Saturday, August 01, 2009

On the Hunt Rant With Overuse of Parentheses

We have been trying to take advantage of cash for clunkers for the past couple days to no avail. Dealerships are still honoring the program (at least they were today, as long as they eventually get paid by the gov't, or you can turn the car back in and get your clunker back)--it isn't that. It is the fact that no one can find us the car we want.

We know EXACTLY what we want and we don't really care if it is a GMC Acadia or a Saturn Outlook (same car basically). We know what trim level we want (basic). We don't really care what color it is. We know what extras we want (not many)....and because GM shut down production of vehicles in March, the inventory level is low. Apparently the car(s) we want cannot be found anywhere in the Baltimore metro area. Sure, each dealership might have ONE Acadia but it will be decked out with too many expensive extras, like a camera mounted to the rear of the car to show you how much room you have for backing up and Bose speakers and cooled seats. Awesome, but we can't afford that. We have called no fewer than 8 different dealerships and visited about 6 and yet....our clunker is still alive and well in our garage. C'est la vie.

But the annoying thing is that the dealers keep giving us the runaround. They say, "If we don't have what you want, we'll find one at another dealer and get it for you. " Riiiiight. So, then they go search their database and come back and say, "Oh...there aren't any like that in Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania or Virginia. We searched our database for the entire region. And the only one even remotely like it is here on our lot!" (That crazy-expensive one over there.)

So, John called a big dealer in Virginia and he said he has a bunch of what we're looking for. You can even see them on their Website. So, how do you explain THAT? We went back and told the Unhelpfuls that--and lo and behold! Suddenly they were able to find 6 or so in their database. So, why don't we have one today, you ask? Well, they can't call that other dealer until Monday. Even though they are open for four more hours today. Because that makes so much sense.

And, is it just me, or have car salesmen become even less informed than ever? They don't even know what discounts GM is offering, even though they're plastered all over the GM Website (sure, they're probably playing dumb on that one). One guy didn't know what the auto start button was. One didn't know what the little weird loopy things in the third row are. They don't know which models come with which packages, or what different packages contain. I swear, we have done our research--we have researched the shit out of these vehicles. Seems to me maybe the salesmen should do the same. John knew the horse power of the Saturn today while the guy was fumbling around trying to read the sticker for the answer. We asked to see what the silver color looked like today and they guy had to look up a car on Ebay to show us. EBAY! Some other dimwit brought in a plastic grayish-colored-sample of the silver paint color, but the manager said, "No. That's not it!" So the guy left and brought back black sample and said, "It is like this, only silver."

Hmmmm....and now they're wondering why GM went bankrupt?

*****
On a much lighter note: Tracy and Randy graciously offered to watch our kids today while we subjected ourselves to the aforementioned ass-pain. When we arrived at their house to get the kids, Andrew was standing unassisted, which he's been doing for about a week. I sat down next to him and held my hand just out of his reach and he took his first unassisted steps! Or, so I think. I suspect he was doing it while we were out, but Tracy is too sweet to admit it!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Ahhhhh. I hate car shopping. We recently ordered a car online and the guy did the same thing some of your guys did (for a while). Oh, we have the one you want - but the only one we have has $4,000 of extras (what?). We had to go around with him a zillion times. Finally, he got it right and we are happy. Good luck!

Angie said...

How annoying! We've never had that kind of problem, though Allen did search quite a bit for his last truck. I wasn't really involved in it, though, so it wasn't my problem.

Don't buy the vehicle before they send it to you to test drive, though. We bought our 4-runner after test driving a more expensive model. We didn't realize how much less would be on it. We didn't mind after awhile, but were pretty disappointed when we first got the vehicle. More things were different than we had realized.

sgtsharp said...

Get Leather Seats!!!! way easier to clean!! will never buy another car/truck without leatherseats. cloth seat suck!! now getting a hand me down car is another story.
also a DVD Player nothing like having peaceful kids. then you can listen to grownup music up front.


word verifaction: forkswou
sounds like F.U.