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Car shopping

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I must start off by saying that shopping is not my idea of a good time. Unless it’s books. Shopping for books rocks!

We got up and out the door early. We hit a total of four car lots and looked at six different cars.

We’re looking for something with some cargo space (gotta have room to haul the dogs around), good gas mileage, and doesn’t need maintenance every other week.

The first lot had the best customer service. The salesman there was professional, knew the answer to almost all our questions, and told us he didn’t know when he didn’t know the answer but would find out the answer for us.

We looked at three different cars. They were sort of like the three bears in the Goldilocks story. One was too big, one was too small, and the other was just right. The wife is in favor of the one that was too small. I know our needs for traveling and if nothing else I think the car is a little too small to get the dog crate into it. I also don’t think we’ll have enough room for all the things we carry when traveling.

The second car lot was OK. The salesman met us outside the front door. He was good at customer service. All the other sales people inside the dealership were just standing around. There were some problems finding a car that we could test drive. The first one had a dead battery. I’m not sure what was wrong with the second car. The third one was almost out of gas. The car itself was the one I liked of all the ones we saw. It handled well, and had space for the dog crate. The problem comes from the seats in the back not folding down completely flat, which cut down on overall usable cargo space. After the test drive the salesman went and grabbed the sales manager. I never like dealing with the sales managers. They tend to be pushy and come across as insincere when talking to them. This guy hit those points easily.

The third lot was OK. The salesman was OK. Right off the bat though we ran into a problem. The model of car we wanted had none on the lot. He told us it would be three to six months to order one and get it to us. That just won’t work for our timeline.

The last car lot was a bit uneven on the customer service aspect. When we fist got there I had to wait several minutes before anyone even showed up at the front service desk. An employee finally came by and asked if I’d been helped. I told him I needed to take one of their cars out for a test drive. He said to hold on a minute and he’d get someone to help me.

I stood there waiting for him to find someone. He went to the end pf the row of desks and was talking to another guy. While waiting another employee walked by and asked if anyone was helping me. I told him one of the other employees was looking for someone to take me for a test drive. A few more minutes after that the first guy looked up from the desk and saw me and said someone would be with me in a few minutes. I couldn’t see that he was doing anything other than chatting with the guy at the desk.

Finally, the second employee who asked if I needed help came back. He was good at customer service after that. He got a car for us to test drive. He answered our questions. He didn’t have any problems letting me decide where I wanted to drive during the test. The car was good, handled well, and had ample room for what we needed. It was also the most expensive of all the cars we saw.

There was one other strike against the last car. We called a guy we know who works on cars. He said to not get anything from that manufacturer because they had lots of problems if you weren’t diligent and precise in upkeep and maintenance.

In the end we didn’t have any solid decision on what car we wanted. We may go out to see two more cars tomorrow. We’ll have to decide soon but we don’t want to jump into something that won’t fit our needs.

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