kurty[B]

I've been doing some car shopping lately, and yesterday I decided to check out some dealerships to see if they'd be willing to work with me and my lack of a credity history on getting a vehicle and auto financing.

I hate salespeople to begin with, well at least pushy salespeople, and it's even worse with used car dealers. I went to an Acura dealership cause I was interested in Legends (knew I probably wouldn't find one in my price range at the dealership, but still wanted to look; wrong idea). I walked around their new lot unmolested looking at the various cars they had (not impressed, and noticed everything seemed marked up $2K more than it could've possibly been worth).

Went to an older lot to walk around that one, and 4-5 salespeople were waiting out front like vultures, and as soon as I stepped out of the car, not even twenty seconds later there's one right there asking me what I'm looking for. I tell him "I want a Jeep Wrangler, Toyota Pick-Up/Tacoma, or Acura Legend within $7-9K price range with payments in the $150-180/mnth range". So, we hop in this POS Nissan Sentra with a big $8499 on the front windshield, and drive off to another lot owned by that dealership. I know then that this is going to be a long and painful day, and the vehicle we were in was going to be a last ditch sales effort by the salesperson, cause he really isn't listening to a damn word I say.

I had already seen all the cars I was initially interested in at the first lot, and they all had fading colour, torn up interiors, or WAY too many miles for me to be interested, and still above my price range (cause of $2K+ mark ups), and I tried to explain this, but did not stop the man from showing me every vehicle on the lot (in the $10-15K range). After an hour and a half of shooting down attempts like "How about a Miata?" or "220K miles really isn't that much for this car I'm sure it'll get another 100K out of it, definitely" (I wanted to say FUCK YOU at that statement but resisted, cause I'm too nice).

Back at his office, he went and talked to the financing guys, and comes back "Oh, I have a Truck to show you, it's in service getting new brakes, but let's go see it". Another drive to another building. Given it was a nice truck, but a '99 Toyota Tacoma with everything I'd ever want in an off-road vehicle and under 60K miles. I told him "This has got to be at least $12-13K, that's got to be more than I can handle!" Course, he either had extremely selective hearing or thought I was a porn star that was just going to bend over and take it in the ass.

Back to his table, on the drive over there guess what "What do you think about this vehicle we're driving". "No, don't like Sentras!" Not only that, but I could hear the problems that car already had, brakes going, belts either loose, or in need of changing, engine definitely not sounding like it should. He tries to hit on the positive points of the car, and I continue. "Family member had one, windows kept falling off tracks, I'm not interested in this car!" At his table he brings me an offer on this Truck that I was not interested in "$14999 with payments of $389/mnth"... "NO, way too much" Repeat to him my initial offer I'd been saying all day... Comes back "well, with $4K down we can get a payment of $199/mnth". "I don't have $4K to put down". And this went on well past the sun going down (I wanted to look at other cars DURING sunlight hours rather than haggle about cars I did not want). This went back and forth back and forth, till dude went and got either the owner of the dealership, or head sales rep (old man sporting tons of "BLING"). I was rather sick of being there, and I'm sure they noticed my faces of disgust while they weren't sitting there, and my attempts of "Just call me when you get one of these three vehicles in under $10K!" Old man used everything from "You need a car to drive, don't you want to practice your right to drive, or you want to walk everywhere for the rest of your life". "I'm' doing just fine bumming rides, and borrowing friend's cars, and walking at the moment sir, look at how good shape I'm in compared to your shapely figure!" Not sure how he took that comment he tossed out a fake salesmen laugh, still trying to bend me over. After some pointless attempts to continue dropping price, but still fail to satisfy MY needs I finally got out of there.

Now... Fuck dealerships, I'm gonna stick with dealing with People to People sales, least they don't lie as much, and they generally give me the opportunity to drive the car for the day or night, and do compression tests, and various checks on every aspect of the car, and they aren't high pressuring me into buying that vehicle that day. I realize used car dealership peeps are simply trying to get their commission check, but why must they refuse to listen to the customer, and continue to try and sell that person something they can't afford, don't you think I've already spent time figuring out what I can afford, what loans/loan rates I can handle if I specifically say I can only afford $150-180 and a vehicle in the $7K-9K range, and I even have a vehicle type in mind. Couldn't he have just said "Well, I have this this and this, in this this and this price, all of which is higher than what you want, sorry, if we get something in that range I'll give you a call". If he had done that, at some point in the future I'd LOVE to do business with them again. Instead, there's NO NO chance of me even going back there again, even if I want a new vehicle.

No more dealerships for me UNLESS I'm shopping for a NEW vehicle, and even then by the time I'm ready to buy new, I'm sure ordering vehicles off the internet will be perfected, and the dealership experience will practically be cut out of the whole deal. I can't wait for such a day!

Anyone else have awful dealership salespeople experiences (or even awful salesperson experiences). How do you deal with them? Just wait for them to get the point, yell at them? What?? Nothing seemed to work for me???