Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] advice on mid-MO car dealerships wanted...

[Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Wed, 2 Jun 2004, Rick Buford wrote:

> Jonathan King wrote:
> 
> >After a surreal experience at a Chevy dealer in Jeff City this
> >morning, I would like to know something:  Are we just having some
> >bad luck, or are car dealerships in the Columbia/Jeff City area
> >sorely in need of some real competition?
> >
> can you expound a bit on what you mean by a "surreal experience"?

Sure.  One car we are/were interested in is the new 2004 Chevy
Malibu Maxx.  As it happens, they've apparently stopped making the
2004s since they need to fix a rear bumper problem that put them on
the bottom of the Insurance institute's low-speed crash testing
program.  Not reassuring, but the remaining stock has been deeply
discounted.  Because the Maxx has an incredible amount of space in
it and appears shockingly good for the money, we were wondering if
we should take our chances.  Perry Chevrolet has one Maxx LS left,
but it's tarted up with a bunch of junk options we don't want, so
the discount would have to be huge.  Riley in Jeff City had some
fairly "stripped down" models to choose from.  Again, buying off the
lot wouldn't be my first choice, but the potential for a pretty good
deal seemed to be there.  So we called yesterday about availability,
and (helpfully) found out that most of their web-listed Malibu
Maxxes were actually parked in their "lower" lot, and that we could
arrange to drive any of those or any of the ones on the upper lot
when we got there.  Soe we drove down this morning and stopped in
at the lower lot (no attendent there, but that's expected) and saw 
mostly the kind of cars with $2K+ in options that we weren't going 
to buy.  Oh well...there should be 5 left up in the upper lot, 
including the cheap ones.  So we go up there, and find out that 
there is identically *one* Maxx in the lot.  Now, I understand that 
there could be a slight discrepancy between what's listed on the web 
and is actually on hand, but it's also the case they didn't sell 
four of these overnight.  Sorry, but this is the 21st century, and 
keeping this kind of info up to date is important.  But that's small 
stuff.

Nobody comes out to us in the lot (we're poking around 25 yards from
the door), so we decide to go in and ask about test-driving the one
(cheap-ish) one they do have.  Inside there are literally 7 people
standing around doing nothing.  One is obviously just a non-customer
visitor chatting with the sales staff, but the others are really not
doing anything.  One of them comes up and introduces himself, and we
ask if we can test-drive this one Maxx they do have there.  The guy
strolls out to find out what number the car is and get the key, and
comes back with a dealer plate to put on the car.  But as he's
getting ready to do this, he takes a cigarette out of his pocket and
puts it in his hand as we go out to the car.  I think "please don't
even think about smoking that if you ride along with us", but what
happens instead is that he finds he can't put the dealer plate on
the car, and instead tells us just to hold it up on the front seat,
or maybe just put it on the front seat.  And if the car has no gas,
come in for a gas ticket.  And then he lights his cigarette and
strolls back to the office.  (Good news: no, he won't be smoking in
the car; bad news: I'm so sorry we got in the way of his nth
cigarette of the morning.)  My wife checks it out, and, sure enough,
the guy is psychic: it has almost no gas.  So we go in to tell the
guy this, and he trots back out to check and see that we have
correctly detected the "needs gas" warning light.  He then says,
"OK, are you from around here?"  We tell him not, but he then tells
us it's no problem that all we have to do is get a gas ticket and
fill the car with $10 worth of gas at the station next to the Ramada
in on the access road.  We don't really know where that is, we
mention.  He says that all you do is get on the access road on the
other side of 54 and drive down it until you see the Ramada and stop
at that gas station, pump $10 of gas into the car, and give them
this ticket, sign the receipt, and come back with it.  In other
words: just fill this car for me, will ya?  We seven people standing
around in the building have better things to do than this.  OK, so
I've now test-driven a lot of cars around here, and gassing cars up
for the dealership is a first.  But...we decide to give it a try.  
Note again that we're NOT familiar with the area and told him that,
and that he still tells us to go out and get gas for the running on
empty car from his lot.  

We start to pull out of the lot, and see that the Malibu has
helpfully pointed out to us that the rear hatch is ajar.  OK, I say,
I'll close that.  I go out to the back and try to close the hatch,
which is obviously not closed tightly.  I try to close it.  
Nothing.  Push it a bit harder.  Nothing.  Pull it down really hard:
nothing.  Absolutely slam it: bingo, but we've seen these cars
before and it's clear that there's something wrong with the hatch on
this one.  Now *that's* weird, since they have half a dozen others
in a lot you can't easily get to, but they choose to keep the broken
one out for display.  Message: we don't care.

Anyway, I'll skip ahead past the part where we choose the wrong
access road (a street name or anything would have helped) and drive
over a mile before we realize that we did indeed miss it.  The GAS
light is now on full tilt.  We limp back to the lot since we're not
about to get stranded a mile from a Chevy dealer in Jeff City
without gas in case our second guess is also wrong.  We get back,
and give back the plate and the key and report that the rear hatch
doesn't work well and that, being from out of town, we didn't make
it to the right gas station before deciding we had better things to
do.  The guy we originally talked to was gone, but another person
cheerfully told us that somebody could fill it up for us if we would
wait.  We elected not to wait.  As we were leaving the dealership, I
swear I saw the "gas it up dude" discover that you couldn't put the
dealer plate on the back of the car, that the hatch would open or
close well, and that, holy crap was it low on gas...

Call me picky, but I would describe that car-buying situation as 
being basically surreal.  Maybe we said something wrong, or maybe it 
was just not a good day there, but I feel uncompelled to go back.

jking




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