I wrote this sometime in October after buying our first car in September 2014. Such a silly story. I don't even want to go read through it before I post it.
There were so many things that we couldn't take care of while we were in Louisiana, so we got to happily ignore them. Suddenly, reality is staring us in the face, we're having a baby in less than two months, and we've got to get cracking on this huge list. Apparently the first item was buying a car. We'd done quit a bit of looking online, and so on Thursday we had Keller come over for dinner and to baby-sit so that we could get serious. After comparing prices and thinking more about MPG and what this car will mainly be used for, we decided that a Corolla/Civic/Elantra was going to make more sense than the Camry we were originally thinking. With that in mind, we had Keller come over again on Saturday morning so that we could do some more looking. I think we hit up 5 lots in less than an hour. They hadn't quite opened yet, which was awesome because then we could look around and get out of there before some salesman could talk our ears off trying to convince us that they actually did have something we wanted. Just because we were passing it, we decided to stop at one place we hadn't intended to go since we had already looked at their inventory online. As soon as we pulled into a spot, a salesman apparated from behind a pillar and started asking us about our credit. I was in no mood to get stuck talking about credit all morning, so I declined whatever he was offering and suggested that we see if their was anything we were remotely interested in first. Since he didn't know the price of any of the cars he was showing us, this was turning into a mess in a hurry. When he went in to check some prices/mileage, another salesman (at the time we thought he was some sort of manager) came out and completely stole the first guy's turf. He suggested we take one of the cars we'd looked at over to their other lots to see if they had anything. I'm not entirely sure why we agreed to this, but we only had one other lot we were planning to visit that day, so we went. The first place was in Provo and didn't really have anything, and the next thing I knew, we were driving up to Sandy (what?). They had a much bigger selection of used cars and we found four that we could be interested in. We changed our minds on the Elantra, and two of the corollas weren't available for some reason, so that left us with one option. We were able to drive it back down to the Orem lot to get more info on it and decide if we were interested. THIS WAS THE KEY. Since the salesman had to drive the other car, Andrew and I had a good thirty minutes to talk between the two of us. I also called my dad to ask for some advice on how to not overpay or get tricked and my parents helped SO much! My mom immediately started looking up the value of the car on multiple sites and giving me all sorts of helpful information in addition to the tips my dad had shared. By the time we got back to Orem, we had a good idea of how overpriced the car was and what we should actually pay for it. This is the part of the story where I get a little worked up just thinking about it. First we got to see that the car had previously been a company car and it had a great maintenance history. Then came the ridiculous offer. We countered 2500 lower, he countered up another 500 and we said no and asked what was up with all the "mandatory" fees all over the place. This is where is started to get mad and said that the price was under the budget that we had told him when we first came in. He was twisting my words and I just rolled my eyes and got annoyed with him, but now I really wish I had thought to point out that despite what our budget was, we weren't willing to spend that much on THIS car and so it didn't matter. He tried really hard to get us to change our minds and even did the whole, If I can sell it to you for your original offer, will you buy it? Okay, then sign this random line I just drew on this blank piece of paper. So Andrew did and when he came back with the go-ahead we went back on it. I know, we're the worst, right? But there were still hundreds of dollars in random fees and we just weren't going to pay it. He got so mad. While he was trying to reason all sorts of things about what a crazy good deal this would be, and Andrew was making small talk, I interrupted him and said if the out-the-door price was under ___ (about another 700 down) then we would buy the car and we would be done negotiating. That really got his undies in a twist. He asked me if I realized that every time I cut the price down it was making his commission less and that with the money we pay, they company has to cover the cost of the car itself, pay their employees, blah blah blah. He pointed out that we had already gone down 2500 from the original price and that this was just crazy. Oh please. I responded that of course I knew all of that and that, with that knowledge in mind, I felt more than comfortable making the offer. I wish I had used his argument against him and pointed out how I can't trust him BECAUSE he is making commission off of the sale and that the more we overpaid the happier he would be. Why can I never think of good responses when I'm in the moment? Anyway, he was very annoyed and made of big show out of how he was going to be more specific this time and wrote out a whole sentence about buying the car for x amount of money and had us both sign it-so silly. Well he came back, we got the price we said, and a couple of those "mandatory" fees had magically disappeared. On to the paperwork! We weren't planning to buy a car that day, so after doing most of the paperwork, he drove us down the street to the bank so that we could transfer some money and get a check. He was super weird at the bank, he just stood right next to us at the counter and listened to everything we were doing. Who does that? He tried to convince us to get a blank check rather than one that had the amount filled in and he just wouldn't go away. He also kept telling us about what a crazy good deal we had gotten and how his boss had printed out the cost and told him to hurry up and leave his office before he changed his mind...okay, right. If I had rolled my eyes anymore, they would have fallen out. So we got back, finished the paperwork, and drove off in our new car. And that, my friends is the story of how we were able to pay less for a car than we said we would only 10 minutes before.
