Interesting Non Car Buying Experience

[Pariah3j]

Not sure if I got lucky or the dealership I've bought my last 2 cars from is just that good. Last 2 cars were Honda Civics through the Honda dealership - they weren't exactly quick but they didn't really play games either.

Walked in, pointed to the car I wanted more or less and told them I'd like to finance them through them, and wouldn't pay over X amount per month. First time they came back with about 30-40 dollars over the monthly amount I said I would pay, started to stand up. Sales guy says hold on, goes back and a few minutes later, comes back with an offer about 10-15 bucks under the amount I had set. Did that with both buying and leasing.

The only thing that was annoying was sitting through the finance officer trying to upsale me on warranty and other crap. Enough nopes and they eventually sigh in defeat and gave me the contract.

[Abraham]

As for extended warranties - they can be hand for the same coverage for far less expensive elsewhere beyond the dealership.

What?

When I bought my last Tundra, they at the dealership wanted to sell me an extended warranty with a $50.00 deductible for an enormous amount of money. No, I don't recall the exact money number...

I found a Toyota dealership out of state who would sell me an extended warranty for about half what the dealership I was buying my Tundra from wanted, plus no deductible.

At this point, it's more than paid for itself. Things on vehicles go south if you keep them for long enough and I do...

P.S. I was told at the dealership the extended warranty had to be bought before I took possession of the vehicle or I could kiss extended warranty good-bye.

Wrong.

[The Marshal]

2 years back I went into a certain Stone Lar Darley Havidson
Test rode a used bike with The Spousal Unit.
The Salesperson told me at least 20 times that H-D has financing. Before I closed the deal I made the mistake of saying that I was paying cash.
Got to have a sit down with the sales manager. After 20 minutes of Cash not Financing discussion, suddenly someone pops their head in and says "Oh, sorry about that. That bike has already been sold. After 2 hours of working with these people, they found out they made a mistake!

As Spousal Unit and I were leaving the Salesman (ha!) turns to me and says "I guess you wish you had taken that deal now..."

[TreyHouston]

As for extended warranties - they can be hand for the same coverage for far less expensive elsewhere beyond the dealership.

What?

When I bought my last Tundra, they at the dealership wanted to sell me an extended warranty with a $50.00 deductible for an enormous amount of money. No, I don't recall the exact money number...

I found a Toyota dealership out of state who would sell me an extended warranty for about half what the dealership I was buying my Tundra from wanted, plus no deductible.

At this point, it's more than paid for itself. Things on vehicles go south if you keep them for long enough and I do...

P.S. I was told at the dealership the extended warranty had to be bought before I took possession of the vehicle or I could kiss extended warranty good-bye.

Wrong.

I agree! I only buy used and with all the technology today I always shop around for a good aftermarket warranty. I will use it here and there but a month before the warranty runs out I will take it to a mechanic shop friend and tell the “find EVERYTHING wrong with this car and call it in. 3/3 times that came to well over $3,000!

[PUCKER]

To the OP: buying cars can be a pain in the rear, for sure!

My VP and I have bought 4 cars total from Jason Foshea at Classic Chevy/Thompson Fleet in the last few weeks. He’s straight up and does not play games. If you’d like me to make the intro send me a PM.

[thatguyoverthere]

Well, it's all done now!

A lady friend of ours at church had recently bought a new vehicle. She was very pleased with her whole experience and so recommended a specific salesman at another dealership. After our original place blew up our deal in F&I, we were planning on visiting this other dealership anyway. But now we had a good recommendation for a specific salesman, too.

We closed the deal and picked up our new ride yesterday. We did pay slightly more than what the salesman at that first dealership where we had the problems had quoted us, but THIS dealership's F&I guy did not try to add $3,750 to our quoted price (in fact, didn't try to add ANY to the quoted price!).

I don't feel bad about the price I actually paid being a little bit more than what the first dealership quoted, because after it all fell apart there at that dealership, I realized they never intended to honor that price they gave us anyway. Here at THIS dealership, when we settled on a price, that was it - it was settled (as it should be).

Here at THIS dealership where we ended up buying, we spent probably a couple of hours with the salesman. Yeah, that's kind of a long time, but heck, I'm retired and the grandkids aren't close by, so what else do I have to do? And he was a nice, easy-going guy. Seemed like every 15 minutes or so, he would just drop off a few hundred bucks. So I figure it was time well spent!

So after finishing with the salesman, he took us to the F&I guy. Now of course, the F&I guy did try to sell us his products, too (GAP insurance, extended warranty, maintenance plan, interior/exterior car-care products, etc.). He seemed like a nice guy also, so I politely gave him about 30-60 seconds to give me his pitch for each item (since I had no intention of buying any of them, I figured not much reason to talk about them). Then after he made his (brief) offer of each item, I politely said: "No, thanks." Then he immediately moved on to his next item. No pressure at all. We spent less than 5 minutes total going over all of the products he was trying to sell, then we moved on to the paperwork for the vehicle. He printed out the sales & finance paperwork and gave it to me. I took a couple of minutes to look it over (and lo and behold, all the numbers were exactly the same as what were on the salesman's sheet!). I signed all the papers there, and we were done. In and out of the F&I guy's office in about 15 minutes, and that included a few minutes of chit-chat about kids & grandkids, etc.

So we ended up buying the exact same model, color, engine, trim level and everthing there at THIS dealership that we almost did at the first dealership, and for a very good price.

As it turned out, my wife was unavailable when the car was ready to be picked up, so the salesman said he would drive it the 25 miles up to my place out in the country if I wanted him to. So I told him sure, bring it on. I told him I'd even make it easy on him - I would drive him back to the dealership so he wouldn't have to bring an extra driver with him (figured it would also give me a chance to have him go over some of the many features of the "infotainment" stuff). But it ended up that instead of us talking about the car as I drove him back to the dealership, we spent the whole half-hour drive talking about kids, jobs, where we grew up, etc. Had a very nice little non-business type visit.

So, a great car-buying experience. Exact vehicle we wanted, very good price, no high pressure negotiations, no funny business with the numbers, quick and simple in F&I, and vehicle delivered to my place 25 miles away. Just the way it should be!

If anyone's interested and in the market for a new vehicle in the far North Dallas area, we dealt with David Perry at El Dorado Chevrolet in McKinney.

Thanks to everyone with all your specific recommendations. Apparently there is a disproportionate number of scum-bags in even the NEW car sales business. So I'm glad to hear that others have had good experiences as well.

For anyone reading this thread that is in the market for a new vehicle, pay attention to the recommendations from the various folks in this thread. I've found that personal recommendations will be a great help to you, as opposed to just walking cold-contact into a dealership and dealing with the first guy who meets you at the door.

So now I've got to go start reading the manual to try to figure out what the heck ALL these BUTTONS are for!

[Soccerdad1995]

As for extended warranties - they can be hand for the same coverage for far less expensive elsewhere beyond the dealership.

What?

When I bought my last Tundra, they at the dealership wanted to sell me an extended warranty with a $50.00 deductible for an enormous amount of money. No, I don't recall the exact money number...

I found a Toyota dealership out of state who would sell me an extended warranty for about half what the dealership I was buying my Tundra from wanted, plus no deductible.

At this point, it's more than paid for itself. Things on vehicles go south if you keep them for long enough and I do...

P.S. I was told at the dealership the extended warranty had to be bought before I took possession of the vehicle or I could kiss extended warranty good-bye.

Wrong.

I routinely get calls offering extended warranties on every vehicle I have bought over the last 5+ years, including one that I gave to my BIL (and transferred title to him).