It’s all rap to me

Nancy and I were discussing the band “Arrested Development” (the musical group, not the TV show), and I described them as being “rap”.  I then recanted and decided the correct description was probably “hip-hop”, but quickly realized that I’m a white girl, and when it comes right down to it, it’s just all rap to me.  Unless Ellen dances to it on her show, then it’s hip-hop.  It’s this type of insight that helped me to become the musical genius I am today.

I despise car dealerships and car salesmen with a passion almost unequaled.  I feel a bit badly saying that, because we have a friend who sells cars and she’s a good person, but for the most part, everyone under the roof of a car dealership is a sleazy bastard.  It’s not always the fault of the individual, because it’s probably tough to keep your job if you’re not sneaky and conniving, but nevertheless, we’ve met some real icky people over the last month and a half.  As you’ll know if you read Nancy’s blog, our beloved Aztek started to clunk and moan in May, and the dealership indicated it probably had transmission problems.  They offered to let us trade it in before they made a definitive diagnosis of what was wrong, and knowing nothing about cars, we felt it was better to take the dealer’s advice than to risk needing a few thousand dollars in repairs.  It turns out that we made the right choice, as the Aztek eventually ended up on the auction block and the dealership didn’t even try to resell it.  HOWEVER—what really ticks me off, in retrospect, is that the dealership never once suggested to us that we could look at new cars, they only took us to the used car lot.  I now know that they make all their money on the used cars, and that if we’d been prepared, we could have had a brand new Aztek for the price we paid for our used Hyundai Santa Fe.  I’m a person who researches and reads before I buy anything, so being put on the spot, and being totally unprepared, this experience was a disaster.  We also took the “dealer financing” which had us paying about 5 percentage points more than we needed to, but more on that later.

We liked the Santa Fe, but after driving it around for a few days we realized how much we missed the Aztek.  A search online for used Azteks revealed that we could buy a new one, so we decided that’s what we wanted to do.  We wanted a very specific colour and style, though, and the only model like the one we wanted was in New Mexico.  I figured a car dealer would be happy to make a sale, so I called around and asked if the local Pontiac dealers would help us bring a car in from the Pontiac dealer in Albuquerque (of course, we’d pay any extra fees).  The resounding response from the dealerships was “no”.  One guy told me that I wouldn’t get a dealer to cooperate because they wouldn’t make any money on the deal.  I guess all that money they’d make down the road as I brought the car in for maintenance and service didn’t count, nor did the potential for repeat business in the future.  When I did finally find one car dealership who would help out, they tried to mess around with the price and added $2000 to what we expected to pay, and then they said that the computers were down so there was no way to confirm my claim that the price they were charging was too high.  We walked out of that place and there was to be no orange Aztek for us.  We eventually returned to the dealership where we bought the Santa Fe (as we thought we’d get the best trade-in value there), but the salesguy again kept pushing used cars on us, and then tried to talk us into a black Aztek which we absolutely didn’t want.  All he cared about was the sale, not whether or not we bought a car we were truly happy with.

Right around this time, our friend who sells cars came to town on vacation, and we put her to work.  With her help, and the help of a friend of hers at a Chevy dealership, we picked out a Chevy Equinox that we loved.  The dealership didn’t haggle with us on price and gave us a great deal, gave us a very fair offering on our trade-in, and sold us an extended warranty at dealer cost.  They also helped us finance via a credit union, cutting our rate down to 4.5%.  The dealership was friendly, polite, and helpful, and I also feel that they were honest with us.  They made a bit of money—maybe not as much as they could have, but I’m sure they made some—and we drove away as happy customers who are willing to send business their way.  And we love the Equinox.  So, thank you, Vista Chevrolet in Las Vegas, for helping us to buy a car which really suited our needs (and our personality).  Thank you for not pretending that the only interest rate we could get was 9%.  And thanks for not tacking $500+ onto the price of the extended warranty.

