Car dealers are still sleezy bastards

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IMADreamer
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Car dealers are still sleezy bastards

Post by IMADreamer »

In a weird shift of fates I am carless. A guy came to look at my Vette, saw my Cuda and bought both. I wasn't even selling my Cuda but I couldn't turn him down. It's fine because I was kinda looking for a Cuda that I could play with more instead of having to be a custodian of. However I need just a regular fun car to drive around. I found a 2016 Mustang GT350. I've never owned a Ford before and I feel a little dirty for looking at it but anyway. I emailed the dealer and after several days I had a tentative deal struck. The only thing left to do was go ever, actually drive it then do the paper work. I get to the dealer and they don't want me to drive the car. "It's rare, blah blah blah." If I'm going to buy a car, I'm damn well going to drive it. Then all the sudden there was a "mistake" and they can't do the agreed upon price. At this point I called the saleman a mother [expletive] and walked out. He and his manager chasing after me and assuring me we can work it out. So I called them both mother [expletive], told them I'd be getting ahold of corporate (I still have some media connections with Ford) and [expletive] them and their dealer.

Today I got three calls from their dealer. I told each person exactly what I thought of their dealer. They even volunteered to bring the car to me to let me drive it. They could give me the [expletive] thing at this point and I wouldn't take it.

Sleezy ass car dealers.

Freed Roger
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Re: Car dealers are still sleezy bastards

Post by Freed Roger »

I like reading these.

Any idea what they were thinking in denying you a test drive?

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IMADreamer
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Re: Car dealers are still sleezy bastards

Post by IMADreamer »

Freed Roger wrote:I like reading these.

Any idea what they were thinking in denying you a test drive?

The GT350 is kind of limited production and their point was if I didn't buy it then it would have like 7 miles on it for the next guy. My point was, as long as the car doesn't suck it was going home with me. They lost out on a pretty big sale today.

Freed Roger
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Re: Car dealers are still sleezy bastards

Post by Freed Roger »

IMADreamer wrote:
Freed Roger wrote:I like reading these.

Any idea what they were thinking in denying you a test drive?

The GT350 is kind of limited production and their point was if I didn't buy it then it would have like 7 miles on it for the next guy. My point was, as long as the car doesn't suck it was going home with me. They lost out on a pretty big sale today.
7 miles though. On a weekday. Assuming you were at local dealer -they aren't getting hit up like this for test drives often . And since you were in contact -surely they researched you. It's not like STL where a car dealer could get random requests to test drive high end vehicles from all kind of jokers.

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Re: Car dealers are still sleezy bastards

Post by lukethedrifter »

I guess you shouldn't have gone car shopping in your cargo shorts.

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Re: Car dealers are still sleezy bastards

Post by Fat Strat »

I had a lot of trouble at a couple Ford dealers. Was looking to get a new truck and was basically going around town to all the full-size truck dealers to get an initial offer for a standard, 2-wheel drive crew cab pickup. I was very up front and specific -- "This is what I am looking for. I am not buying today. I will not buy anything today. I'm just doing some comparison shopping for a future purchase." Chevy, Toyota, GMC... they all seemed to get what I was doing immediately. They gave me what they thought was a fair offer, printed the specs of their vehicles out, gave me a card and sent me on my way in 10 minutes, most of them promising to match any offer I got from another dealer.

Not the Ford guy. I actually liked the F-150 the most of the trucks of that model year, so I saved it for last. The Ford salesman set me up in his office and then started talking me up. Then he went to talk to the manager and came back saying he had an incredible deal for me. It was a supped-up, 4x4 luxury addition truck that was $15k more than anything else I had looked at that day. I told him flat, "not interested" and repeated what I was looking for. The salesman went to talk to the manager. Came back with a new offer on the same truck, taking $1k off this time... This went on and on. He would go say he's going to go look for the kind of truck I wanted, then go back to the manager, then come back with a new deal on the same luxury truck. Just kept me trapped in his office for what ended up being a full hour, and never once even mentioned any other trucks. Finally, I just said, "you're not listening to me at all. You're not even bothering to show me what I want. I was probably going to buy from Ford down the road, but now I'm definitely not coming back." I had to push the man out of my way to get out because he was standing in the door to his office, blocking it. What an idiot...


Another Ford dealer in another town... We were looking for a little Ranger (back in the 90's). Found an ad for one with a good price and went over to drive it and buy it. While I was waiting on the paper work -- I was literally holding the keys -- the manager came in and demanded to know where I had found the ad for the vehicle at that price. I actually had the ad and showed it to him. For some reason, that enraged him. He yelled at me, "that ad was a mistake" and said "you just sit there and wait". A few minutes later, the manager came back and started screaming at me and my wife and my dad accusing us of lying and trying to cheat him. When I got up to leave, I saw our salesman outside showing the same truck to another couple. Obviously, they were just playing us because they had a better offer from someone else. I almost... almost... walked out with the keys to the truck, but didn't that might be theft of something imprisonable. They probably made a few hundred $$$'s on that sale, but lost a customer and his whole family for life.

