Reliving the sales shit , Party van, Birds blew it
I have been going back and forth with the local Toyota dealer for awhile about the Camry hybrid. We talked about going in to test drive one for awhile but our schedules have never meshed. Well I got a call Friday from the sales guy saying they got 3 of them in and we set up an appointment for Saturday morning. I wasn’t looking forward to stepping back into the car sale circus but it is a necessary evil.
I sold new cars for about 16 months in my early 20’s so I know how the whole game works. I know all about back ends, padding interest rates, selling you unnecessary insurance and warranties. I took part in the exhausting back and forth negotiations that take place in car sales. I TO’d (turned over) customers to my sales and finance manager, I told lies, I manipulated people with subtle mental tricks as I was taught to do. It was my background in car sales that made me so angry with the purchase of our 2003 Sentra where I basically ignored all of my knowledge and allowed us to to get rammed into a vehicle on terms that were unfavorable to me in the long run. After that experience I swore no more new cars, well unfortunately the Camry Hybrid is pretty much only available as a new car.
So anyway, we pull into the place and see the swarms of sales people coming out the door, moving cars out onto the grass for hopefully a busy Saturday. They had 30 sales people on the floor, a huge number. At Hyundai the most we ever had on at once might have been eight. We met our sales guy at the door. He was a personable guy named Tony. Tony had a Camry Hybrid pulled out front, all ready for us to test drive. Tony had another new sales guy named “Mack” by his side. He explained Mack was new and still in training. Mack was from Bangladesh, I don’t believe that was his given name.
Tony gave the car sales standard walk around on the vehicle. It is something I knew well. You literally walk around the vehicle and point out features as you circle around. It is designed to impress the customer. Tony’s walk around wasn’t all that impressive, mine used to be much more thorough. Luckily it didn’t really matter because I did plenty of research online and I probably knew more about the car than he did. He told us Mack would go out on the test drive with us and we were off.
Mack directed us around the standard test drive route. He was chatting it up the entire time, spewing out things that were supposed to sound important. Very little of it interested me. I tried to tune him out and focus on the car. Man it drove nice. It was silky smooth, spacious and had plenty of power. I really liked it. I pulled over and let Ali drive it a bit as well. She liked it too but in typical Ali fashion, she was bummed out about a small detail, the sales guys told us the Camry didn’t have the hybrid monitoring system available on the big LCD in the center (like the Prius), only in the speedometer cluster. It turns out the sales guys were wrong about this as well. We pulled back into the lot and went back in and talked to Tony some more.
Within a few minutes we found out Tony and I had quite a few things in common. We both love dogs, he has a black lab, I would guess he is around my age and he has played a lot of beach doubles volleyball. He seemed like the type of guy I would like to hang with but it never left the back of my mind that his ultimate goal was to seperate me from as much cash as possible. We told Tony that we liked the Camry a lot but also still were considering the Prius. He said they had some 07 Prius on the lot too so we hopped in one of them with Mack and took it out.
This was a base model Prius touring edition. I didn’t bother to drive it since I drove one for 600 miles out in California. Sitting in it was like night and day compared to the Camry. Ali immediately noticed how my seated posistion was much more cramped than the Camry. Ali prefers the Prius if it was just her but she conceded that the Camry would be a better fit since I drive 80% of the time. The Prius seemed sort of very much like a econo-car after driving the Camry.
During the second test drive, Mack opened up a bit more about his personal history. He has beein in the US for the past 5 years and for 3 and a half of them he was driving a car without a driver’s license. It was an odd thing for him to reveal. He said he was legal now as though that made it all ok. I also did a little probing of Mack regarding the ridiculous addendum stickers they slapped on their cars. The Camry had a 3000 dollar “Market Value” adjustment on it, the Prius had an obscene FIVE THOUSAND dollar market adjustment. These adjustments totally negate any savings you could hope to have with a hybrid vehicle over the life of the car and are just pure unadulterated profit for the dealer, all of which you immediately lose in resale value. When I asked Mack about it he gave some rehearsed speech about the cars being in high demand, blah, blah. I didn’t continue the line of questioning as I knew Mack had zero to do with what we would wind up paying.
We came back to the dealership and sat down again with Tony and established what we wanted to work numbers on, a Camry Hybrid with the navigation system and cloth interior. Ali has a hang up with leather seats because of her pro-animal stance. Don’t get me wrong I am all about animals as well but I pointed out to Ali that the leather is a by product of the animals being killed for food, they aren’t killed for the leather. Plus we have leather furniture at home. Well anyways, cloth and navigation it is. We told Tony about our trade as well. A 2003 Sentra with 67000 miles on it isn’t a big draw but even with the miles, I got online values ranging from 6k to 7k as a trade in value.
