New Car!

I finally did it! We had to go all the way to Quincy to do it, but I got a car yesterday! I don't think I was robbed too badly, but it certainly wasn't for lack of trying on the part of the dealership. Here's what happened...

I called my neighborhood Ford dealer last week and told him that I wanted to buy a 2006 Ford Freestyle, and what options I wanted. He said that he'd see what he could find for me, but didn't have anything in stock that matched what I wanted. He called me back later and said that he could only find one that was at another dealership, but it had MORE than what I wanted and that he wouldn't be able to get me as good of a deal on it as he could if I bought one that they had in stock already. Since I didn't want to pay for options that I didn't necessarily want, and I wanted the freedom to negotiate, I told him that I'd try to figure out something else. So, with the beauty of the internet, I went online and searched the inventory of all the Ford dealers in a 60-mile radius of our house, which is how we ended up going to Quincy.

At first, it was a relatively easy transaction. I asked for a quote online, and was responded to right away. He listed a very good price and so we decided to bring my car in for an appraisal. He said that if I brought my title, we could probably get the transaction done and bring the car home the same day to save us the trouble of having to get back to Quincy during the next week. So, yesterday morning, the family jumped into the car and headed on the trek to Quincy. When we got there, the dealer pulled around the car I was interested in so that my husband could see it (up to that point, he had pretty much been out of the loop!), and they took my registration to check out my Volvo. Here's where it gets pretty shady...they come back to me and say that my trade-in is worth $5600. This is $3800 less than what Edmunds said my car should be worth for trade-in (I'm glad I looked it up before I left!). I got REALLY mad and told him NO WAY, I know that I should get much more for my trade! He then comes back with this book that has trade-in prices listed (it wasn't Kelly's Blue Book, I have no idea what it was) and he opens it to this page that lists the Volvo S40, and he says, "see? this is our guide for trade-ins, and it says your car is worth $5600". I look in the stupid book, and while he's right, that's what it said, that was the price for the stripped-down basic model. I had the "loaded SE turbo" which conveniently wasn't listed in the book. This made me even angrier because I think he was trying to take advantage of the big, fat, poor pregnant woman. So I told him to go online, look up the costs of all of the options that I had on my car, and come back with a price that better. He said that he couldn't do that, but then he said, "we really want to make this happen for you today, but there's no way we'll be able to give you that price for your trade in. Give me a number we can work with". So, I said $8000 and he did the usual "I have to talk to my manager" and came back with $7000. I said, "thanks, but no thanks, I can do a lot better elsewhere" (my sister and her husband would be so proud) and we started to walk out. He came running back and said how about if we do $7500 and zero percent financing? I was tempted to just say no, but I also wanted it to be over, so we took the price and the financing, and voila! new car (and we got to take it home yesterday). I think we did pretty well. We got the car at just under invoice rather than list price, and then a relatively fair price on the trade-in. My husband said that if we had completely left, we probably could have gotten them up to a better trade-in price, but it wasn't worth the long trip back and forth.

Ultimately, I am pleased with the transaction. It wasn't pain-free, but I don't feel like I got taken to the cleaners. It made me realize how much I got ripped off when I bought my Jeep back in 1998. I had no idea that you could even try to get a car for less than sticker price, that they generally try to rip you off on the value of your trade in, and that you could cleverly finance so as not to spend twice as much money on a car than it's worth. I ended up getting a $18,000 (sticker price) car for about $25,000 when all was said and done. YIKES.

Drumroll please...here is my new car!
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