My first car was a 1980 Buick Century station wagon, light blue with wood paneling.
Me and my brothers used to fight over the backwards seats in the station wagon.
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Conundrum. Friend has a 2008 Acura MDX that was purchased for $2000. It now has significant driving issues after front end crash, steering loses feel during right hand turns. Doubtful if it can drive 5 miles to a repair shop, and I assume any repairs will be at least $1500. However, can probably get it looked at and get an estimate. It may just be a loss.
Any hope for repair under $1000? Or what is the best option for buying a legal driveable car for $2000 or less these days Like Craigslist or FB marketplace? Autotrader?
That’s going to be rough. Repairs are very likely to be over 1k and it’s hard to find anything drivable for 2k because most auto places will take anything for a 800 to 2k trade in value.
Maybe FB Marketplace, but there are a lot of scams on there with too good to be true prices on stolen cars, robbery attempts, etc.
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Think of graph with purchase price on one axis and significant breakdown risk on the other. 2k is about the minimum for a running car but comes with a high breakdown risk. Realistically 8k-10k is about the point where you start getting cars that dont come with substantial risk. You can certainly get something for 3-4k and maybe you hit the lotto and it goes 40k+ miles with no issues, but it’s not likely.
Indeed. The current plan is a AAA tow to a no-name garage run by Mexican immigrants to assess the potential for repair. They are apparently honest and reasonably competent. If a replacement needs to be purchased then maybe we go to $3.5k.
bought a used accord in 2017 for 19k and just traded it. they are selling it for $14k now. damn.
My brother in law bought a new 14my ram 3500 for 34k. Sold it at peak used car pricing in late 2021 for 30k.
I just bought a new Mazda 3 yesterday. Since I had already gotten their quote and thought it was fair (especially with the $500 loyalty rebate added to the $400 discount off the MSRP), it seemed fair enough that I didn’t want to hard-hassle to try to save another few hundred. I barely even test drove it, since this will be my 3rd or 4th Mazda 3.
The salesman, who was covering for the original salesperson who responded previously by text to my request for an offer, was pretty cool and chill, and the entire drive + “negotiation” took less than 15 minutes.
AND THEN CAME THE FINANCE GUY!
Despite my having decided to use the 36 mo/2.9% financing with 3K down, he gave me the super hard-sell for the various extended warranties, and would not take “not interested” for an answer.
It was a series of questions to probe my decision, constantly peppered with comments like “…with the coverage, you won’t have to worry if anything goes wrong.”
“Dude, I’m not worried. I have the money to pay for the services if I need to.”
“But what if…”
[shakes head “No”]
“Let me ask you ask you this…”
“Sorry, not interested”
Finally, after nearly 10 minutes of this nonsense, I truthfully and calmly mentioned that I was in the emergency room the prior night for a stress-related heart arrythmia (I’ve gone into A-fib a few times this past month, no answers yet, have seemingly ruled out most/all of the “bad” causes), and I said, “I need for this to go smoothly right now, and exactly the way I want this sale to go.”
He finally relented, and switched to finishing up the paperwork. A few minutes later I added, “I’m not bullshitting you. I can show you the emails notifying me of the different test results from last night.”
He said it wasn’t necessary, but he looked like a kid whose dog just snatched and ate his cookie.
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Which trim? I have the 2023 turbo with the red leather. Love it.
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Shortly after I made the prior post, I sent a detailed note to Mazda USA essentially outlining what I wrote in that post.
Today I received *Hello, my name is Jordon, I will be more than happy to assist you today. *
Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention. We’re truly sorry to hear about the experience you had during the finance portion of your recent vehicle purchase at Ourisman Mazda.
Your feedback is deeply concerning, especially given your long-standing loyalty to the Mazda brand and the difficult circumstances you were managing at the time. Please accept our sincere apologies for the stress this situation caused.
We take matters like this very seriously and will be following up directly with the dealership to fully investigate the interaction. We want to ensure that no customer feels pressured or disrespected during the purchase process, and your experience is certainly not reflective of the values we uphold.
Again, we appreciate you sharing this with us, and we will take the appropriate steps to ensure this type of situation does not occur again. We hope you are otherwise enjoying your new Mazda, and we wish you all the best in your continued recovery and well-being.
*Sincerely, *
*Jordon *
Representative, Customer Experience
While it feels like a boilerplate response, I’ve known car salesmen who’ve told me their dealerships take customer complaints seriously, and my likeable salesman kept reminding me to complete the written customer survey they included with my paperwork–along with reiterating that anything less than a “10” out of 10 is considered a mark against them.
Although I circled “10” out of 10 on all the items, since he said “even complaining about finance on this will ding us sales people,” I have to assume that my formal complaint letter will make its way to the dealership and to the finance person’s supervisor. Hopefully, he’ll soon be joining the ranks of the newly unemployed.
Most dealerships take complaints seriously and those surveys are their lifeblood as the dealership gets money based on the. Surveys being tens, as do all the managers, sales people and finance guys.
If you could have dinged him specifically I might have suggested that. Don’t know if finance was its own question(s).
We just bought a new car yesterday as well (Subaru Outback) and my wife and I found the warranty push hilarious as well.
First hour when you’re looking at cars and on the test drives “We have excellent reliability. We have fewer mechanical breakdowns than any of our competitors, you’re going to love how little you have to come in for repairs”
When you’re signing papers and paying “You really need the extended warranty. Things break all the time. Are you sure you don’t want it? If the screen has to be replaced that’s $4k and trust me those things are pieces of shit that break all the damn time.”
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come 10 minutes before closing and the finance guy is having to stay late and just wants to leave too
You’ve never bought a new car, amirite?
When I got mine I accidentally went in on the Saturday of a long weekend close to closing and I didn’t have to say no to hardly any warranty nonsense. Part of it was I had made a big deal out of getting a new car for 235 a month and anything that pushed that number up was easy to push against.
Generally, negotiating the monthly payment rather than the total price is going to lead to a worse deal, since they can simply spread the payments out over an absurd amount of time.
However, in no dealership in the US can one “show up 10 minutes before closing” and purchase a new car that day. It’s not like buying a shovel at Costco.
Yeah, I had been dicking around on the Hyundai web site and ended up sending some kind of lead to the dealership and they sent me an email asking if I wanted to test drive the car, this was an hour or so before closing, I said yes and would have left with the car if it had gone through dealer prep but it was fresh off the truck.