Oh, I almost forgot... when we walked out, my dad went over to the other couple who was standing with the salesman. He told them that his son was just about to buy that truck when the manager came in screaming and yelling at him so he would leave and you guys could make your offer. Who knows what that couple actually did, but I probably would have walked away at that point.

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IMADreamer
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Re: Car dealers are still sleezy bastards

Post by IMADreamer »

Fat Strat wrote:I had a lot of trouble at a couple Ford dealers. Was looking to get a new truck and was basically going around town to all the full-size truck dealers to get an initial offer for a standard, 2-wheel drive crew cab pickup. I was very up front and specific -- "This is what I am looking for. I am not buying today. I will not buy anything today. I'm just doing some comparison shopping for a future purchase." Chevy, Toyota, GMC... they all seemed to get what I was doing immediately. They gave me what they thought was a fair offer, printed the specs of their vehicles out, gave me a card and sent me on my way in 10 minutes, most of them promising to match any offer I got from another dealer.

Not the Ford guy. I actually liked the F-150 the most of the trucks of that model year, so I saved it for last. The Ford salesman set me up in his office and then started talking me up. Then he went to talk to the manager and came back saying he had an incredible deal for me. It was a supped-up, 4x4 luxury addition truck that was $15k more than anything else I had looked at that day. I told him flat, "not interested" and repeated what I was looking for. The salesman went to talk to the manager. Came back with a new offer on the same truck, taking $1k off this time... This went on and on. He would go say he's going to go look for the kind of truck I wanted, then go back to the manager, then come back with a new deal on the same luxury truck. Just kept me trapped in his office for what ended up being a full hour, and never once even mentioned any other trucks. Finally, I just said, "you're not listening to me at all. You're not even bothering to show me what I want. I was probably going to buy from Ford down the road, but now I'm definitely not coming back." I had to push the man out of my way to get out because he was standing in the door to his office, blocking it. What an idiot...


Another Ford dealer in another town... We were looking for a little Ranger (back in the 90's). Found an ad for one with a good price and went over to drive it and buy it. While I was waiting on the paper work -- I was literally holding the keys -- the manager came in and demanded to know where I had found the ad for the vehicle at that price. I actually had the ad and showed it to him. For some reason, that enraged him. He yelled at me, "that ad was a mistake" and said "you just sit there and wait". A few minutes later, the manager came back and started screaming at me and my wife and my dad accusing us of lying and trying to cheat him. When I got up to leave, I saw our salesman outside showing the same truck to another couple. Obviously, they were just playing us because they had a better offer from someone else. I almost... almost... walked out with the keys to the truck, but didn't that might be theft of something imprisonable. They probably made a few hundred $$$'s on that sale, but lost a customer and his whole family for life.

Oh, I almost forgot... when we walked out, my dad went over to the other couple who was standing with the salesman. He told them that his son was just about to buy that truck when the manager came in screaming and yelling at him so he would leave and you guys could make your offer. Who knows what that couple actually did, but I probably would have walked away at that point.
I wouldn't have stolen the keys, but certainly hiding them someone in the saleman's office would not have been out of the question.

AWvsCBsteeeerike3
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Re: Car dealers are still sleezy bastards

Post by AWvsCBsteeeerike3 »

Fat Strat wrote:I had a lot of trouble at a couple Ford dealers. Was looking to get a new truck and was basically going around town to all the full-size truck dealers to get an initial offer for a standard, 2-wheel drive crew cab pickup. I was very up front and specific -- "This is what I am looking for. I am not buying today. I will not buy anything today. I'm just doing some comparison shopping for a future purchase." Chevy, Toyota, GMC... they all seemed to get what I was doing immediately. They gave me what they thought was a fair offer, printed the specs of their vehicles out, gave me a card and sent me on my way in 10 minutes, most of them promising to match any offer I got from another dealer.

Not the Ford guy. I actually liked the F-150 the most of the trucks of that model year, so I saved it for last. The Ford salesman set me up in his office and then started talking me up. Then he went to talk to the manager and came back saying he had an incredible deal for me. It was a supped-up, 4x4 luxury addition truck that was $15k more than anything else I had looked at that day. I told him flat, "not interested" and repeated what I was looking for. The salesman went to talk to the manager. Came back with a new offer on the same truck, taking $1k off this time... This went on and on. He would go say he's going to go look for the kind of truck I wanted, then go back to the manager, then come back with a new deal on the same luxury truck. Just kept me trapped in his office for what ended up being a full hour, and never once even mentioned any other trucks. Finally, I just said, "you're not listening to me at all. You're not even bothering to show me what I want. I was probably going to buy from Ford down the road, but now I'm definitely not coming back." I had to push the man out of my way to get out because he was standing in the door to his office, blocking it. What an idiot...