There were so many things that we couldn't take care of while we were in Louisiana, so we got to happily ignore them. Suddenly, reality is staring us in the face, we're having a baby in less than two months, and we've got to get cracking on this huge list. Apparently the first item was buying a car. We'd done quit a bit of looking online, and so on Thursday we had Keller come over for dinner and to baby-sit so that we could get serious. After comparing prices and thinking more about MPG and what this car will mainly be used for, we decided that a Corolla/Civic/Elantra was going to make more sense than the Camry we were originally thinking. With that in mind, we had Keller come over again on Saturday morning so that we could do some more looking. I think we hit up 5 lots in less than an hour. They hadn't quite opened yet, which was awesome because then we could look around and get out of there before some salesman could talk our ears off trying to convince us that they actually did have something we wanted. Just because we were passing it, we decided to stop at one place we hadn't intended to go since we had already looked at their inventory online. As soon as we pulled into a spot, a salesman apparated from behind a pillar and started asking us about our credit. I was in no mood to get stuck talking about credit all morning, so I declined whatever he was offering and suggested that we see if their was anything we were remotely interested in first. Since he didn't know the price of any of the cars he was showing us, this was turning into a mess in a hurry. When he went in to check some prices/mileage, another salesman (at the time we thought he was some sort of manager) came out and completely stole the first guy's turf. He suggested we take one of the cars we'd looked at over to their other lots to see if they had anything. I'm not entirely sure why we agreed to this, but we only had one other lot we were planning to visit that day, so we went. The first place was in Provo and didn't really have anything, and the next thing I knew, we were driving up to Sandy (what?). They had a much bigger selection of used cars and we found four that we could be interested in. We changed our minds on the Elantra, and two of the corollas weren't available for some reason, so that left us with one option. We were able to drive it back down to the Orem lot to get more info on it and decide if we were interested. THIS WAS THE KEY. Since the salesman had to drive the other car, Andrew and I had a good thirty minutes to talk between the two of us. I also called my dad to ask for some advice on how to not overpay or get tricked and my parents helped SO much! My mom immediately started looking up the value of the car on multiple sites and giving me all sorts of helpful information in addition to the tips my dad had shared. By the time we got back to Orem, we had a good idea of how overpriced the car was and what we should actually pay for it. This is the part of the story where I get a little worked up just thinking about it. First we got to see that the car had previously been a company car and it had a great maintenance history. Then came the ridiculous offer. We countered 2500 lower, he countered up another 500 and we said no and asked what was up with all the "mandatory" fees all over the place. This is where is started to get mad and said that the price was under the budget that we had told him when we first came in. He was twisting my words and I just rolled my eyes and got annoyed with him, but now I really wish I had thought to point out that despite what our budget was, we weren't willing to spend that much on THIS car and so it didn't matter. He tried really hard to get us to change our minds and even did the whole, If I can sell it to you for your original offer, will you buy it? Okay, then sign this random line I just drew on this blank piece of paper. So Andrew did and when he came back with the go-ahead we went back on it. I know, we're the worst, right? But there were still hundreds of dollars in random fees and we just weren't going to pay it. He got so mad. While he was trying to reason all sorts of things about what a crazy good deal this would be, and Andrew was making small talk, I interrupted him and said if the out-the-door price was under ___ (about another 700 down) then we would buy the car and we would be done negotiating. That really got his undies in a twist. He asked me if I realized that every time I cut the price down it was making his commission less and that with the money we pay, they company has to cover the cost of the car itself, pay their employees, blah blah blah. He pointed out that we had already gone down 2500 from the original price and that this was just crazy. Oh please. I responded that of course I knew all of that and that, with that knowledge in mind, I felt more than comfortable making the offer. I wish I had used his argument against him and pointed out how I can't trust him BECAUSE he is making commission off of the sale and that the more we overpaid the happier he would be. Why can I never think of good responses when I'm in the moment? Anyway, he was very annoyed and made of big show out of how he was going to be more specific this time and wrote out a whole sentence about buying the car for x amount of money and had us both sign it-so silly. Well he came back, we got the price we said, and a couple of those "mandatory" fees had magically disappeared. On to the paperwork! We weren't planning to buy a car that day, so after doing most of the paperwork, he drove us down the street to the bank so that we could transfer some money and get a check. He was super weird at the bank, he just stood right next to us at the counter and listened to everything we were doing. Who does that? He tried to convince us to get a blank check rather than one that had the amount filled in and he just wouldn't go away. He also kept telling us about what a crazy good deal we had gotten and how his boss had printed out the cost and told him to hurry up and leave his office before he changed his mind...okay, right. If I had rolled my eyes anymore, they would have fallen out. So we got back, finished the paperwork, and drove off in our new car. And that, my friends is the story of how we were able to pay less for a car than we said we would only 10 minutes before.
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