Buying My First Car

I was chatting with muh honey the other day about when we bought our first cars.

Each of us took our respective fathers with us to go buy our cars.

We were both fresh out of college and had no experience in negotiating anything. Her transaction went pretty smoothly and she loves that little Jetta of hers. I, on the other hand, can honestly say. "We almost got kicked out of the dealership."

The story is entertaining on some level and I feel the need to share it with you loyal readers.

My father found an advertisement in the paper for a rather cheap Hyundai Accent for approximately $7500. So... the two of us went into the particular dealership in Flemington, New Jersey and walked around the cars for sale. We were eventually assisted by a slimy salesman. We did a bit of haggling and got the salesman to finally agree on the $7500 price tag that was in the paper.

We went back to the desk and filled out the paperwork. The plan was to use my savings and buy the car outright with a check. The salesman agreed that this would be a terrific sale as we didn't need to fill out any of that pesky financing paperwork.

For the record, car dealerships make a great deal of money on the financing. That is how they can offer such low prices sometimes as the interest on the financing more than makes up for the lower price.

We signed all the paperwork and the salesman took it back for manager approval. We waited for about 10 to 15 minutes when the salesman and the manager came out from the back. They informed us that they couldn't sell us the car because the $7500 price was only for those people that took advantage of their financing plan. My father's quick response was... "Too bad, we already signed all the paperwork and got a receipt for the check." A heated exchange took place and we were almost escorted from the building.

This brought out the owner of the place as the salesman and manager obbviously had a lot of ass covering to do. After some calmer discussions, I eventually walked out of the dealership with key in hand and went home driving my new car.

This is where I started believing in a conspiracy.

I can only wonder what the dealership did to the car as we argued about it. About 3 weeks into owning the car, problems started to result. I don't want to get into it too deeply, but let's just say that 3 months later, after 4 visits to the dealership, and 4 rental cars, a boss who didn't believe that I had to leave early again to get the car fixed, 239 headaches, a letter to the Department of State asking for the Lemon Law to be applied, the car was finally fixed.

To this day... some eight and a half years later, I still believe that the car was not the problem. It was the dealership(s) that were the problem. I know it is crazy, but I believe that there was some sort of deception going on here. We had "pulled one over" on the dealership and this was the retribution. I really do believe it.

They should have thrown us out. I would have gotten a car elsewhere and had less headaches. I swear by it.