September 18, 2011

• How To Successfully Test Drive A Car?

  The beginning of this post is going to serve as a very very very very very VERY VERY important lesson for car dealerships that are trying to get potential customers to come in and take a test drive on a vehicle that the dealership would indeed like to sell to said customer. So, let me give those dealers a couple of very important steps they are going to want to take in the whole test driving experience. In fact, you might even say these are absolutely essential steps that must be taken when test driving a car.

  1. Find a customer who is interested in test driving a car and ask if they would like to come in and test drive said vehicle. If they can't come right in, then offer to set an appointment.
  2. Now here is the big one. The one that while not as hard as number one, is probably more important then number one. And I can not stress this one enough. Are you ready? Because if you aren't ready for this then you should just close up shop. Okay, so here we go with the step: HAVE THE MOTHERFUCKING CAR IN STOCK AT THE DEALER FOR A TEST DRIVE!
  3. There is no step three. If you can't get past step two then you probably shouldn't be selling cars.

  Why do I say all of this you ask? Well as you might recall from my previous post, I am in the market for a new car. Last week I spent most of the week narrowing it down to one specific car at one dealer from whom I was most certainly going to buy from. The dealership in question, Honda of Lisle (Illinois), tried to get me in for a test drive on multiple occasions last week, asking me if I wanted to come in or just schedule an appointment.  I told them I could not make it until Saturday, so they made an appointment for Saturday at one in the p.m central standard time.

  Now I desperately wanted a hybrid and had the biggest hard on for the Honda Insight. It was determined that I would probably buy the Insight LX, which the dealer did not have in stock but they told me they had the Insight EX in stock so I could just test drive that. So after scheduling my appointment, I continued to do research on the Insight, finding out quite a few things that actually were not good. For example, while it claims to seat five, the back seat is so tiny that a normal sized adult could not fit back there. Also, Consumer Reports not only ranked it as the worst car in it's class but also was the only one they recommended NOT to buy. And I had heard that having work done on Hondas can be expensive and even a new set of windshield wipers could only be obtained from a Honda dealer. So at this point, I was down to about 50-50 as to if I would buy, which was down from 100% at the start of the week. Then came the test drive.

  I was curiously excited on Saturday to finally get my chance to drive this car and see for myself about the room in the back seat. I'm a small guy so it's not a big deal for me but could be a big deal for my friends. My brother and I arrived promptly at the dealer, in fact, we were about 10 minutes early. We sat down with a salesman who proceeded to tell me that they did not have the LX in stock. No big deal, I already knew that. But, in addition, they didn't even have the EX in stock; meaning that the very car I was to test drive on my appointment for a test drive was not even there! Instead, he told me that I could test drive a CRX which was kind of like an Insight (it's not) except that, you know, it wasn't an Insight and in fact, was a lot different from the Insight. Oh, and the only one they had in stock was a stick shift. Naturally, I don't know how to drive stick. So now, this 20 minute drive to the damn dealer was  pointless. Needless to say, I was kinda pissed. To add insult to the whole thing, he started to ask me if I would want to put money down on the Insight to which I cut him off and quickly told him that there was no way I was going to put money down on a car that I could not test drive first. Seriously? That was fucking insulting, to try to sell me a car without letting me test drive it first.

  Normally I would make a bigger stink about such a thing, but this pretty much just sealed it for me: I was not going to buy a Honda so why get pissed? He told me that he would have some Insights in around the 23rd or 24th and I could come back then. At this point though, I did not want my trip out there to be a total fucking waste so I asked him to give me a price on my trade in. At first he refused, saying that they normally do it the day of a potential sale. But, I kinda pushed him into giving me an appraisal on my car. He told me it would take 20 minutes and I said that was fine, I just wanted a price. While he was gone I asked my brother where the nearest Ford dealer was because I was going to leave there and test drive a Ford Fiesta.

  Finally after a half fucking hour, he was able to give me a price on my trade in, but told me that he can't be sure that was the value it would be when I come back to test drive the Insight as I might put 1,000 miles on it in the 10 days it would be before I test drove the Insight, you know, because I'm totally planning on driving to New York and back as soon as I leave the dealer. After giving me the price he shook my hand and started to walk off when I reminded him that he still had my key (it was my spare, I wasn't dumb enough to give him my only key). He then went back and got my key and gave it to me and we left, with no intention of ever going back there.

  I remembered that there is a Ford dealer on my way home from work, in fact I drive past it everyday. And since the Honda dealer was just a few minutes from my job, we stopped off at the Ford dealer and test drove a Fiesta. Oh, and they gave me a price on my car in about 15 minutes. And as of right now, it is highly likely that I will buy it, in part because, SURPRISE, they actually have the vehicles people want to test drive and maybe buy in stock.

  • 5:48 pm
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