Taking license

Over the past few weekends, I’ve spent more hours than I care to think about looking for a used—excuse me, certified pre-owned—car for my son. Or daughter. We’ll see whose room is cleaner when I get home.

What struck me about the whole ordeal is how monumentally unpleasant the experience is. Not a revelation if you’ve ever bought a car, but always a surprise to me. I guess it’s because like surgery or Christmas shopping, I don’t do it often enough to remember the amount of pain involved.

On paper, it should be one of the most exciting, fun experiences you can have. You get to test drive lots of different models, pick one that makes you happy, and drive off into the sunset, preferably up a winding coastal road where you can let your right foot loose and see how many curves your new investment wants to hug.

Well, not so fast there Edsel.

Because of an incident at Keyes Toyota years ago, where the wife and I were virtually held hostage for three hours because they wouldn’t give us back our car keys (they were checking it out for trade in—no we didn’t buy there, yes we finally escaped), I’ve been adamant about laying down a few ground rules when car shopping.

The first is never give them my keys.

Here are the others: I don't go inside the dealership and have a seat if I’m just shopping. Instead, I’ll have the salesperson go inside, get their best price and walk it back out to me. I make two things clear—they only have one shot at it, so the number they give me has to be the final offer the first time. And I won’t wait longer than fifteen minutes.

Which brings me to my next rule: I don’t deal with anyone but the salesperson. No closers, no sales managers, no fleet managers coming out the door with their shark tooth smile and hand ready to shake mine. If the salesperson can’t make the deal, meeting his boss isn’t going to help.

Speaking of the deal, I never take the deal. Any number they give me has profit built into it, otherwise they wouldn't be selling it at that price. So even though I've asked them for their best offer, I have no qualms about being the bad guy and letting them know it isn't good enough. I'll try to knock another ten to fifteen percent off whenever number they give me. If they're willing to negotiate, I know they haven't given me their best price (which they never do). If they're not willing to negotiate, there's always another dealer who is—all you have to do is remind them and they usually change their tune. However if they start whining about how they're not making any money on the deal, or ask me to come up just $200 more on my offer, I'm out of there.

With car salespeople it doesn't take much for my bullshit meter to go into the red.

For the time being I've taken a break from car shopping, although I still peruse online to see what's out there. But my time right now is mostly being spent figuring out how to pay for the upcoming kitchen remodel. Plus for the moment we seem to be managing with the cars we have.

But if anyone has a fairly new model, safe car they'd like to sell, we can always talk about it.

C'mon inside and have a seat.