I've been looking at a goat for a while, and with my Bonneville needing some major TLC, I decided to pull the trigger. In my youth, I used to be one of the best hagglers around. I had never had accepted a retail price on anything that cost me more than $100. All that haggling comes at a price...it is called stress, and something I dearly wanted to avoid when buying my new goat. I have a friend who gave me a supplier discount code, and I was satisfied to pay that price without having to go through the stress.
About a month ago, I just wanted to look at one, so I stopped at one of the half-dozen dealers in St. Louis. It was just to look, but the salesperson talked me into taking one out for a spin, tossed me the keys, and said "Take your time". I returned 20 minutes later with my heart a pounding, drooling all over myself, and completely in love.
I worked on the "Finance Committee" and got approval to buy, so I did the obvious thing and contacted my local dealer (10 minutes away), talked to a salesperson, and basically handed them the easiest sale they've ever made. The one catch? I wanted to be able to take the car out ALONE with my wife for a test drive. I even swore I would stick to any time or mileage limitations they would insist on. In the end, their refusal to allow me to do so terminated our relationship, cost them the sale, and years of revenue from service work. Heck, I’ve already spent over $500 in their service bays, and I may even be related to one of the service managers. Now? If they were the last Pontiac dealer on the face of the earth, I’d buy a Dodge.
I don’t want to offend anyone here, so let me make this clear…you cannot judge a person based on color, sex, or what they are wearing, but when I was 21 I **ACCEPTED** the fact that some folks would be hesitant to trust me on a test drive of a muscle car.
Fast-forward to 2006, and my attitude has changed quite a bit along with my hair color. About the quickest comparison I can make is that I look something like Taylor Hicks…just uglier, a bit more gray, and I can’t sing to save my @ss. I do, however, dress like a professional software engineer, and was wearing clothing that obviously displayed the company I work for and the job I do there.
Anyway, I contacted “Bill” at my local dealer last Thursday and explained that I’d already decided I was going to get a GTO, but I wanted to take a test drive with the frau. He….yes ********HE********** suggested that I could take it out for a drive, keep it overnight if I wanted to, and bla, bla, bla. I thought that was kewl, especially considering my neighbor got a $50k + Caddy to drive for the weekend before they purchased it. I cleared my schedule for Friday evening, talked my wife out of working OT on Saturday simply because I wanted her to drive it, and had a leisurely route picked out for us, fully intending to sign the paperwork on our return.
Then came the call from Bill. According to him, the GTO and the Escalade are the only two vehicles on Earth that cannot be taken out overnight. I was fine with that, and accepted the fact that insurance companies would not let them do it. So, I started ironing down the details of when I would show up with my wife yesterday, and quickly balked at his proclamation that he would go on the test drive with us, but would give me an my wife all the time we needed to make a decision.
Excuse me? I’ve been married for 20 years, and there is no discussion required. Any of you married folks will know what I’m talking about. If you’ve been married for 20 years and your spouse DOESN’T know why you’re at a Pontiac dealer, you’ve got problems.
I overlooked that (though I pointed it out to Bill later), thinking I was being overly sensitive about it. I did tell him that “If I cannot convince you and your sales manager that I’m trustworthy enough to take out the car for 10 minutes without you in the back seat, I’m getting up and walking.” He got up, went over to a group of three people talking, returned sweating like he’d jammed a couple dozen habeneros down his throat and said, “You’re not going to believe this, but that was Mr. OwnerName I just talked to along with my sales manager. That’s Mr. OwnerName himself, and they absolutely refuse to let anyone take out a GTO without a salesperson. It’s no offense to you – our insurance will NOT let us do that.”
I got up, shook his hand, and wished him luck. I was accosted by his big, [email protected] sales manager at the door who said, “Bring your wife in, and we’ll work something out.” While I’m too polite to do it, I was thinking “Fat f*****g chance you jerk.
I got home about 20 minutes later to find a message on my answering machine from Bill. It was left at 10:00 AM on Friday after he asked his sales manager if what he’d promised me (the overnight thing) was OK. That set me off again, and since Bill was out picking up another vehicle, I chewed on the sales manager’s @ss for quite some time. I’ve got to tell you though…he never faltered at all, and in the process came over as one of the most arrogant pr!cks I’ve ever dealt with.
