So, we are in Wood River, at Keya's parents' house. We came straight here after picking up her new car. She is now the proud owner of a beautiful 2009 Pontiac G6. If you want the specs of the car, I'll be happy to share elsewhere. I'm guessing most of my loyal readers (HAHA! Reader) care not for such trifles. Here's the deal, though. There's a reason I stick with one dealer when I find one I like. We looked at nearly every dealership between Grand Island and Council Bluffs. That's not the part that threw me. Now, this blog is in response to a couple of friends who wanted funny back in the blogs. 10-4. File this one in both "If only you knew who you were talking to," as well as, "Did you really just say that s**t to me and expect me not to find out?"
I am doing my best to only repeat what was said to me/us. I am not doing this to bad mouth a specific dealership or dealerships. I am just sharing honestly.
First dealership - H&H Kia in O-town (Bro, don't lie to me):
Our salesman claimed to be a former Marine. Now, he was built about like me. I'm not saying he WASN'T a former Marine, but he neither looked or acted the part based on my experience with Marines. Not the point. While driving the car (A brand new Kia Forte), we were talking about this, that or the other. I mentioned that I had seen very few USED Forte sedans, and he said they're hard to find based on the fact that they have a phenomenal warranty (Which is true. 10 yr/100,000 miles powertrain) and that they hadn't had one in quite some time. Really, I think the reason is because the model's only been around since 2010. However, he promised that if one came in, he'd call us. As we re-mount my motorcycle, we realised we were parked right in front of a USED KIA FORTE WITH H&H plates! WTF?! Dude, seriously. You BLATANTLY lied to me! Now, it's possible that he didn't know, but there was no hesitation, no "I don't think we've had one for awhile," just a "No."
I had also asked him about any new 2012's still on the lot. Nope. They hadn't had one in over a month as the 2013's were coming in. Upon returning to my place, I looked online and, low and behold, they had a 2012, brand new Kia Forte in stock. WHAT THE HELL?!
Brandon had already lost me by this point, but then, a week later, they got a used Kia Forte Koup in stock. Keya wasn't particularly interested in the Koup, but had mentioned that she'd drive one. What does he go and do? Schedule a test drive presumptively. I. You. WHAT? Never, NEVER in my life has THAT happened. In other news... they'll be getting a politely worded, but anger-ridden email later. I swore I'd never buy a car from them because their ads irritate me to no end. Their salesman only helped re-assure me in that decision. Don't lie to me, bro.
Second dealership - Anderson Auto Group in St. Joe, MO; Lincoln, NE; and Grand Island, NE (I was neither born at night, nor was I born last night):
Anderson was of particular interest to us because they have stores in both Grand Island (where her parents work and live 10 miles west) and in Lincoln (there are two stores there, and Keya lives there, I'm working there and soon to move there). Browsing their website, I find a 2012 Ford Focus listed for 14,900 with an MSRP of just over 22,000. OOOHH!!! YES! She was interested in the Focus, this store was in GI, her parents could go look at it. YES! DO IT! I immediately emailed the store using the link on the website. I get a message back fairly quickly. The message said (in short, as I no longer have the message, and it was fairly verbose, as was my response) that they knew the car I was talking about, and indeed, it was still there, and that will all of the discounts it was 19k. Wrote back and asked why it was listed at 14-9. I didn't hear back and didn't hear back. About a half hour later, I refreshed the page and magically, the price was 19k! WHOA! Welp, guess I brought that to their attention. I expected a contrite, but gracious email telling me that they'd fixed the price and sorry for the confusion. No, NO! That's not the choice this dealership made. His email said that he'd checked the website and the price was, in fact, 19k, and he wasn't sure as to how I'd been confused, but he was sorry for the confusion. I know this is getting old, but WHAT THE HELL?! Seriously, dude? Yeah, both my girlfriend and I (combined IQs somewhere north of 270) mistook a 4 for a 9. Oh, did I mention I didn't receive this email for over 5 hours after my previous reply?! (That last sentence makes me uncomfortable, but I want to you to share that with me, so I'm not changing it) Yeah, 5 hours. I wrote him back, letting him know I didn't like being treated like an idiot, that I'd bought WAY too many cars in my day to be treated like I didn't know anything. I used as many big words as I knew/could look up on thesaurus.com in the email to prove to him I'm all SMRT and junk. I also told him that I'd have had a hell of a lot more respect for him if he'd just said, "You're right, thank you for bringing that to our attention, and we've fixed the problem." The next day, he sent me an email saying that they must have fixed the problem over the weekend and it had taken 24 hours to update on the site. Now, my computer friends out there, tell me if that's realistic that a car dealership with 4 stores wouldn't have the technology to instantly update the website. I feel like it's too much of a coincidence that within a half hour of me bringing it to their attention, it then updated. IDK.
