We should run a competition here to see who can clock up the most business class air miles in a year, then compare credit card points.
Winner has the right to call themselves the best forum lefty.
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Yeah, it’s really uncouth for anyone who purports to be a lefty to take fancy vacations.
Summary
Yeah we didn’t even bother with the beach there. Further along to the West things improve a bit (Antibes is good), then dip horribly with Cannes and St Tropez isn’t much better… whole Riviera is surprisingly bad imo. Monaco is even worse lol.
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Missing the point again.
My “bad” = your “great”. Those places are for people who want to boast about how much money they spent on business class and restaurants. Easily the worst foreign holiday I’ve had.
It’s leftist and cool if you ironically take fancy vacations.
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lol, sure thing, bud.
Still missing the point, I guess.
This is super frustrating. We have a 2011 Honda Odyssey that has had various minor annoyances over the last few years, so I’ve been advocating to my wife that we should be thinking about replacing it. Yesterday, the check engine light starts flashing and the car is shuddering, which the internet (and common sense, I guess) indicates is a problem to address immediately.
So we contact the dealership this morning to see if they have an available slot. Normally, we would go to AAA, but our thought was that we’re not willing to put a lot more money into this car, and we could drop off the car at the dealership and then look at the new models. We get there and tell the guy our plan, and he’s like, "Yeah, good luck finding a new one. We might have one model on the lot, but I’m not sure. And there’s no indication that the chip shortage is going to be resolved in 2022, so I think it’s likely that there won’t be a good supply of new cars until 2023 or later. "
Imagine going to a car dealership, expressing interest in buying a new car, and basically being laughed at instead of pounced on by multiple salesmen.
Oh, and we apparently have bats and rodents in our attic, so September 2021 appears to be the month that I light all my money on fire.
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Cars are the new stainless steel Rolexes
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I had no idea that a new minivan would be such a status symbol.
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I was recently in the market for a minivan. I ordered one in March (there were plenty available at the time, but I had certain combo of features and color in mind, and no one had it, and I had no urgency). It turns out this was right before the chip shortage.
Estimated time to delivery was 8-12 wks. I’d pretty much written it off, but if finally showed up a few days ago. It was the only one they had on the lot, and I’m sure that they could have easily sold it for 10K more if I had walked away from the deal (which they offered to allow me to do for no cost). I was actually so worried they might be tempted to just sell it to someone else anyway, that I dropped everything and went down there as soon as I got the call. That wasn’t trivial as the dealership was about an hour away and my wife and I had a lot of stuff going on that day.
On the down side, I think the minivan is the final nail in the coffin that contains my youth. I have a minivan. I am officially old and there is no denying it.
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My wife had this feeling when we bought this one originally. She desperately wanted to get a big SUV so she wouldn’t look like the stereotypical soccer mom. Same thing now that we’re talking about replacing it. But minivans are perfectly designed for exactly our multi-child scenario. Adjustable seat configurations, sliding doors, a bunch of cargo space. They’re fantastic. (Of course, it’s easy for me to say because I am not the one who has to drive it. Instead, I drive the stereotypical dad car - the CRV. We are absolutely the most generic suburban family you could possibly imagine.)
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In b4 the Spidercrab pandemic of 2021.
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Well, the dealership just called with a quote of $5,100 to address the immediate issues. So that makes the decision easy. Looks like we’re shopping for a new car starting right now. Should be no problem in this environment.
Cold-climate bats generally migrate south in the fall and then you can just seal things up behind them with some combination of spray foam and sealing caulk. I have a vague memory of you being in Ohio, so my guess is that they’ll be gone in November and you can focus on preventing their return.
Rodents are a different ballgame, and the solution depends on your personal ethics more than anything.
It’s worth noting that the optimal place to get repairs like this done is not a car dealership.
Right. Like I said in the original post, we normally go to AAA. But the optimal place for us to get these repairs done was the place that could take us immediately.
If you’re buying new, I recommend figuring out the car and features you want and just emailing all the dealerships and ask their best out the door price. Let them know you’re emailing all the dealers in the area so they know they’re competing with each other. That’s what we did when we bought our last new car and it worked out great and saved a bunch of time.*
*May not work as well in today’s market
I have the letter I sent to all the dealerships if you want an example. Let me know and I’ll send it
Totally agree, and this is what I’ve done in the past. I actually used Costco to get a quote from a kind-of-close-dealer (Costco’s auto pricing program is very good, but they only have relationships with a limited number of dealerships), but the problem is that they don’t really have much in stock. So we’re going to look at the closer place that we’ve purchased from before (using the internet pricing for our prior 2 purchases) and take in the Costco quoted price to see how close they can get.
But I have close to no leverage here because supplies are so low all over. So if I end up paying $1-$2k too much, but end up with a car we like in our garage today, I’m pretty happy with that outcome in this environment and considering how fast this all happened.
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[Me, sitting down with the sales guy, rubbing my hands together]: Now it’s time to negotiate. Where would you like to start? Just to let you know, I know the Costco price for this minivan at [other dealership that doesn’t actually have the minivan in stock], so keep that in mind when you present your offer.
[Sales guy, unimpressed and bored]: The minivan you’re looking at is literally the only one on our lot. It’s been here for two days. We’ve had several out-of-state buyers over the last few months, because so many places around the country are selling at significant markups above MSRP. This is your price. If you are unwilling to pay that price, we’ll sell at that price this weekend to someone else.
[Me]: Aah, yes. I agree to that price.
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You could try a local shop and expect that price to drop by a couple of G’s most likely. (At least that’s how it is around me. Dealerships are ridiculously overpriced.) Depending on the issue and the specifics of the vehicles current condition, it might be worth a few grand to buy yourself a couple of years and get out of the current madness.
This has been every transaction I’ve done this year buying or selling. Absolutely bonkers.
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