So, at this point in the story, I’m sort of happy with car dealers again, but over the past few days I’ve returned to being pissed off.  We can get a refund of our extended warranty and the Gap insurance we bought for the Santa Fe, but the dealership we bought it from has to give us the paperwork.  We’ve been in there twice to get these papers, and both times they’ve been completely unhelpful.  The first time we waited for twenty minutes or more and no finance person was “available” to talk to us.  We left a detailed note asking someone to mail us the paperwork or to phone us, and no one did.  We went back to the dealership today, and while we did talk to someone in finance, he was “too busy” to help us, and told us we’d need to wait about 45 minutes before he’d be free.  He said he needed to process cancellation paperwork and we had to sign it.  We had other errands to run and didn’t want to wait 45 minutes, so I asked if we could make an appointment to come back in, and he said no, they don’t take appointments.  You know, I’d bet if I wanted to come in and buy a car, they’d make an appointment to see me.  I’ve got an inkling about that.  So, we still don’t have our cancellation paperwork, and with every day that passes, it’s money we lose from our refund.  Car dealers suck!  Courtesy Pontiac GMC in Las Vegas, you suck!  You’re just a slimy bunch of con men and believe me, we won’t be back to do business with you anytime in the future.  Caveat emptor, and really, we should all just ride the bus.

So, that’s really the big thing we’ve been doing lately—fuming at car salesmen.  Seriously though, we just love the Chevy Equinox, and it even survived Eli’s trip to the optometrist.  It came with XM Satellite Radio and OnStar, and wow, we love OnStar.  For no reason, really, we just love a gadget.  We can push a little button and talk to nice people in Canada about things, and our car even has its own phone number.  We’re going to make an effort to leave the house more often to take advantage of these little niceities.

Work is so busy right now—more work than I can shake a keyboard at.  I feel like I’m at the computer slogging away at every spare moment, yet there’s still so much work to finish.  We’re having good luck with a new affiliate program and we hope they’re honest and will stay in business and won’t cheat us out of money.  We’re making 5+ sales every day with this new program, vs. 3+ sales per week with the program we’ve used for the last year or so.  At that rate, we can calculate that our old affiliate partner cheated us out of $100K or so last year.  Isn’t that special?  No wonder we’re always so stressed.

All the pets are well, and Eli passed her eye exam with Dr. Michael Brinkmann with flying colours, as usual.  It’s just not that hard to put drops in her eye once a day, but the vet always seems so thrilled at our excellent compliance.  Maybe I couldn’t be a vet… maybe I’d get too irritated with the owners who didn’t give a damn.  We made an appointment to take Phoenix in to see Dr. Brinkmann next month, so perhaps we’ll finally know if she can see at all, and what exactly is wrong with her eyes.  If nothing else, she’ll love the car ride.

I’ve got a ton of book reviews to write, as I’ve finished some reading in my absence.  In lieu of those right now, here are some fun links.  First, visit Wing Tunes to download free music samples by Wing, a singer who was recently immortalized on an episode of “South Park”.  You’ll never be the same after you’ve heard them (they make Dante bark).  And after that, spend some time visiting My Cat Hates You, because it might be the best website ever made in the entire history of the Internet.  I submitted a photo of Frank so I’ll post a link if it gets accepted, but in the interim, doesn’t this photo of a cat named Leo look just like my little Frank N. Stein?!  http://www.mycathatesyou.com/cats/2005/06/51

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 06/17 at 12:12 AM

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  1. And Courtesy Pontiac GMC has a crappy ass website too.  Grrrr.

    Posted by Flippy  on  06/17  at  02:32 AM

  2. Even crappier, we don’t even NEED the stupid dealer to do anything.  We can cancel by mail.  Man, Courtesy Pontiac sucks. 

    That aside, I love Dr. Brinkmann.  He’s one of my all time favorite vets.

    Posted by Flippy  on  06/18  at  12:14 AM
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