Car Buying Rant & Rave

I'm not a fan of car shopping. Sure, if I had an unlimited amount of money to spend it wouldn't be a problem but I like to get my limited amount of money's worth. So this weekend dh & I went car shopping, not fun but definitely not fun in the summer heat. We knew what we wanted, a small compact, low miles, 2-3 years old. We focused on Honda Civics and Toyota Corollas.

By the end of Saturday we had one possible car to buy - a Civic. But, when spending thousands of dollars you want to know that you've done due diligence and are getting the best car at the best price out there. So today we tried another dealer. Their website showed two Civics that fit our criteria. We get there and before we could get out of the car a sales person is out there waiting for us. We give him our list with the info of the two cars we want to see. He invites us inside, telling us he'll look them up and see if they still have them. We have a seat and he starts taking down our information. Not exactly comfortable with this but, okay. We finally head outside to look at some cars. The two cars on our list were both 2008, low miles (13K & 18K) and $17K & $14K. Same exact models, only difference was the miles and price.

The first car he showed us was an Accord, which is bigger than the Civic and had a lot of miles on it. He tells us the previous owner drove it to Flagstaff every day. That's like 1 1/2 hours away. We told him no. Then he showed us a Civic - a 2010 model priced at $22K. No again. Hey, another Civic, also another 2010 model at, yeah $22K. At this point I'm getting irritated. We come in, very specific with what we want and it's like he didn't listen. His manager shows up, asks how we're doing. We tell him what we're looking for. Then I ask the sales guy, "What about the two cars on the list we gave you?" His response, "Ah, here's the gray." Both cars on the list were gray. And yes, this car was a gray Civic but not one on the list. This was a 2007, which would have been fine except it had 36K miles. Too high. My guy drives 90 miles a day to work and back, he can put miles on the car just fine. :)

I ask about the two cars on the list. Where are they? Are they even out here? His response was that he'd go find out. What?! I thought that's what he was doing when we were inside at his desk and he was looking them up on his computer. Ugh! At this point I look at dh and say, I'm getting pissed, I want to go. His response - Okay. LOL He's usually very mellow but I knew he was already irritated when the guy had us inside, taking our information instead of showing us the cars. So I tell the sales guy that we're leaving. He's like, no, don't go, give me a couple minutes and I'll find the cars. Dude - we already gave you more than a couple minutes! We keep walking to our car, the sales manager guy comes out and starts after us, asking us to wait. I'm like, nope, we're done. We get in our car and the manager asks us "Didn't you see anything you liked?" So dh tells him that the guy didn't show us what we asked to see. And we left.

End of rant. Yeah!

We went back to one of the dealers from the day before and talked to Mo again - a nice salesman who wasn't pushy and showed us exactly what we asked to see. He was happy to see us back and after test driving another car, dh decided he liked the one he drove the day before. We started the massive amounts of paperwork and dh now has a new-to-us Civic. And now I'm wanting a newer car. I've got my eye on a red Honda CRV. But that will have to wait a couple of years. At least now I know where to go first!