In an effort to terminate this thing sometime this year, a few phone calls later I’d told them to take a flying f**k at a rolling donut, but guess what? The phone rang a bit later, and it was a salesperson from yet another dealer in St. Louis. “How serious are you about that black ’06 goat, because we have a dealer trying to get it from us.” I asked what dealer and who it was that called.
You guessed it folks…it was Bill from my local dealer. His sales manager said he was doing me a favor (that no other dealer in the country would do) by pulling in a black M6 without a down payment…their “gift” to me. My quote to Bill ½ hour or so before the other dealer called was, “And to be quite honest with you, with those two [email protected] (color I hate) GTOs sitting on your lot for the last three months, I don’t think your sales manager is taking a huge risk by pulling in a black one for me. I guess I was right ;-)
My wife assured me she didn’t need to drive the car, so my daughter and I stopped at McDonalds in Festus yesterday on our way to test drive the M6. We were behind a ’65 Vette coupe that was so loud they had to shut her down to order, and they, us, and all the workers at Micky D’s were all whipped up into a frenzy over it. Wow!
Anyway, we drove to Auffenberg Pontiac in Farmington, MO and talked to Jamie Lashley. I’d taken my father-in-law’s Yukon there a year ago to check out the brakes before we took it out to Colorado to throw a huge-ass BBQ party for troops returning to Ft. Carson from Iraq, had spoken to her about a new Bonneville, so I thought she deserved the first shot.
She didn’t hesitate…she put the whip to the gang, and had them roll out the only M6 they had out of the showroom. Five minutes later, my daughter and I were in the car and freaking out over how nice it was. I told Jamie what she needed to do while I was gone, where I was at in my life in regards to haggling, and that she had one and only one chance to make the deal. Hell, I had a dealer call me before we left (unsolicited) to offer me $29,300 for an 06 M6 with 17” wheels, so I had nothing to lose.
We came back in 20 minutes, she came within a few bucks of matching the deal I’d been quoted (plus $ for the 18” wheels), and that was that. Well, I did walk away from the deal over $200, but my daughter talked me going back and taking it. I did a Uie, signed the papers, and am going to pick up my ‘06 M6 tomorrow. I even got approval from the boss to take the day off to go pick it up and drive around for a while.
My wife is awesome.
Gerry
About a month ago, I just wanted to look at one, so I stopped at one of the half-dozen dealers in St. Louis. It was just to look, but the salesperson talked me into taking one out for a spin, tossed me the keys, and said "Take your time". I returned 20 minutes later with my heart a pounding, drooling all over myself, and completely in love.
I worked on the "Finance Committee" and got approval to buy, so I did the obvious thing and contacted my local dealer (10 minutes away), talked to a salesperson, and basically handed them the easiest sale they've ever made. The one catch? I wanted to be able to take the car out ALONE with my wife for a test drive. I even swore I would stick to any time or mileage limitations they would insist on. In the end, their refusal to allow me to do so terminated our relationship, cost them the sale, and years of revenue from service work. Heck, I’ve already spent over $500 in their service bays, and I may even be related to one of the service managers. Now? If they were the last Pontiac dealer on the face of the earth, I’d buy a Dodge.
I don’t want to offend anyone here, so let me make this clear…you cannot judge a person based on color, sex, or what they are wearing, but when I was 21 I **ACCEPTED** the fact that some folks would be hesitant to trust me on a test drive of a muscle car.
Fast-forward to 2006, and my attitude has changed quite a bit along with my hair color. About the quickest comparison I can make is that I look something like Taylor Hicks…just uglier, a bit more gray, and I can’t sing to save my @ss. I do, however, dress like a professional software engineer, and was wearing clothing that obviously displayed the company I work for and the job I do there.
Anyway, I contacted “Bill” at my local dealer last Thursday and explained that I’d already decided I was going to get a GTO, but I wanted to take a test drive with the frau. He….yes ********HE********** suggested that I could take it out for a drive, keep it overnight if I wanted to, and bla, bla, bla. I thought that was kewl, especially considering my neighbor got a $50k + Caddy to drive for the weekend before they purchased it. I cleared my schedule for Friday evening, talked my wife out of working OT on Saturday simply because I wanted her to drive it, and had a leisurely route picked out for us, fully intending to sign the paperwork on our return.
