Replacing the Fish tank January 19, 2006
Posted by Aaron in : Life , trackbackSo as a few of you know, I’ve been giving some thought to replacing my car since before Christmas. Saturday I really started doing some work and tonight I think I know who will win the bidding war I hope to spark tomorrow. I’ve been looking for a Honda Certified Civic LX or EX that is no more than 3 or 4 years old with reasonable mileage given its age. Right now I’ve got two dealers with nearly identical cars mileage and age wise, but are $1k apart in price. Unfortunatly right now the salesman I’d really like to buy from is not on the winning side, but as I said, I am hoping for a bidding war.
Incidentally, let me relay a cautionary tail about one of the honda dealers in the st louis area. Saturday I hit two dealerships, Hueys Honda then Dave Mungenast Honda. In general I didn’t particularly have a great experience with the salesman at Hueys but it wasn’t until the end that I really became skeptical. After I’d gone on a test drive and said I was interested but not at the listed price he told me that it was Honda policy to not allow negotiating price on a Certified used car for the first two months it was on the lot. Now I have to admit even that statement by itself caused my BS meter to twitch, but I didn’t say anything. Rather I expressed some vague, “well thats too bad” and started making my way to the door. He stopped me and asked if I’d consider it if he could knock $700 off. I blinked and thought “but you can’t negotiate” but only nodded yes. He continued his sentance, asking if that knocking that much off would convince me to sign right then and there. I blinked again and said “ah no, I’ve got several other dealerships to hit today, I’m only exploring options” and didn’t say “and you don’t even have the respect to even try to come up with a convincing lie anyway”. So I went to the next dealership and talked to Rick, the salesman I’d talked to on the phone (great guy by the way, I’m rather hoping he can come close enough to the other dealerships offer that I can justify taking it). Nearly the first question out of my mouth was “So I hear with certified cars, honda won’t let you negotiate a price for the first two months on the lot.” He confirmed my suspicions that it was totally not true, then much to my amazement, guessed which dealership I’d just come from. Thats right, there are 7 or 8 honda dealerships in the St Louis area, but he had run into enough misinformed or burned people that he’d apparently noticed a trend. So my cautionary tail is this, if you are looking for a Honda dealership in St Louis, avoid Hueys Honda.
Update
Well it looks like we’ve got a winner, but unfortunatly I will need a cosigner on the loan as student loan debt is considered “low end” credit and is basicly ignored. I really don’t want to ask anyone outside my immediate family to cosign, but unless they have a fax form my parents can fill out it may come down to that as I can’t very well ask them to drive the 7 hours to do it. The depressing thing is that unless my job situation drasticly changes, I’ve figured in a pretty safe margin for making these loan payments.
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Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! and all that. so, what do you want for Christmas in like 2 weeks? (no, a car is not in my budget, otherwise i would have one). Happy January 23rd Day!