Before we got into numbers, Tony TO’d us for the first time to the F&I (financing guy). It was annoying because the guy basically asked us all the stuff we just got done explaining to Tony. He was trying to establish if we were buyer or strokers. We explained to him more than once that if we can agree on numbers, we were buyers, plain and simple. This guy was the only person I dealt with that I had an immediate distaste for.
The process was long, we did a LOT of sitting around. Mack’s job during this process was to bring Ali and I Diet Coke’s. Eventually they looked at the Sentra and Tony came back with the initial numbers. They were laughable. They low balled the trade and didn’t discount the car one bit. They appraised the Sentra at 4k. With the price of the Camry and what we owed on the Sentra they showed a total of 41k! I immediately called shenanigans on the appraisal. I told him it was 50% lower than the lowest appraisal I saw online. I said the number on the Camry with the market value adjustment on the sticker was crazy and I offered that we appreciated his efforts but we didn’t want to waste his time, we were so far apart.
Well Tony remained calm and started probing us for what we wanted. I told him that with the trade and a certain amount down where we wanted our payment to be. I told him I ran the numbers online and it is realistic, but not at what they are trying to sell the car for and giving us on the trade. I said we were like 10k apart. Well he wrote down what we were willing to do and then drew a line and said sign here if you agree to buy the car at these numbers. Ali and I looked at each other. We had been here before, it is a common salesman tactic to make you feel like you are committed to buying. After some discussion with Tony I said fine, I signed it. After a few minutes the next TO occurs.
The sales manager, Manny sits down. He is a a nice guy as well. He started going into a big speal. Right away I saw his paper he had in front of him that showed a monthly payment 80 bucks a month higher than we agreed to and included an additional 1500 of up front money. So I let him ramble on, telling us how our trade is a tough sell and I once again explained that I took into account mileage and location when I got the appraisals. Eventually he got around to officially showing us the paper and we told him that it still was not close. Once again he asked what we would agree to. We both liked the car so we showed our hand a bit and moved up on what we were willing to spend per month by 20 bucks. Once again, he asks us to sign the paper that we would be willing to buy the car at that number and shakes my hand. He said he was going to see if he could get more for my trade.
Manny came back in only a few minutes and said he was sorry, the best they could do was coming within 40 dollars a month of our number. Well we were disappointed because he acted like it was doable but we certainly were not going to give any further. He apologized, shook my hand once again and we were out the door. The bottom line was they were not willing to discount the car much because they assume someone else will be willing to overpay for it.
The entire affair took over 3 hours so it was a bit of a bummer to spend that much time and not get something but Ali and I both felt good about holding the line and not jumping into something that was going to cost us a lot more than we were willing to budget for. The Sentra will have to do for now. I did however contact the dealership in Fort Myers this morning. They are a huge high volume store and have a reputation of being much more willing to deal than the Naples dealership. I don’t know if they are trying to price gouge people on hybrids too but it is worth looking into.
We got home early Saturday afternoon. Ali had to pack up and go to some event where she was trying to pitch Pampered Chef. I was outside pretty much the entire time she was gone doing chores. After watering the still thirsty landscape, I turned my attention to the party van. My sour attitude towards it has softened a bit and Ali and I have even been talking about taking it out west to see my sister and dad. So I addressed a few things on it. I removed an auxillary braking thing the prior owner put in it for his geriatric dad. It was a hand held trigger that was used to apply the brakes. I had a theory that this sytem may have been contributing to the braking issues and since I never used it I cut, unscrewed and yanked the sucker out and threw it away. Next I removed the cradle for the satellite radio units I no longer own. Finally I tackled the most challenging job, fixing the inside rear door handle that refused to open the door.
I fought with that sucker for awhile, after disassembling the door panel I saw the problem. The plastic sheathing that kept the cable in place was deteriorating, allowing too much play in the cable so it wouldn’t trip the latch. I tried various rig jobs like using tie wraps to apply additional torque, using a small hose clamp to apply additional tension to the wire, none of it worked. Finally I wedged the wire into the latch in such a way that it tripped the door. I triumphantly closed and opened the door from the inside, it was a nice little victory. The sticking door was one of the little van annoyances that bugged me for a long time.
