Adventures in car buying.

Happy Tuesday friends!  If you are reading this, that means you survived Monday....congratulations!  LOL

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We had an interesting Saturday.  Like I told y'all a couple of weeks ago, we are looking for a new (to us) car.  

We have almost decided on a Toyota Venza, and have been watching a few online for several weeks.  Well, the Venza I had been watching that was PERFECT, had a price drop of $3000 on Friday, which put it right in our target price range.  We immediately sent an e-mail requesting an appointment and within 2 minutes, we had a call from a salesman.  We set up an appointment for Saturday.

**The car dealership we made the appointment with is one of a huge complex of high-end dealerships.  The car was listed at the Lexus dealership.**

Marty de-junked and cleaned the car like a pro.  Once our car was ready, we headed to the dealership, which was an hour away.  We walked in for our "appointment" only to be told they couldn't find us in the system...at all.  Not only were we not in their system, they didn't recognize the salesman's name, and the car was already sold.

EXCUSE ME???

You talk about being TICKED OFF!  We were livid!  And if you follow me on Twitter, you may have caught part of my rant!  Not only did I vent on Twitter, I may have sent a not-so-nice e-mail to the dealership.  I know they are in the business of selling cars, but have the common courtesy to call us and let us know not to make the HOUR LONG DRIVE.

We went to cool our tempers by getting something to eat, and then decided to hit a nearby "motor mile" to see if we could find anything else we liked.  Rebound buy, anyone?  We ended up at a dealership that happened to have the same make of car we had been looking at, but quickly realized it was a piece of junk (or at least hadn't been taken care of very well). Then, a super-pushy salesman (that wouldn't stop smacking his GUM), who wouldn't take no for an answer, somehow persuaded us to take a test drive of a GMC Acadia.  The car was beautiful and had all the bells and whistles, but it had way too many miles on it and just couldn't see spending that much money on that "used" of a car.  I just wish we hadn't wasted TWO hours there, because we didn't have time to seriously look anywhere else.

We drove home disappointed, but realize that it just wasn't our time to buy a car, or at least this particular car.

One good thing did come out of the long drive:

 

When we got home, we had a weird e-mail from the car dealership, replying to my not-so-nice e-mail, with some lame attempt of an apology.  But it also implied that WE called the wrong dealership.  Which was complete crap because we never called anyone.  We hit the "schedule an appointment" tab ON THEIR AD FOR THE CAR and THEY CALLED US!  Whatever!  It's totally fine if you don't want our money!

Fast forward to Monday....Marty gets a phone call from the original salesman he talked to on Friday.  He wanted to know why we never showed up to look at the car on Saturday.  Marty then informed him of everything that happened and that we were not happy about our treatment.  Well, the salesman tells Marty that he knows the car isn't sold because he had moved it to HIS dealership on Friday, getting it ready for us to come on Saturday.  Well, HIS dealership was the Porsche, the car was listed at the Lexus.  Seriously, the two dealerships are YARDS apart  from each other, in the same complex.  It's not like they are on opposite sides of the city.  Do you think anyone bothered to tell us we needed to come to the Porsche dealership instead?  NOPE!  He then tells Marty that he didn't understand why they didn't tell us where the car was because they knew he had it with him, etc, etc, etc...  He told Marty that he was going to get his supervisor to call around immediately and find out why nobody told us where to go.  I'm holding my breath! {insert eye roll here} 

My theory:

They DID sell the car either Friday or Saturday morning.  Financing fell through or the customer had buyer's remorse and returned it to the dealership on Monday.  "Oops, now we are stuck with the car again and need to get rid of it ASAP."  "I know, lets call these suckers who showed interest last week and see if we can get them to come back."

I HOPE I am wrong, but I'm not counting on it.  Marty is expecting a call back from them tomorrow, so I guess we will see.  However, they will have to offer us a MIGHTY GREAT DEAL to even get us to think about driving back over there again!

Who knew buying a car would turn into a game of hide-and-seek?