Rave: The modern car buying experience

[jim]

We had to buy a car yesterday, just basic transportation for my wife. I was amazed at how easy this process has become. There was an episode on Modern Family the other day where Phil got this great deal on the internet, but his father in law insisted on coming along and going all old school and basically ruined it for him and he ended up paying more. I kind of laughed at that, because if you did go old school on these new school dealers I think they would think you were a freak.

Get a bunch of internet quotes (which were all great prices), call the one with the lowest, go in and 90 minutes later you leave with the car. You do get the sales pitch for rust proofing and warranties, but other than that painless. What is really weird now is the guy I worked with wasn't even there - and he didn't care. Told him we would be in last night and he said great, but his partner would take care of us because he got off at 4:00. In the old days, sales guys didn't leave at 4 when they had a car to sell. Now I think it's like a tip jar at a coffee shop - they just split it all up.

I don't miss the old days where the sales guy left for 10 minutes and then came back smiling and told you "This is your lucky day, my boss really wants to sell this car today.".

[lukethedrifter]

Pretty sure I told the story of my last car buying experience, just 5 years ago. I'm buying the bottom of the line Ford Focus FROM MY BROTHER IN LAW* when he walked out to see the finance guy, then turned around, came back and said "what do we have to do to get you in this car today?"






*yes I have a lot of brothers in law

[Freed Roger]

We bought a car in October. Basically we knew what we wanted going in. It took us half a day at the dealer. Not bad but not great. We had a trade-in and financing to work out there -so that's where the pain still comes.
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Also, the salesman was very aggressive in wanting us to fill out a positive survey. My wife did it, and I think she put mostly favorable - but the guy called harassing us to up the scores. Meh.

[Freed Roger]

Something else I noticed: My wife did most the online searching from our laptop. She just lurked, and didn't enter any contact info. The next day, my email had quite a bit of spam from local car dealers.

Then, the day after we bought the car, I get a call on my cell from a salesman at another dealer that we used years ago -asking if we were looking for a vehicle. When I replied with a simple "No", he was like "are you sure?"

That officially ends my naïveté about other's ability to link my IP address and usage to my contact info.

[jim]

We also traded a junker in at Carmax before this. This was car an absolute beater, 12 years old and the window wouldn't roll up or down on the drivers side and it was stuck 2" open, mirrors duct taped on, big scratch down the side, and then as of a week ago only 4 of the 5 cylinders firing right. Car sounded like it was going to explode into a ball of flames until you got it to about 20, which at that point it just simply ran rough. Check engine flashing etc.. Could have been just coils and plugs or it could have been we needed an entirely new engine. They gave us $750 for it, which I thought was fair. I wouldn't sell that to anyone.

My wife got to Carmax at 4:30, we were out of there with the check in under an hour. Got to the dealer at 5:45, at 7:30 we were in a restaurant eating BBQ with the new car in our possession. Two different transactions at two different stores in 3 hours.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

We also traded a junker in at Carmax before this. This was car an absolute beater, 12 years old and the window wouldn't roll up or down on the drivers side and it was stuck 2" open, mirrors duct taped on, big scratch down the side, and then as of a week ago only 4 of the 5 cylinders firing right. Car sounded like it was going to explode into a ball of flames until you got it to about 20, which at that point it just simply ran rough. Check engine flashing etc.. Could have been just coils and plugs or it could have been we needed an entirely new engine. They gave us $750 for it, which I thought was fair. I wouldn't sell that to anyone.

My wife got to Carmax at 4:30, we were out of there with the check in under an hour. Got to the dealer at 5:45, at 7:30 we were in a restaurant eating BBQ with the new car in our possession. Two different transactions at two different stores in 3 hours.

My 21 year old son went to CarMax looking for a Nissan Frontier. They didn't have one but there was one on a lot near Atlanta. A day or so later, the sales guy calls and says the truck's in, come take a look. We researched online and got blue book of 8-10K.