For the grand finale I gave the van a much needed bath. I pulled out the vacuum and swept the inside as well. The good feeling was short lived as I came around to the passenger side with the shop vac. As I opened the passenger door a full size adult tree frog hopped out from uder the door sill, onto the passenger side floor and instantly hopped up the foot well to somewhere up under the dash. I was pissed. The f’in frog is going to die up there somewhere and stink the van up for weeks. I hopelessly started banging on the heater box and the dash, thinking that just maybe the racket would drive the frog out. I turned the blower on high, thinking maybe that would do the trick. I jammed my hand up behind the dash, hoping to feel something slimy that I could forcefully extract. I struck out all around and left the frog in the van to die and rot. Most of the times the frogs are cute but when they do this sort of shit I just want to squash em. Well regardless the van looked decent after it’s bath and I made a mental commitment to try to take it to work once every week or two to try to keep it in good running shape.
Saturday night we watched another flick I dl’d, Click, starring Adam Sandler. It was a light hearted comedy that at the end flips over to an emotionally painful film which I didn’t appreciate. It basically was a non-Christmas version of Scrooge. I would give it a B-. Adam’s wife in it is the woman that is in Underworld, she is hot.
We got some bad news on Saturday that Ali’s Pop Pop had a stroke. The good news is it happened in the dining room of the nursing home so he was attended to right away. Ali talked to him on Sunday. He is still suffering some of the affects of it but hopefully he is out of the woods as far as immediate danger. It really upset Ali. She will be going up in early November to see him again.
On Sunday morning we kncoked out grass mowing even though only a few spots on the property had grass of considerable length. As Ali finished mowing on the tractor I moved inside to tackle what I deemed a necessary chore, steam cleaning the carpet. I do it every 2 or 3 months, I should do it more. It gets put off because it is a pain in the ass. After thoroughly vacuuming, I go back over all the carpet with the steam cleaner.
Calling it a steam cleaner is misleading because it doesn’t use steam at all. In fact the water is only as hot as what you get out of the faucet, it does no additional heating which is lame. Running the cleaner is a chore because you have to go over each spot several times, once to apply the solution and then several more passes to suck up as much water as possible. Each time I emptied the tank the water was very dirty so it at least made the effort feel worthwhile. By the time I was done my shoulder was burning from pushing the machine back and forth a few hundred times. The carpet looked pretty good by the end. Late in the day I almost strangled the f’in cat when she once again used the now clean carpet as toilet paper. I chased her around a bit but Ali called me off her and she cleaned up the shit, saying the cat knows no better. I offered up that slamming her off a wall may help the learning process.
The Eagles game was a disappointment. They once again let the game they were in contol of slip away. It was just sloppy on multiple fronts, most notably special teams and defense. The special teams were bad all day long, leading directly to Saints points. The defense allowed the Saints to hold the ball the last 8 and a half minutes of the game, kicking a field goal with 3 seconds to play to end it. It was embarrassing as the Saints were able to kneel down the last 2 minutes of the game before kicking the field goal. Once again, the Birds wasted time outs early in the half because they couldn’t get plays called in time. Michael Lewis has distinguished himself as a true liability in pass coverage, he once again blew a big play that allowed the Saints to score a quick touchdown. He made similar f ups in the Giants and Cowboys game. He can’t be trusted back there, pro bowl quality player my ass. Hank Baskett came up lame. He had a couple opportunities to make some big catches and came up with iron hands everytime. Asselio Hanson (or whatever his name is) doesn’t belong out on the field. The defense in general just did not assert itself. The unit has shown a disturbing tenedency to not be able to make a stop when it needs to. It was a bad game.
Around 5:15, I was playing WoW and out of the blue I asked Ali if she wanted to go run a quick mile with me at the track. I was in a bad mood from the Eagles game and I thought a quick run may help my mood. I hadn’t run with Ali outside in a long, long time. We ran the mile at a quick pace, quicker than Ali is used to now. Running outside was a lot different than the treadmill work I have been doing. You actually use your legs to propel yourself forward. When you are on the treadmill, the movement of track moves your leg back for you. I felt what has become the normal little twinges in my knees so as as precaution I iced and Aleve’d afterward but they both feel ok today. It was good to get out there and it did help my mood a bit.
Ali sent me this link. It is a cute little thing where you answer some questions and it will approximate what age you could expect to live to. I clicked in at 89. Eh I doubt I would want to live that long. Try it out.