Car Shopping Continued

I found another blue Honda Civic online.  This one was a 2015 with 13K miles listed at the same price as the 2014 Galpin one.  I called ahead to see if it was there before we headed over.  I asked the guy on the phone if he could look it up by the stock number but he said he could see it in the lot so we went over.  When we got there, it wasn’t the same car.  It was a two door Coupe.  When I showed him the print out of the car I wanted to see that I saw online he went to check and came back saying it had already been sold.  Too bad but now I know I can find another one and at a better price than Galpin had.  They apparently sell fast.  This is the second time a listing just went up for that car and it was sold before we could get there to look at it.  We looked at a couple of other colors and years of Civics that they had but I just wasn’t feeling any of them so we called it a day.

Joe and I went to have Chinese food at Green Apple, a place on Ventura.  My friend recommended it.  We had lunch there earlier that week but I had been craving Chinese Food and Jamba Juice and luckily Green Apple was directly next to a Jamba Juice.  I liked their food and I think it was sweet that Joe agreed to it eat twice in one week to satisfy my cravings. 

When we got back home I checked online again to see if there were any new listings and to my surprise Galpin Honda lowered the price of the car we were going to buy by 500 dollars.  It was literally the car we tried to buy.  What a bunch of crooks!  They kept claiming they were losing money by giving us a deal and yet now they’re now taking off an additional 500 dollars!  I’m glad their losing money on it.  It can sit in their lot for another two months for all I care.  Upon further inspection compared to other dealerships they actually charge the most.  Other places have the same or better cars with the same or better mileage at the same or lower price.  Plus, their add on taxes and fees are actually much higher than other dealerships too.  So they’re really just a bunch of scammers.

The most important thing is that we need to stick to our budget.  We know what we want.  I looked on Kelley Blue Book to see what a fair price range for what we want costs.  I compared different dealerships to see the different ranges in pricing and I know we can get the car we want for the price we can pay.  It just takes a little patience but it’s that simple.  When we had told Galpin that it was over our budget they suggested a small loan to cover the rest.  We are absolutely not doing that.  If we can’t afford it for the budget we have available we’ll buy a different car.  We are not going into debt over it and we’re not going to owe anyone money.  We have the money to buy a car.  If they can’t meet us at our budget then we won’t take it and they can sell it to someone else.  We have noticed that car dealerships are much more interested in selling you a loan than they are at selling you a car.  You think that cash is king and you’d have more leeway on pricing if you had the money ready to go but that’s not how it works anymore.  They want you to take out a loan with the hope that you’ll fail on payments so they can repossess your car and resell it again and again.  Plus, they want to make interest on it and thus make much more money than the car costs.  Dealerships are sleazy and hard to deal with but buying from a private party runs it’s own risks and we want a certified pre-owned Honda.  If I get a 2014 it’ll still be under manufacturer’s warranty.  I know we’re going to find the right car eventually.  It’s just a matter of time and patience.

Although I have to admit that this whole car buying experience is a nightmare.  Every dealership has the same tactics.  To offer you a price thousands of dollars beyond sticker for taxes and “fees” and then you give them a price and they leave for 15 minutes.  Then a manager comes back and offers you a different price.  Then you ask for another price.  Then they leave for another 15 minutes.  Then they come back with another manager to offer a price and swear up and down they’re doing all they can.  And it goes on for hours.  It’s a waste of my time and stupid.  And I know for a fact they probably spent tens of thousands of dollars on marketing research trying to figure out what tactics they can do to make you spend the most amount of money.  It actually backfired for them because leaving Joe and I alone to talk about it for 15 minutes made us decided we didn’t want it and we didn’t want to budge on price and it wasn’t worth wasting all day waiting around for so we just said no thanks.  One dealership wouldn’t even tell us the price of the car until we filled out credit check applications.  Then he tried to get us to sign an agreement on how much we could pay without even telling us the price of the car.  We refused to sign anything and got pretty mad.  All we wanted to know was the final price of the car.  They just wanted to push their loan financing on us.  All these dealerships are just sleazy, dishonest and gross.