Happy Tuesday Bébés~
How are y’all doing today? — I hope you’re having a pretty good day. I’m so sorry for missing Saturday’s post, I swear this one was suppose to be for then, but I was getting caught up with prepping for a wedding I was attending that I forgot.
But in today’s post, I will be having story time, and will be talking about my first car buying experience. Here’s how it went down:
So on Memorial Day, my dad received a promotional email for this car dealership, and decided to take me along. It took us a total of 6 hours to get this car sighed and released to us… SIX . HOURS.
We had showed up at the dealership at 8:30AM, for our appointment, to find out that the representative we were scheduled with was not there yet, and will be late. So we received a new one, which is cool and everything — my dad and I were just off put about the fact that we were placed with an asian gentlemen, even though my dad speaks fluent English.
During our time here, there were many red flags that I noticed. For example, 45 minutes later, our scheduled representative called and asked my dad where he was and if he was still coming to the lot — not even apologizing for the fact that he was late, but making it seem that it was our fault for not showing up. When in fact, he walked right passed us when he was rushing inside. As he walked passed, he asked my dad if his name was Johnathan, which it wasn’t.
Another issue was that every color option we were looking at was not available; however, that’s not the main concern (I’m not petty like that). The problem presented was the fact that our representative had to run around to try and locate the car, see if the keys were available, and then tell us that it wasn’t available, or the only one they had was already sold.
This was after the fact that we were taken to another lot to look at some of the model variations and walking around the lots in the hot Texas heat. We were left to wait outside for roughly fifteen minutes at a time between each color we had asked to see.
It actually turned out that my first color preference was in fact available, even after we were told it was sold. However, there was already 250 miles on the car, and my dad wasn’t fond that nor of the light interior — which I’m okay with.
In the midst of all the hustle and bustle our representative was doing, my dad actually called another dealership and told them about our predicament — and surprisingly, they agreed to match price with the promotion we were offered at our current location, if they didn’t have what we were looking for. In fact, they had my color preference, and my father’s interior preference, so it was basically perfect.
Once our representative had finally decided to tell us exactly what they had left in stock, my dad mentioned about him talking to an employee at another location. At this point, our representative mentioned that they could get that car for us — although there would be a charge for moving the car from that location, to the location that we were at (which was actually farther from our house in comparison to the other).
My dad agreed and our representative finally took us back inside. From the very beginning, my dad explained clearly that he did not want to haggle back and forth about pricing, and the representative agreed passive aggressively.
The promotion my father received was an employee pricing promotion; however, another big red flag. We were then told, after all the struggle and frustration, that the employee pricing was actually more expensive than the consumer’s pricing.
Does this make any sense? To me, and my dad, this made zero sense — and I worked retail for three years.
All in all, our representative kept going back and forth between him and his “manager” about the price, and was basically haggling us. They kept telling us that “they will do all the work for us, just give [them] a price”, but then returned to tell us that they couldn’t offer us the car for the amount my dad offered. Dad offered him about 3k more than the online price. They finally brought out his manager, and he basically told us the same thing, however, he also added the caveat that the actual price listed online was about 7k less than what they were making the worth of the car was.
My dad of course argued with the manager saying that the original representative we had scheduled with said that the promotion would be cheaper than the online pricing, and that the other dealership actually had the car we wanted. After laying out all the facts, and doing all the calculations with the representatives, my dad finally denied them and announced that we would be heading to the other dealership.
Once we arrived, my father requested to speak to the representative he spoke to on the phone, and we were told to wait. As we were waiting, Dad received an email from the general manager at the previous location to talk about what had happened that day, and requested for his cell phone number.
At this, my dad responded that they already had his number on file. Afterwards, he received a call from the general manager and stepped outside to talk. During this time, another representative at the new location offered to help us, and told me to go to his office once Dad was finished.
I was waiting for a while, so I headed outside to see what was going on, and Dad was livid. The so-called general manager was basically reinforcing what his associates had stated to my father, causing him to get angry and keep reiterating the whole process of what had happened — calling out every red flag my dad and I both saw.
Afterwards, our final representative explained to us bluntly that he was there to help us, and that he was not working commission — which I was thankful for because at this point it had been roughly 3 hours since the entire process started.
He easily retrieved the keys to the car, and he showed us every detail about the car (in fact the other dealership didn’t even do that, and the car we test drove was a model different than what we were wanting). I got to test drive the car, and it only had 3 miles on it after I took it for about a mile. From there, my dad gave him the offered price and did the math with him, and our representative complied and said it was doable. He then brought what he needed to speak to his finance representative and then came back with the finance guy.
Overall, the second dealership was more professional, and very easy to work with and understandable. We got in and basically got out, and they stuck to their promise to price match — no questions asked.
After all of the drama, I finally got my new car and we drove it off the lot that day. Although I did not partake in any financial commitments on the car, the experience was definitely eye opening.
I understand what it’s like to have the pressure to sell things you don’t want to sell, but what really irked me was the lack of integrity and professionalsim at the first dealership.
You have one associate who does not own up to his mistake of being late to an appointment. You have another who is passive aggressively ignoring the request of the customer — I understand you need to make a sale, but my dad politely gave a reasonable price for the car. There was false advertisement, and differing promotional details from different associates. But the cherry topper was the fact that the general manager had called my dad back and basically backlashed on my father about the entire situation.
I understand car sales is a sticky business, but we are the customers — and it really boils down to just customer service.
Overall, I don’t like this process at all. I don’t do well in high stress and comprisable situations, so no thanks. It was a good experience, but I am not for it.
I hope this story somewhat helped you gain some insight to what it’s like to buy a car. I pray that your experience won’t be as wild as mine, and I hope your patience doesn’t get tested like me.
Thank you for joining me in this story-time. I promise my content will get better with some more time~
With Love, Joslyn
My Authentic Nature 