Wednesday, February 1, 2017

I Bought a Car! (or How Not to Sell a Car to a Woman)

How to lose a car sale to a woman in five easy lessons: Assume she’s stupid. Assume she doesn’t have money. Ask her if she’s married or single. Pressure her after she says she’s just test-driving. Then get pissed off when she says she’s going to sleep on it.


So I did a little bit of car buying this past weekend while visiting my friend in Florida. I ended up buying a new car, which I hadn’t planned to do (I’m a used car kind of gal), and I bought it from the second dealer I visited; and I visited that dealer because yes, everything above really happened………in 2017. Seriously.

Friend Tonya went with me to test drive cars. I was trying to decide between a sedan or SUV. I was in no hurry to buy, just thought I’d start looking, but I was ready in case “that car” appeared.

We went to the above dealer. There was a nice guy who was new, and a pushy guy who was training him. Nice Guy went with us on the test drives. We liked him.

Side Story: When the dealer guy asks for your license, it is not all that funny when your “friend” says, “Oh no, you need her license? She has a DUI.” Well, I have to qualify what I said. She thought it was stinking hilarious as I was sputtering, “I do NOT have a DUI! I’ve never had a DUI! I’ve never even caused an accident! I’ve only gotten one ticket, and that was in Grundy County in Illinois, and everybody gets tickets in Grundy County (as I was told by everyone after I got the ticket – thanks for nothing),” and fortunately, with no thanks to her, he believed me.

I’m getting off the subject, but as you can imagine, I’m still a bit scarred. She says someday I’ll laugh about it.

So I decide I’m definitely interested in a sedan, but not necessarily that one. Enter Pushy Guy. He asks me if I’m single or married. At that point, Tonya, who is slightly in front of me and closer to him, turns so that I can see her and he can’t, and she has this really funny smirk on her face that I know is saying, “Ohhhh nooooo. She’s gonna take him down!” I can’t even look at her because we have this amazing way of reading each other’s minds and collapsing into giggles, and I asked the obvious (I thought), “Why does it matter if I’m single or married?” He then went on about how he’s all about saving me money, and he wants me to get something with payments I can afford, etc, etc, to which I responded, “You don’t even know if I need financing,” and he went on some more, and when he stopped talking, I said, “and why does it matter if I’m single or married?” He said if I didn’t have a husband who could take care of my car, I would want an extended warranty. I can tell Tonya is in pain trying to keep her head from exploding, as I said, “How do you know I’m not a badass car mechanic?” He started to lose his game and asked, “Did I say something wrong?” Oh, Pushy Guy, where do I begin? And not today, please. It's not my day to educate you.

So when your experience starts like that, you’re on guard. Tonya found a car at another dealership not far away, and for reasons I can’t explain, I took her driving with me again. We show up at the other place, expecting the same kind of treatment, and I have to say I was a bit startled when a guy came out to greet me by introducing himself as he shook my hand and looked me in the eye. Huh. I wonder what’s up with that?

I went on a test drive with our new friend, Dan, along with Tonya and her husband, Peege (funny story for another day). Tonya is cracking herself up telling him the DUI story. Then I told him she forgot to mention that I had just bailed those two out of jail. And what does he say? “It's ok. We all make mistakes.” Seriously? Seriously???

Another Side Story: Leah’s car has a heated steering wheel, and it has been my dream to have one of those. It’s not something they tend to point out in Florida, because well, Florida, so I look down and see a picture of a steering wheel with heat rising, and I whispered to Tonya, "If I push this and my steering wheel starts to heat up, this baby is mine!" It did, and it was, and the long, drawn-out moral of this story is, if you treat people respectfully, they tend to respond well. They did, and I did, and I have a car with a heated steering wheel!!

I apologize for the ramblingness (ramblinguity?) of this post, but there is a serious point here somewhere. Ooh, here it is. Don’t be a jerk and assume you know something about someone else when you don’t. The End.