Car buying experience

The title of this post is probably misleading, it should say "car browsing experience" since we walked away from buying a car today. I just have to blog about it though b/c it was pretty unbelievable. It BLOWS MY MIND how car salesmen act. Let me preface this by saying my dad was a car salesman. I mean no disrespect but the guys we had today were very stereotypical.

The scoop-
We have $15,200 to spend. As said before, we'd like to not spend all of it and we're absolutely not willing to spend more. No ifs, ands, or buts about that last part. Since I'm good at crunching numbers, I knew just how much the car needed to cost so that once you add taxes, license, registration, and fees, our total at the end is $15,200. In other words, the car we buy needs to be priced at $13,400. 

The experience-
We've been checking out Kia Fortes and found some online at a dealership near our house for $13,987. We decided to head over there to test drive the car (they had 6 or 7 of them). After driving it around and asking some questions (we did all of our research beforehand though), we decided to make them an offer.

We originally offered $13,000. Remember, the asking price was $13,987. "Don" said he had to check with his manager. He came back and said no but proceeded to ask us a bunch of questions. We wouldn't tell them whether we were paying cash or financing until we settled on a price. We wouldn't tell them anything actually, until we settled on a price.

The guy ended up bringing his manager over and they seriously threw every tactic at us possible to get us to break our budget. Initially, they were "only" willing to come down to $13,720. We said no. After going 'round and 'round w/ them, we finally told them our max was $13,400 (which is the truth) and that's final. The manager said he'd take $13,600. We said no. $13,400. And that's when he pulled out his big guns. He said all of the following at one point or another-

• "Can't I make a $100 profit on this car?" (Sure you can, unless that $100 comes from us exceeding our budget, then no.)
• "What if we take $13,400 now and you come back in a month and give us the other $200?"  (Umm... seriously? Do people really say yes to this?")
• "You can put the $200 on a credit card." (Hell no.)
• "What if you buy a Kia Rio instead?"  (What? No. We just test drove a Forte, shut up.)
• "Are you willing to finance a little bit of it?" (Nope)
• "You guys are really going to walk away because of $200?"  (You guys are really going to keep this car on your lot for however long over $200?)
• "You'll easily save $200 in gas with this car." (So what? that has nothing to do with the PURCHASE PRICE of the car.)

I'm really proud of us for sticking to our budget and walking away despite the pressure. I can see how they get so many people to buy a car by pressuring them. We said "No" so many times and they would NOT let us leave. Seriously. Every time we tried to walk away, they would say, "Well, now, just wait, what if we..." then proceeded to try and convince us in another way without actually doing anything for us. And to think, all we really wanted them to do was come down from $13,987 to $13,400- a difference of $587! (And they were already at $13,600 so only $200!)

At one point he was leaning over the table (he was standing) and said very directly, "You wouldn't buy this car for $13,600?" To which I replied (and I'm proud of myself), "We don't make decisions that exceed our budget without thinking about it and discussing it in length. I can truthfully tell you that today, we will not buy this car for more than $13,400 and that's all there is to it."

So many times today I just sat there and laughed while they were talking to us. It was just so comical to me that they were doing what they were doing just to get us to buy this car. It felt great to not be in a hurry, to not "need" a new car, and frankly, to be in control. We don't have a new car (not yet anyway), but we don't have any regret or buyer's remourse for spending more than we planned and budgeted either. That's a great feeling!

Until tomorrow,
Kelsalynn