ANYWAY, in spite of that, Anderson continued to come through with vehicles that were interesting to Keya. I had time to kill between work and volleyball practice and ran over to their Lincoln North store to see what they had. Saw a couple of cars I really liked and got to talking to a salesman who mentioned that they move cars between stores all the time. I asked if there was a transfer fee, and he said no. They had a couple Kia Fortes at their store in St. Joe's, Missouri and I knew those would be at the top of our list. He indicated it wouldn't be a problem. I had to run to volleyball.
The end of that same week (last week, then, I suppose) Keya had found two cars at the North store (still Anderson) she liked. We went up to look at them and drove three cars, a 2010 Kia Optima, a 2010 Hyundai Sonata (they're the same car, different manufacturers) and saw this 2009 Pontiac G6 on the lot. It turns out, it hadn't been on the website b/c they'd just taken it on trade. We drove it. It was great. It's got 32,00 miles on it. It's cherry. It's her new car. ANYWAY, the dealership in O where I bought my car from had a similar G6, and I wanted to look at it. Nissan of Omaha has been phenomenal with the way they've treated me. We scheduled a test drive of the G6 in O for the next morning (Then H&H Kia told us we had a scheduled test drive we'd not solicited. It ended up being the same time as our test drive at Nissan of O). We liked both G6s, but the one at Nissan of O had 11,000 more miles and the paint wasn't nearly as clean.
So, as the day goes on, we decide we definitely like the G6 from Anderson the best. The saleswoman had been great so far, outside of the fact she told me I was wrong about Ford ever owning Mazda (they don't any more, but they did once upon a time). Mikeal Hocevar, do I know my stuff? I looked it up. DON'T ARGUE CAR STUFF WITH ME! Sorry... side track. So, I get on the phone with her to set up a "Plate and Pass" wherein we will get to borrow the car to drive to York to show Keya's parents. She starts telling me that we should have the loan in Keya's name with her dad as a co-signer to help her build credit. The difference in APR will only be like 7.99% vs. as low as 2.49%. No, I don't think we're going to do that, I tell her. It'd be a good idea, she says, and an easy way to help her build her credit (her credit's not bad, she has just always paid for things with cash). I said it'd be as easy to get her a credit card she puts a small amount on every month and pays off every month. This is a point of contention, I can tell. I get to Lincoln, and she is working on the paperwork, including getting us some basics on financing, trade for the Neon, etc. She again brings up the co-signing thing. She shows me the difference over three years. Yeah, it's $650 over three years difference (Not much! she says). Yeah, lady... $650 is a lot of money no matter how much time we're talking about. I tell her, again, that we're not going to do that and she says (direct quote) that's the stupidest thing we can do. I damn near walked, but it's a really nice car. She pushed it, and pushed it, and pushed it. Again, lady, I know how financing and APR work. Admittedly, $650 over three years (less than $20) isn't a TON of money, but it's still money, and not the best way for us to do it.
On the other side, I will tell you that I wish I'd bought from Nissan of Omaha, but there was no way they could match the deal on this car. It was amazing! My boy at Nissan of O wanted us to buy his, but it just wasn't nearly as nice, was the same price, and had way more miles. Oh, and Anderson gave us $300 more than Nissan offered us for the Neon.
Also, Duteau Chevy in Lincoln has a really great salesman named Tom who probably is part of the reason we bought the G6. We drove a Malibu down there, and the fact that Keya liked it so much is a big part of the reason we looked closely at the G6.
Okay, that's it. I hope it's funnier!!! ;-)
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