We go to our credit union to make sure we could get a loan for him. Not an issue as long as I'm co-signing. Great. We head to CarMax. The truck is real clean inside and out. Good but not new tires, clean bed liner, etc. The son says its better than any other truck he's looked at from Craigslist and other lots around town. Nice.

"How much?"
"15K" says the guy.
"Wow, that's well over blue book."
"We don't haggle here at CarMax. Our price is our price."

My son is still smitten. I take him across the street for lunch and explain the situation. I'm not going to make his decision for him, he needs to decide if excellent condition is worth 50% over book value. He decides he wants the truck as he will need it for work, etc. We go back to see if there is any negotiating at all. Nope - the book value is way off on these trucks says the sales guy.

After one more time making sure my son is OK with over-paying, I tell the sales guy we'll go get the check from the credit union and be back.

Well, he and 2 of his co-workers work real hard to get us to fill in a 'loan application' that they will be happy to tear up if we can't get the money from the CU and to 'hold the truck for you'. Initially I'm ok with it but then they say they are going to run my credit and I'll need to sign for the loan. No way I say and we end up having to leave while they are still insisting we need to do this loan application.

We get to the CU, they get the VIN number and say they'll only finance up to 11K because that's all the truck is worth. The light finally goes on for my son. He puts two and two together.

"They wanted to lock me into their loan before going to the CU where they knew I would be rejected, right?"
"Bingo!"

And for extra credit, he notices the CarMax loan rate was higher than the CU.

"Why do you think that is?" I ask him.
"Because CarMax knows people are going to default at higher rates and needs the extra interest?" "Boy, maybe you are smarter than I gave you credit for - I am proud of you!" I joke to him.

We go back to CarMax and our son, with the self-righteousness of the young, tells the sales droids what he thinks and we go home truckless but a whole lot smarter.

CarMax sucks as bad as any other car dealer and from where I sit, nothing much has changed in the car buying experience here in North Alabama.

[Diddy]

Something else I noticed: My wife did most the online searching from our laptop. She just lurked, and didn't enter any contact info. The next day, my email had quite a bit of spam from local car dealers.

Then, the day after we bought the car, I get a call on my cell from a salesman at another dealer that we used years ago -asking if we were looking for a vehicle. When I replied with a simple "No", he was like "are you sure?"

That officially ends my naïveté about other's ability to link my IP address and usage to my contact info.

We are expecting our third child in March and decided that I needed to sell my truck and get an SUV. Sold my truck outright because they weren't willing to give me much on a trade. Was able to sell it slightly above book value for 7k more then they were going to give me on a trade. I literally was not home from the bank from paying off the loan on it and the salesman who sold it to me called to see if I needed help finding something.

My wife found an SUV online and the actual transaction for it was pretty simple. Only able to get them to come down a few hundred, but I guess the internet has changed that. We looked at another one and after the test drive the salesman asked if we were interested. I told him yes but not at that price, he wouldn't even make an offer just told us that was already his best price.

Found several vehicles that had salvage or rebuilt titles, all had great prices and the dealers were upfront about the titles, but I've heard CarMax tries to pass a lot of these off to unsuspecting buyers. I don't know that I was 100% opposed to one but my bank wasn't interested in loaning money on one.

[IMADreamer]

We bought a new Ram last year for the farm. I was pretty sure at one point my Dad was going to put the salesman from the first dealership through the wall. My Dad was going to just write a check, the dickhead basically refused to accept that and an argument ensued. I think after a half hour my Dad called the guy a slimy son of a [expletive] and we walked out. As we got to the truck we came in he basically cuts my Dad off and wouldn't let him in the car. I was pretty sure that salesman was dead but after my Dad turned real red and clinched his fist the salesman couldn't get away fast enough. Pretty stupid to lose a 50k dollar check because you are pushing dealer financing.

We went to the other Dodge dealer in the area and had a new truck in about an hour.

