Car Salesmen Suck. Except Jim.

It's "Let's borrow money from a billion places and spend a hundred hours trying to buy a 2nd car" week here in Crazyville. Does it REALLY have to be this difficult to buy a new car? I blame the men. No, really. There are very few women selling cars out there, but if they DID, this is how I imagine it would go:

Husband & Wife walk into a dealership. They are approached by a good looking (read: not skanky/slutty/whorish/24), clean, well-mannered woman who offers them a beverage and asks if she can help them.
Wife: He wrecked one of our cars [points to husband] and we need to replace it. It needs to have 4 doors, decent gas milage, be any color except red or white and a blue tooth thingy for his phone so the cops don't arrest him when he drives to DC.
Saleswoman: No problem! What's the budget look like?
Wife: I stay home with the short people, so he's the one with the job and his credit is only OK because he didn't pay off his student loans when he was single. So we'd like to pay about $17,000 out the door. Oh and we have some cash for a down payment on that price.
Saleswoman: Typical. But that's still not a problem. Let's take a look at our inventory. [Pulls up long list of cars, sorts by color, then by price, prints list.] Here's what we have on the lot right now that are ready to go. The prices on the left INCLUDE all the taxes, tags, and processing fees. We currently have 13 cars under $17,000 that fit your criteria. I also happen to have a coupon for $750 off the sales price, and we double all coupons here. There are no restrictions on it, either. Now, which color would you like to see? *smile*

Here's what actually happened:

The Husband and I go to a dealership. We stand around for 5 minutes before someone approaches us. The Husband gives the name of a guy he spoke to on the phone. Loud muffled page over the loud speaker. 5 minutes later a short, spazzy Salesman with a scruffy beard comes up and has no clue who we are or what he spoke to The Husband about. The Husband explains he found a car on their website that fits into his budget, has blue tooth, etc., etc. Salesman sits at a computer and they both look at the car online. I text my Mother back a list of acceptable foods that The Girl can have since she is currently squishing and throwing her dinner on the floor. Salesman gets up and goes to talk to the "mystery rule maker" in the back [totally dark and enclosed] office, comes back and says that said car was sold this afternoon and no one bothered to update the website. The Husband gets a look on his face like his non-existent dog died, then asks if there is another, similar car on the lot.

Salesman, The Husband and I shuffle to a different desk (apparently the internet doesn't work the same way on all the computers in the building) and Salesman brings up the inventory. He finds 1 (ONE) car that could be in the budget if the numbers work out right. Everyone traipses to the back of the lot (damn you cute black high heels!!) and we get into the car, which has been sitting there since June. I know because checked the sticker on the window. Everything is covered in plastic and it is HOT.AS.HELL. The Husband drives it up to the front, we get out and go back inside to sit at the 2nd desk.

Salesman tells us that since the car has not been on the lot for a long time, it's going to be hard to negotiate the price down, and also because that's just not how they work. He takes the printout The Husband had of the car that got sold to the "mystery rule maker" to see what the final price would be. I text my Mom back and apologize for the ginormous pile of clean laundry upstairs and yes, The Girl's pj's really are in her room. Salesman comes back with an outrageous number that included almost $3,000 in fees (one was actually for freight. Yes, FREIGHT. I looked him in the eyes and said "That car's been sitting back there since JUNE. Why do we have to pay freight?" He said nothing.). Also, we have to finance the car through THEM or they charge us an extra $500. BUT, if we finance through them, they'll GIVE US $500 CASH. To which I said "WHUCK?" The Husband has been shaking his head no the whole time and saying "That's $1,500 more than we can do. No way."

Salesman keeps insiting that with this incentive and that incentive it works out great and he's not making any money off of the deal at this price anyway and did we go to college because if we can give a transcript he can knock off $500 (WTF is the obsession with $500?!) and maybe there's a way to drop it a LITTLE, but really our budget is just unreasonable and why are we being so unfair? The Husband said "Ok. Thanks. Bye."

So we went to Carmax next door. Met a nice, laid back guy named Jim. He let us look around, printed out a few cars, gave us some info, let us know they could transfer a car to that dealership from up to 250 miles away for FREE and told us to call him when we were ready to go. The Husband looked less like his dog died and more like the internet was temporarily unavailable. A few days later (today) he went online, found a car on the carmax website and requested a transfer.

That was WAY more complicated than it needed to be. You either want to sell a car or you don't. Don't waste my mother fecking time playing with the price of the car (in increments of $500) just to eek out a few bucks. Want steady money where you don't have to rely on commission? GET ANOTHER JOB!

And so, after all that... there's a chance that in the next 7 days, we could have another car! I have already promised The Boy that we would take a picnic lunch and go to the Dinosaur Park. In the middle of the day, whenever we want to, because The Husband will be able to take his own damn car to work! Yey!

I need a glass of wine. Adios, people.