 4500 miles on it, and minor dings and scratches inside and out.  Again we walked away.

[Craig Sawyers]

Carole is an FCA (Fellow Chartered Accountant) and even checks restaurant bills.  Car dealerships don't stand a chance.

Although back when we were in our mid 20's, we went into a Vauxhall dealership, and the guy looked at us and decided we looked too young to buy a new car and (I swear to god) asked us how much we earned.  I looked him straight in the eye and told him straight that he had just lost a sale.  That is the only bad buying experience I had.  Bought a Ford Escort instead.

That is until the MPV diesel version of the Corolla.  Carole had that as a company car, and we bought it from the company at 3 years old.  Got to 110,000 miles and the cylinder head gasket went - fuel in the coolant, to the extent you could smell it - and the car performed like crap.  Toyota apparently knew that the engine had problems in that regard, and had extended the engine warranty from 60,000 miles to 100,000 miles.  They refused point blank to make any contribution at all and said it was a new engine and £7000, and I refused point blank to ever buy a Toyota again.  How come they get it so wrong?  If they had just sorted it out without hassle I'd have bought my next car from Toyota.

Bought a Ford Kuga in February and couldn't be more delighted with it.  Looked at Mazda and Honda (NOT Toyota, although the RAV4 would have been in the frame).

[skullguise]

Glad things worked out CJ, congrats to you and Julie.

I don't have the patience to deal with asshats like that.  I have walked out as well and received better deals elsewhere (and made sure the manager of place # 1 knew that).

[crappyjones123]

5 hours ago, EdipisReks said:

Emily and I were treated poorly a dealer in 2008.  I told that fucker to fuck off, and we left, about 5 minutes after we got there.  We got a great deal at the next place we went.  I'm glad it worked out for you, Anurag, at the end.  When I bought my GTI, the first thing I told them was that I was a finance track MBA student at a very good school.  I was treated extremely well, and no tricks were pulled.  From what you said, I think something yelled "yokel" to them.  I would work on that, next car you buy.

There might be some truth to it. We were dressed in dinosaur t shirts with math jokes on them but once Julie told the lady to stop patronizing me when it came to the math as I had a PhD in it, the color from her face drained and she stopped arguing with my calculations. They were already aware that I was in med school. In retrospect, when I was leading my civic last year around this same time, we talked the dealership down from 13500 to 7700 total cost of ownership for 3 years and I was treated with respect. No funny business was done other than the usual back and forth to arrive at a price. For Julies car the lady kept pointing to the monthly payments but refused to address how we were paying more than the agreed upon price as a total cost after the loan period. The differential was just a few dollars here and there. It was $3854 first. Then $2900. And progressively went down to $0 eventually when I got up from my chair. Magically all the math suddenly made sense to her and she triumphantly stated, "oh this is what you were asking for. You should have said that from the beginning!!!" 

"At the end of the loan period I am not going to pay a cent more than $17000 for this car. How you structure the monthly payments or taxes and fees is immaterial to me." Didn't think that was too dense a statement for a financial consultant to follow. 

[n_maher]

I hate the "how-much-a-month" approach to car sales but sadly, this is probably 90% of what dealers deal with when brokering deals.  Most people, for reasons I can't comprehend, don't worry about the cost of the car as long as they get it down to the point where they can afford the monthly payment.  The dealer tried that approach with me on the GTI until I informed them that I was not financing the car through them and then we quickly got to the point of negotiating the actual price of the car.

[Grahame]

Indeed, most dealers aren't selling you a car as such, but merely using it as a vehicle for extracting money from you. TCO calculations are their kryptonite.

Carsdirect.com for the price and manufacturer finance worked for me last time I had to deal with their kind

[dsavitsk]

In this Article, Professor Ayres offers empirical evidence that seriously challenges faith in the ability of competitive market forces to eliminate racial and gender discrimination in other markets. His Chicago-based research demonstrates that retail car dealerships systematically offered substantially better prices on identical cars to white men than they did to blacks and women.

http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/1540/

 

[TMoney]

19 minutes ago, dsavitsk said:

http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/1540/

Malcolm Gladwell wrote about that one in one of his books.

[Dreadhead]

I love TruCar. I negotiate by email with a few dealers and play them off each other. I always get the out the door price too even if I have to ask 3 times. After it is about where I want it I take that to my preferred dealer (TruCar or not) and ask them to match. Has worked to within $500 3 times.

[guzziguy]

I agree that using a web-based sales tool is the way to go.  Most dealerships have an internet sales department.  I used  Edmunds.com when buying my last car.  I got a price for the car on line.  Unfortunately, the dealer was about 1 hour away.  I took the quote to my local dealer and they matched it.  This price was below dealer invoice.  I controlled the out the door cost by refusing almost all of the suggested add-ons.  I was planning on paying cash, but they had a deal for .9% interest.  I decided that it was cheaper to take the loan than pay cash.

[Hopstretch]

Have bought our last two cars sight unseen, by email. One was in Aberdeen and the other in Birmingham. Reasonable offer (with promise of immediate payment by bank wire), quick acceptance, electronic document exchange, funds transfer, car dropped off in driveway a few days later. Super low friction. 

 

[shellylh]

i really need a new car but dealing with dealers is not something I like to do (also I need to get my fender bender fixed before I can trade in my old car).  I think I better do the pricing ahead of time.  Any suggestions/hints are welcome.  

[Hopstretch]

My hints are so hot, they land before the request for them!

The big key is knowing exactly what you want (which car, and which options) and how much (realistically) you should have to pay for it. Having your own finance in place beforehand is always good, too. 

[guzziguy]

I had good luck with the Edmunds.com buying program.  Chris likes TruValue.  You might also try the kbb.com (Kelly Blue Book) and any other that you might find.  The nice thing is that you can get several quotes and choose based on both price and dealership.

Edit:  Of course, you have to know what make, model and options you want before you can take advantage of a web-based buying program.  You can research those things at the aforementioned sites.  You can also get different cars and option combos if you want.

Edited December 21, 2015 by guzziguy

[shellylh]

I suppose I probably need to test drive some cars first.

What about financing vs paying cash?

Edited December 21, 2015 by shellylh

[acidbasement]

Went by my old house to find out that someone had sent me a pecan pie for the holidays.   Unfortunately, I hadn't been sitting on my front porch for a few days.  Too bad since I like pecan pie.  

Too bad you don't have the Canadian advantage of your front step being a freezer at this time of year.

[naamanf]

 

1 hour ago, shellylh said:

i really need a new car but dealing with dealers is not something I like to do (also I need to get my fender bender fixed before I can trade in my old car).  I think I better do the pricing ahead of time.  Any suggestions/hints are welcome.  

I'll just come down and beat them up to give you a good deal. What are we going to buy? 

[shellylh]

1 minute ago, naamanf said:

 

I'll just come down and beat them up to give you a good deal. What are we going to buy? 

Great!  I was wondering how you got such nice cars. 

Haven't decided what to buy since I haven't done any test drives.  I was thinking of going with either a very basic Honda Accord V6 Coupe or Lexus IS 350 (not sure about the F Sport).  Reading about leasing a car made it seem very complicated which is one reason I am not sure about getting the BMW M235i (also, there aren't very many around here and the people at the BMW dealers seem to all be dicks).  I can't remember if there is anything else I was considering.   Perhaps I should just get the Honda and when some nicks the car with their door or hits me from behind I won't be as upset.