[Diddy]

We bought a new Ram last year for the farm. I was pretty sure at one point my Dad was going to put the salesman from the first dealership through the wall. My Dad was going to just write a check, the dickhead basically refused to accept that and an argument ensued. I think after a half hour my Dad called the guy a slimy son of a [expletive] and we walked out. As we got to the truck we came in he basically cuts my Dad off and wouldn't let him in the car. I was pretty sure that salesman was dead but after my Dad turned real red and clinched his fist the salesman couldn't get away fast enough. Pretty stupid to lose a 50k dollar check because you are pushing dealer financing.

We went to the other Dodge dealer in the area and had a new truck in about an hour.

Why did they start calling them Ram and disasociating with he dodge name?

[jim]

We also traded a junker in at Carmax before this. This was car an absolute beater, 12 years old and the window wouldn't roll up or down on the drivers side and it was stuck 2" open, mirrors duct taped on, big scratch down the side, and then as of a week ago only 4 of the 5 cylinders firing right. Car sounded like it was going to explode into a ball of flames until you got it to about 20, which at that point it just simply ran rough. Check engine flashing etc.. Could have been just coils and plugs or it could have been we needed an entirely new engine. They gave us $750 for it, which I thought was fair. I wouldn't sell that to anyone.

My wife got to Carmax at 4:30, we were out of there with the check in under an hour. Got to the dealer at 5:45, at 7:30 we were in a restaurant eating BBQ with the new car in our possession. Two different transactions at two different stores in 3 hours.

My 21 year old son went to CarMax looking for a Nissan Frontier. They didn't have one but there was one on a lot near Atlanta. A day or so later, the sales guy calls and says the truck's in, come take a look. We researched online and got blue book of 8-10K.

We go to our credit union to make sure we could get a loan for him. Not an issue as long as I'm co-signing. Great. We head to CarMax. The truck is real clean inside and out. Good but not new tires, clean bed liner, etc. The son says its better than any other truck he's looked at from Craigslist and other lots around town. Nice.

"How much?"
"15K" says the guy.
"Wow, that's well over blue book."
"We don't haggle here at CarMax. Our price is our price."

My son is still smitten. I take him across the street for lunch and explain the situation. I'm not going to make his decision for him, he needs to decide if excellent condition is worth 50% over book value. He decides he wants the truck as he will need it for work, etc. We go back to see if there is any negotiating at all. Nope - the book value is way off on these trucks says the sales guy.

After one more time making sure my son is OK with over-paying, I tell the sales guy we'll go get the check from the credit union and be back.

Well, he and 2 of his co-workers work real hard to get us to fill in a 'loan application' that they will be happy to tear up if we can't get the money from the CU and to 'hold the truck for you'. Initially I'm ok with it but then they say they are going to run my credit and I'll need to sign for the loan. No way I say and we end up having to leave while they are still insisting we need to do this loan application.

We get to the CU, they get the VIN number and say they'll only finance up to 11K because that's all the truck is worth. The light finally goes on for my son. He puts two and two together.

"They wanted to lock me into their loan before going to the CU where they knew I would be rejected, right?"
"Bingo!"

And for extra credit, he notices the CarMax loan rate was higher than the CU.

"Why do you think that is?" I ask him.
"Because CarMax knows people are going to default at higher rates and needs the extra interest?" "Boy, maybe you are smarter than I gave you credit for - I am proud of you!" I joke to him.

We go back to CarMax and our son, with the self-righteousness of the young, tells the sales droids what he thinks and we go home truckless but a whole lot smarter.

CarMax sucks as bad as any other car dealer and from where I sit, nothing much has changed in the car buying experience here in North Alabama.

carmax used car prices are very high. There was a Ford Focus (that's what my wife bought) on the lot with the exact same options with 4k miles that was a couple hundred over what we paid for a car at the dealer with 7 miles on it. I don't know the depreciation from mile 7 to mile 4,000, but I know it's pretty high.