car shopping

It's that time again - lease is almost up, and must hunt for and select new car. Ugh.

Firstly, I am a disaster where negotiations are concerned. DISASTER.

Secondly, I hate being "sold" to. All I really want is to walk in, look at the car I want, ask whatever questions I might have, and leave. Not an attitude appreciated by car salespeople.

Thirdly, I tend to know pretty well what I want before I get there, so it frustrates me when they don't (for reasonable reasons of inventory) have exactly what I want on the lot to be looked at. Makes me wonder what the point is of going to see the car in the first place.

This morning, I went to two dealerships. The first one I showed up to at 9:25 (they opened at 9). It was a ghost town. Clearly people had been there, but there was no one to be seen when I walked in. It's a small dealership, more service than sales, so the inventory was exceedingly small. Veronica and I wandered around the lot looking for minivans, saw only one or two (obviously not open, so I couldn't look at them). Finally went in, stood there for 10 minutes - while one of the service guys went by three times, looked at me each time, but never spoke. So I asked the cashier. Turns out, the entire sales staff was in a meeting. All of them. No one watching the door, no notes letting potential customers know where the sales staff was. Frankly, if they'd had a minivan displayed in the lobby, it would have been my favorite dealership ever, but since they had nothing in the lobby, I was mostly just frustrated.

Second dealership, one car in the lobby. A minivan, as it happens. I got two steps in the door before someone came over to ask me questions. First thing he did? Ask me to sit down so he could take all my information. He was displeased, to say the least, when I declined to give him my phone number. I said what I wanted was to see how the base model had changed since my current vehicle was made, three years ago. What did he show me? A top-of-the-line model. No offers to take me out onto the lot to see a base model, and he knew very little about the differences between the top-of-the-line and the base.

Ugh. If I liked minivans, or thought I was likely to take better care of my next car than I have my past ones, I'd just buy one and be done with it.