Then came the call from Bill. According to him, the GTO and the Escalade are the only two vehicles on Earth that cannot be taken out overnight. I was fine with that, and accepted the fact that insurance companies would not let them do it. So, I started ironing down the details of when I would show up with my wife yesterday, and quickly balked at his proclamation that he would go on the test drive with us, but would give me an my wife all the time we needed to make a decision.
Excuse me? I’ve been married for 20 years, and there is no discussion required. Any of you married folks will know what I’m talking about. If you’ve been married for 20 years and your spouse DOESN’T know why you’re at a Pontiac dealer, you’ve got problems.
I overlooked that (though I pointed it out to Bill later), thinking I was being overly sensitive about it. I did tell him that “If I cannot convince you and your sales manager that I’m trustworthy enough to take out the car for 10 minutes without you in the back seat, I’m getting up and walking.” He got up, went over to a group of three people talking, returned sweating like he’d jammed a couple dozen habeneros down his throat and said, “You’re not going to believe this, but that was Mr. OwnerName I just talked to along with my sales manager. That’s Mr. OwnerName himself, and they absolutely refuse to let anyone take out a GTO without a salesperson. It’s no offense to you – our insurance will NOT let us do that.”
I got up, shook his hand, and wished him luck. I was accosted by his big, [email protected] sales manager at the door who said, “Bring your wife in, and we’ll work something out.” While I’m too polite to do it, I was thinking “Fat f*****g chance you jerk.
I got home about 20 minutes later to find a message on my answering machine from Bill. It was left at 10:00 AM on Friday after he asked his sales manager if what he’d promised me (the overnight thing) was OK. That set me off again, and since Bill was out picking up another vehicle, I chewed on the sales manager’s @ss for quite some time. I’ve got to tell you though…he never faltered at all, and in the process came over as one of the most arrogant pr!cks I’ve ever dealt with.
In an effort to terminate this thing sometime this year, a few phone calls later I’d told them to take a flying f**k at a rolling donut, but guess what? The phone rang a bit later, and it was a salesperson from yet another dealer in St. Louis. “How serious are you about that black ’06 goat, because we have a dealer trying to get it from us.” I asked what dealer and who it was that called.
You guessed it folks…it was Bill from my local dealer. His sales manager said he was doing me a favor (that no other dealer in the country would do) by pulling in a black M6 without a down payment…their “gift” to me. My quote to Bill ½ hour or so before the other dealer called was, “And to be quite honest with you, with those two [email protected] (color I hate) GTOs sitting on your lot for the last three months, I don’t think your sales manager is taking a huge risk by pulling in a black one for me. I guess I was right ;-)
My wife assured me she didn’t need to drive the car, so my daughter and I stopped at McDonalds in Festus yesterday on our way to test drive the M6. We were behind a ’65 Vette coupe that was so loud they had to shut her down to order, and they, us, and all the workers at Micky D’s were all whipped up into a frenzy over it. Wow!
Anyway, we drove to Auffenberg Pontiac in Farmington, MO and talked to Jamie Lashley. I’d taken my father-in-law’s Yukon there a year ago to check out the brakes before we took it out to Colorado to throw a huge-ass BBQ party for troops returning to Ft. Carson from Iraq, had spoken to her about a new Bonneville, so I thought she deserved the first shot.
She didn’t hesitate…she put the whip to the gang, and had them roll out the only M6 they had out of the showroom. Five minutes later, my daughter and I were in the car and freaking out over how nice it was. I told Jamie what she needed to do while I was gone, where I was at in my life in regards to haggling, and that she had one and only one chance to make the deal. Hell, I had a dealer call me before we left (unsolicited) to offer me $29,300 for an 06 M6 with 17” wheels, so I had nothing to lose.
We came back in 20 minutes, she came within a few bucks of matching the deal I’d been quoted (plus $ for the 18” wheels), and that was that. Well, I did walk away from the deal over $200, but my daughter talked me going back and taking it. I did a Uie, signed the papers, and am going to pick up my ‘06 M6 tomorrow. I even got approval from the boss to take the day off to go pick it up and drive around for a while.
My wife is awesome.
Gerry
