So I’m looking for a new (used) car since mine is really old and starting to literally fall apart. I found a nice newer well-priced car on the website of a nearby dealership. I go in and take it for a test drive, I really like it and was strongly considering pulling the trigger because it was priced so well.
Salesman confers with his boss, comes back and says hey, I just found out I actually wasn’t supposed to test drive that car with you because it needs a new transmission, and it’ll take 2 weeks or so for that new transmission to come in. I say okay no problem, I can wait a couple weeks, I still have my old car in the meantime.
When he comes back again with the official quote, the price is TWO GRAND HIGHER than the online price, because “well I didn’t know it needed a new transmission and I just can’t possibly eat the full cost of that, so this is the new price now, I’m oh so sorry but I just can’t it’d be too hard for me and my manager said so :((((”
So I flat out told him the online price is what brought me in, and if that’s not honored (which would be fucking illegal to do but they don’t care) then I’m walking. Guy comes back with his manager who then begrudgingly agrees to honor the online price and we were able to do the business we were both there to do like mature adults.
Oh the funniest part is this dealership is very outwardly “Christian” (there was Christian music playing over the speakers the entire time and a little daily devotional book on the salesman’s desk) and the manager told me “you know we’re very Christian based so we would NEVER try to scam people” immediately after he tried to squeeze an extra two THOUSAND fucking dollars out of me for HIS fuckup.
This is my one isolated experience with a REPUTABLE dealer in my area, I have to imagine this shit happens all the time to people just trying to secure reliable transportation in Carbrain Hell
Neighbor was looking for a car for her daughter and wanted me to look at a used CX-5 once. It was an AWD with like 70k miles that they wanted 19.5K for. It was in decent shape, no leaks, no dry rotted ball joint boots, minor cosmetic scratches in the paint, but it had 3 different brands of tire on it and one of them was bald with literal chunks taken out of it. This is bad on any car, let alone an awd where different TREAD patterns on each tire can wear out the AWD faster. Also really needed an alignment.
I also pulled the back seat up (highly recommend doing this on any used car, it reveals the secrets you can’t vacuum out of the carpet) and found cheerios, fries, and a bullet.
Told the sales guy we’d pay 18 if they put a set of four good, matching tires on it and aligned it and he was like “well, we’re a volume dealer so we only make a few hundred dollars on each car”. BS.
On a separate experience, i went with a friend who very much could have been my partner and paying for this car and he literally didnt acknowledge her the whole tome. Then I had the sales manager yell at me across the shop floor as I was leaving to take thousands off the price since he “had to move cars this month”.