I’m an 18 year old college student, and the only car I have ever owned was purchased second from a private party in a newspaper advertisement. Aside from that, I’ve had no experience with car shopping.
Yesterday, I received an advertisement from an auto dealership saying that they were giving away free raffle
tickets to either a $50,000 prize, or a new Corvette. The only way to receive a ticket would be to come do a credit check to finance a car. (Something along those lines).
I figured “Hell, why not? It should only take a few minutes for them to tell me I don’t have a enough credit, and I can still try for a Corvette.”
I drove over, and one of the salesman said that in addition to running my credit, he could do an appraisal for my current car to get a trade in value, and while he did that I could look around and select a car I would like. I thought that was okay, and he asked for my my keys, which I gave to him.
While I looked through the car lot, another dealer constantly followed me around, practically breathing down my neck and giving long winded speeches about each car I approached. Resisting the urge to backhand him, I went into the building and took a seat to wait for the one who said he would check my credit. He appeared shortly afterwards and asked if I had selected a car, to which I claimed that I had not yet. He strongly urged me to go back out to the lot and choose a car.
Extremely annoyed, I went back out and “chose” a car just to humor him–all I wanted at this point in time was the f’ing raffle ticket so that I could see if I had won, and then leave.
He excitedly told me that my credit was approved, but I needed a cosigner. I told him I did not know anyone, but he said “Oh come on, your mom and dad loves you, right?” and lead me into an office and pointed to a telephone. He watched me as I dialed a number (which was actually my voicemail), and at this point in time, I didn’t even want the raffle ticket anymore, I just wanted to go home. I pretended to leave a message and said to him “No one is home–can I just have my keys now? I really have to get going.”
He said that “the technicians” were still appraising my car, but he would go find them…in the meantime, try thinking of some other numbers to call and ask.
He did not return for a solid 45 minutes, and searched all over the premises for him, demanding his whereabouts from any employee I came across. They all would tell me they would page for him, but nothing happened.
After he appeared again, I yelled for him to give me my keys, but he kept saying things like “But don’t you want to see if you won the Corvette?” or “You’re telling me you don’t want a shot at $50,000″ He asked me if I had even tried asking anyone to cosign for me, and I said “Yes, and the answer was no. The difference between me and you is that I know what the word means!”
He said he would give me the keys if I called them back, put them on the speaker phone, and let him do the talking. I said okay, and he turned on the speaker phone. I dialed a number, and when the person answered the phone and said “Avondale City Police–how may I help you?” he immediately pushed the hook, handed me the keys along with his business card and said “Think it over, okay?” I shoved him to the floor and left.
After this ordeal, I don’t think I’ll ever go to another car dealership. Has anyone ever deal with this before when they shop for a car? How do you deal with it in order to buy a car that you would really like instead of acting under duress?
KB: He said “the technicians” needed to fully evaluate the car, and I saw no problem with it. *smacks himself over the head*