Another Ford dealer in another town... We were looking for a little Ranger (back in the 90's). Found an ad for one with a good price and went over to drive it and buy it. While I was waiting on the paper work -- I was literally holding the keys -- the manager came in and demanded to know where I had found the ad for the vehicle at that price. I actually had the ad and showed it to him. For some reason, that enraged him. He yelled at me, "that ad was a mistake" and said "you just sit there and wait". A few minutes later, the manager came back and started screaming at me and my wife and my dad accusing us of lying and trying to cheat him. When I got up to leave, I saw our salesman outside showing the same truck to another couple. Obviously, they were just playing us because they had a better offer from someone else. I almost... almost... walked out with the keys to the truck, but didn't that might be theft of something imprisonable. They probably made a few hundred $$$'s on that sale, but lost a customer and his whole family for life.

Oh, I almost forgot... when we walked out, my dad went over to the other couple who was standing with the salesman. He told them that his son was just about to buy that truck when the manager came in screaming and yelling at him so he would leave and you guys could make your offer. Who knows what that couple actually did, but I probably would have walked away at that point.
It would have been awesome if your dad had showed the couple the ad you all had and said, we had a deal set for this price but becasue they feel they can make more money off you all, they won't sell the truck to us. Here is the ad, and they agreed to sell it at that price to us until you started looking.

Also, you can use truecar.com to do basically what your first paragraph described. No idea if it's as good as actually going to the dealers and finagling a little bit upfront, probably not as if you go see a dealer they know you're at least actually going to buy a car whereas with truecar they probably get dozens of requests every day just probing prices.

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Re: Car dealers are still sleezy bastards

Post by AWvsCBsteeeerike3 »

Car dealers are shady. But, I bet they get a lot of shady customers too. After going through the whole thing a year ago, my personal opinion is it's not really worth the time to finagle for months or however long.

Select a few models that you're interested in, test drive them reasonably, like 5 miles unless it's a model simply for test driving. Tell the dealer you'll work with them if they can be within a couple hundred dollars of dealers within a couple hundred miles, and then go from there. It's pretty easy to compare cars online nowadays. And, most likely, unless it's a ford or chevy, the dealer you originally go to is where you're going to get the car even if that means shipping it in from somewhere and have it serviced if it's under warranty for a long time.

In my experience, there was a car that matched exactly what we wanted. Told the dealer that I had called the dealership where it was (Dallas) and had a price from them (which was about $2k under MSRP or whatever it's called). He said they could match the $2k under MSRP but there were shipping costs they couldn't waive. IE, we'd have to pay the $400 or whatever it costs for their guy to go get it. So, we went home. Then, he called the next day and said they had the same exact thing but it had an extra package which added $1k. He said they'd stay at $2k under MSRP and throw in apple car play or whatever. No delivery charge. We said fine. In the end, we didn't have to drive to Dallas to pick it up, got pretty close to what we wanted for a pretty decent price I thought. And, we have a guy in the sales dept who will bend over backwards to make sure the service dept takes care of things correctly.

We took it in for a problem with the screen in the console. They did a reboot on everything and called it good, but it still didn't work quite right. So, we called the salesman and he said bring it in and he'd have them replace the whole system.

Doubt they'd have done that if we had bought it in dallas and brought it to them for that service, though I could be wrong.

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Re: Car dealers are still sleezy bastards

Post by tlombard »

I've never actually bought a vehicle from a dealer (will probably soon). I did come really close when I was 20 or 21 though. I had a good job, credit and no debt or bills since I still lived at home. Being young and dumb with plenty of disposable income, they could have made a killing off of me. I went to a Pontiac dealership in Ellisville planning on looking at something specific (I forget what it was) and while I was waiting in the showroom for somebody to come help me and was glancing at a nice Firebird when a salesman walked up to me and the first thing he said was, "What, did you hit the lottery?" I walked right out and went to another dealership down the road where I managed to browse around for 20 minutes being ignored completely by salesmen. I had much better luck at the Acura dealership and was ready to buy an Acura Integra GSR that I loved, had a loan approved through the credit union at work... and then ended up not buying it once I called and got insurance quotes. Being 20, the insurance was just too much even with a clean driving record.

Turned out to be the best thing that ever happened though because a couple of weeks later my dad called me up and wanted me to look at something the next morning with him. It was a 12 year old '86 Z28 with 11,020 miles on it after I drove it. I went straight into work, got the loan for that and picked it up the next Monday. It was a long weekend waiting for that check since I got to work too late that day (it was a Friday) for them to actually get the check cut until Monday. Since it was a personal loan. Our family insurance agent wouldn't even try to sell me full coverage on that one so just liability wasn't bad at all. His reasoning for not quoting me full coverage was really appreciated though. Even though the car was PERFECT, the extra premiums didn't make sense. He pointed out that if the car got stolen or totaled a year later, what would be paid out would be less than if I just took the extra premiums and set them aside I would have more than what they'd pay me.

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