February 26, 2004
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Car shopping
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4922 hit(s)
So, car dealers. I read somewhere that for Americans, the #1 least favorite commercial experience is dealing with a car dealer.[1] Yet last night Erica and I found ourselves sitting at a round Oak Warehouse table at the Toyota dealer in fun-filled Burien, Washington. Erica really had done her best to get past this process as painlessly as possible. We'd done research on the Web and had test-driven the car we were interested in. (A Toyota Matrix, which is basically a tarted-up Corolla station wagon.) Toyota is offering 1.9% through the end of the month, so there was some incentive to Act Now. Erica had sent email to all the local dealers laying out exactly what we wanted -- model, colors -- and the guy in Burien had responded first with a succinct reply. Can get cars, stop. Cost is invoice plus, stop. C'mon down. Stop.
So we did, yesterday evening. We asked for "Tony," he of the emails. Turns out Tony is the Sales Manager. A personable fellow with a smooth and reassuring manner who, however, is not the guy you deal with directly. Instead, he handed us over to "Dave," one of the salesmen. And thus began the excruciating portion of our evening.
There must be people somewhere who respond positively to guys like Dave. Dave is an older guy who, as he told us either two or three times, had come out of retirement to work in car sales. (As Erica asked me later, what kind of retirement do you have that makes becoming a car salesman in Burien look like an attractive alternative?) In fact, Dave told us pretty much everything two or three times. We weren't sure whether this was because he wanted to be sure we got the point or whether it was incipient senile dementia. Dave tried the time-honored tactic of using our first names frequently, which might have worked better if he had gotten straight that it was "Erica" and not "Sarah."
Dave apparently thought we needed to be reassured on various points of our potential purchase. The Matrix is a good car, he reassured us. In fact, his daughter has this very car, he noted. Several times. In fact, his daughter had the second Matrix in the state of Washington with a leather interior. What a fascinating fact, Dave.
It just didn't get better. Tony brought us a list of available cars with codes for the option packages, and a sheet with explanations for the codes. I can read pretty well, actually. Nope. Dave got out his highlighter ("I love highlighters, don't you?" Sure, Dave, we do), marked each option, and then read us every word on the explanation sheet.[2]
At this point Erica allowed me to leave the table and have some blood-pressure-control laps around the showroom.
To preserve our sanity, we began mentally logging the many fascinating things that Dave chose to share with us. Here's a partial list:
This is the car my daughter got.
Oh.
I live in a gated community.
I'm president of the HOA.
We bought a house on the Street of Dreams.
Our house has a beautiful view.
I was the first one to buy and the first one to move in.
I'm still trying to figure out the relevance of any of this to our car purchase. Apparently Dave himself found all of these facts to be really important, or he wouldn't have told them to us. Several times.
Your car is a 1994?
Why, no, Dave. Erica's car, as she has already told you, is a 1995. But thanks for asking. Again.
How do you spell your last name?
Translation: I didn't catch it when you said it. Or I haven't asked yet. I forget.
When I go to North Dakota, I start talking Midwestern even though I grew up in Seattle!
Erica's from Minnesota. Apparently Dave was groping for some obscure "hey, me, too!" experience. Wonder what he would have come up with if we'd told him that we were buying a new car to celebrate kicking that crack habit.
Email is free!
You can send email all over the world!
No! Really? Dave, we're going to share this with our fellow Microsoft employees!
I just sold a car to a Microsoft guy. His name was ... Nathan?
Oh, Nathan, sure.
Real nice fella.
Meaning we're not all assholes, is that your point?
As HOA president, you wouldn’t believe how much email I have to respond to.
Our particular favorite. Dave, we just don't know how you can keep up with all that email. But listen, I have 173 unopened emails in my Inbox, so I'm going to have to let you go.
If my opinion means anything, I really like the blue color.
It doesn't.
I can save you a lot of money with a certified automatic on the lot.
Dave, which part of "we want a manual transmission" is not quite getting through to you? And BTW, according to the math here, a new car invoice is the same as your used car, and financing is at half the rate. Explain "save you a lot of money," please? Or wait, better yet: don't explain, thanks anyway.
It’s a really nice red.
Well, that's a relief.
How much down payment? $40,000. HaHaHa! Isn’t that a good one?
Haha.
Trade-in value on your car? $18,000. HaHaHa! Isn’t that a good one?
Haha. You sure are a funny guy, Dave.
All of this, and no car. There were no actual Matrixes on the lot, as it turned out. None. So last night, as became clear only at the end, was just a little sales exercise. Today, we are assured, they'll call us to let us know if they can locate the cars whose option packages we had spent such jolly moments examining. Gad. All of this pain, and it's unlikely there will even be a car to show for it in the end.
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