I feel like I've been through the wringer these last few days! I bought the car of my dreams, realized a few hours later that I overpaid for the car, spent 2 sleepless nights panicking and gathering details, and finally, with a lot of help and advice from family and friends, managed to re-negotiate the contract and get my intended price.
Whew! Want me to back up? I need to get this down and on the record so I can refer back to it next time I make a big purchase. I made quite a few mistakes, which I will outline as I go.
It all started the weekend Molly and I drove to Cincinnati. I realized I hated my car. The seats were uncomfortable, the steering was truck-like, and it was so loud on the highway that Molly couldn't hear through her headphones if I had the radio on at any volume. Since there was no way she was going to survive 6 hours in the car without the movie, I ended up making most of the drive in radio silence. I spent some of that time thinking about how nice it would be to drive something new(er).
I started doing some research and settled on the Nissan Murano for my next car. The reviews were pretty good, I liked the way it looked, and it seemed like it had some luxury touches without a luxury price tag.
Mistake #1: I fell in love with a car. I found a few 2014 Muranos for sale that looked good, including one in Evanston a couple of miles away. The one in Evanston was white, with tan leather, and only 12,000 miles. I wanted it. Bad. It had everything on my list and cargurus.com said it was priced under blue book value. I wasn't willing to walk off the lot and consider another car. I wanted that one.
Mistake #2: I went in for a test drive and ended up buying the car the same day.
Mistake #3: I did all of this alone.
Mistake #4: I was in a hurry, trying to get everything wrapped up in time to get Molly to a birthday party. It gets worse.
They said there was no wiggle room on the price of the car, but they offered me more for my trade-in than I was expecting. I did a teeny tiny bit of negotiating to end up at the number I wanted, and felt so proud of my skills.
Mistake #5: Feeling like I got a deal.
The car was listed as certified with a 7 year/100,000 mile warranty.
Misunderstanding #1: The car had the OPTION for certification. To have it certified was an extra cost that they added to the base price of the car before I went into financing. No one ever told me or showed me the price of that certification or else it was done in a way that I didn't even realize it was happening.
Misunderstanding #2: They also started telling me about the wonderful warranty, that I thought was included with the certification, and I did a lot of yeah, yeahing. Everything sounded great.
Mistake #6: So great, I even knowingly added on an extra package to the warranty that got me free oil changes, interior, and windshield protection, etc. I knew I was being a sucker about that add-on, but didn't care. At the price I thought I was paying, the add-on didn't seem like a big deal.
Mistake #7: I agreed to finance the car even though I could have paid cash.
They stuck me in a room to wait for 30 min before the financing meeting. I was getting antsy about the time, thinking about when I would need to be home at the absolute latest in order to shower, wrap the present, and walk Molly over the birthday party. When they finally got me in with the finance guy, I was so relieved to be in the final stages of the sale. He printed out about a million pages of paperwork and started chatting me up about his niece, how his father had a Murano, and loved it, etc.
Mistake #8: I thought he seemed like a pretty nice guy.
Anyway, he began rattling off line items and things started happening fast. I knew from going through closings on our condo and house that these big purchases are always more expensive than you think they are going to be. After taxes, fees, and all that random stuff, I knew the final cost of the car was going to be more than the price we agreed to.
Mistake #9: The numbers seemed higher than I had expected, and I started feeling uncomfortable, but when I asked for an explanation, I accepted the answer without really understanding the hocus pocus involved with the calculation. I thought finance charges were involved, but was planning on paying off the loan early, so didn't worry too much.
Mistake #10: I never asked for the final out-the-door number/pay-off cost.
Misunderstanding #3: I had agreed to put money down on the car and the very last thing we did was run my card for the down payment. SOMEHOW, I thought that amount was being subtracted from the amount of money that I financed. In reality, that payment was in addition to the amount I financed through the bank. Can you see how all of this happened? Yes, I am stupid.
Anyway, I drove home in my new car, loving every minute of it. I took Molly to the birthday party, slipped out to watch a quarter of the Northwestern game with Jason, and then picked up Molly at the party and tucked her in for bed.
I was starting to get an uneasy feeling about how fast everything went down, so I decided to go through the paperwork. Then, the true horror was revealed. By the time I figured it all out, the dealership was closed for the night. It was also closed the next day. There was no way I was going to be able to do anything about Mistakes 1-10 until Monday. I wasn't even sure I COULD do anything to fix the mess I had gotten myself into.
I called my mom in a panic (she knows about these things), scanned in a couple of the documents, and emailed the guys at the dealership. I thought there was a slim chance that there was an error on the paperwork and that they had entered an incorrect number on the forms.
I could not sleep that night. I kept replaying everything in my head, trying to figure out how it all went so wrong. I was on a major, major shame spiral and basically spent the rest of the weekend sweating.
On Monday morning, Jason and I went to the dealership to ask questions and try to remedy the situation.
Misunderstanding #4: The finance guys were in a Monday morning meeting until 10:30, so we talked to the sales guy, who "explained" the numbers to us (incorrectly). We left the dealership thinking it wasn't as bad as we had feared.
Something still didn't feel right, so when I got to work, I checked the paperwork again and still couldn't figure out the discrepancy between what the sales guy said and what I was seeing on the forms. I finally got the finance guy on the phone and made him go through every single line charge listed, or not listed, on the forms. That's when I realized how much they charged me for the certification and warranty. Apparently those are "front end" charges, so they weren't itemized on the forms, just buried in as an unexplained sum added to the base price of the car.
Mistake #11: I should have had that conversation before I signed the forms.
He told me there was nothing I could do, other than opting out of the extra warranty and gap coverage that I had signed up for, bringing my costs down slightly, but still not down to what I thought I had paid. My brother-in-law Archie put me in touch with a friend of his who is an estate lawyer and I talked him through the whole story. He wasn't sure what we'd be able to do, but recommended that I at least mention to the sales guy that I was going to have a contract lawyer review everything for me. Best piece of advice ever. The sales guy seemed like he was starting to panic. He kept trying to pressure me to come in again to talk about it, but I told him I wouldn't meet until I had a lawyer look over the paperwork. The next thing I knew, I had a text from the dealership that the manager had agreed to re-do my contract.
Still, when I showed up after work, the manager gave me the same song and dance about only being able to take off the extra warranty and gap coverage because I had already paid taxes on the certification, etc. I told him I was willing to eat the cost of the taxes paid on the certification and he reluctantly agreed to re-do the contract as a cash deal without any of the extras. He also went back on the tax thing and said he could get me out of the deal without having to pay the original taxes. Liar!!
I ended up with the price I wanted, but without the certification and warranty that I thought was included. I can live with that. I still have some of the original warranty on the car and probably should have to suffer a little bit for botching the first round of contracts!
I know I am a very lucky girl that I was able to get out of the first deal. What if I wouldn't have looked at the paperwork that first night after I bought the car? What if I didn't have a mom and lawyer friends who know a lot about these types of things? There's a reason car salesmen have a reputation for being sneaky. Lesson learned... Apparently I am a terrible negotiator, but no so bad at problem solving ;) Hopefully I won't have to buy a car again for at least 10 years!!
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| My new ride...it looks nice in the driveway, right? I DO love it, even after all this hassle. |
