Buying a Car - Part 2

Sorry about the delay from part 1 until now. I just haven't taken the time to blog it out because of the links, but I think I'm ready now!

I have always enjoyed Microsoft's site carpoint.msn.com where you can go to spec out a new car and receive what the actual invoice to the dealer is. The site has a great tool to select each and every option for a car to determine what the invoice and the MSRP is for every thing and you can see how much those heated seats affect your bottom line! In addition, Kelly Blue Book is a great resource to determine the value of a used car. But recently there has been more help available. eBayMotors allows you to examine new and used cars all around the country and the reality is a 300 mile trip to pick up a car for a lot less is not so bad.

I had friends recommend CarsDirect.com as a site to use and it helped out nicely for determine some pricing. I really enjoyed the information available on Edmunds web site though. They have an idea they call True Market Value that puts everything in perspective for the value of a car and I felt that they did the best job of putting all the information into a single location.

I also went through my head reminding myself of what a car dealer wants to do to me. That is, of course, take the most money they can for their product. I don't blame them for it, it's just the way they do business. I reviewed some of their tactics. You see, the dealer will do anything to take control of the situation. From the initial assault as you step out of your car at the lot to the point where they say

follow me

and head into the office to holding the keys to your trade-in until you have to ask for them back, the job of the car salesperson is to make you feel like they are in charge. This puts the customer back on their heels and gets the customer used to allowing the salesperson to control the discussion and situation. This continues as the dealer never really wants to talk about the cost of the car, but rather they only want to talk about the payments you can afford, then they will try to find a way to squeeze the car into your payments. This is a real ripoff for people as they think they are getting a good deal on a car when in reality they are paying more than it is worth and they are paying it for years and years longer than they thought they would.

So with all of that said, I was able to narrow down the choices for my wife's next car to really two candidates for her to drive and provide input on. The first was the Hyundai Santa Fe. This machine had seating for seven, the entire cabin was basically a pillow in a crash with all the airbags and it had all the neat electronic geegaws to keep you safe traveling down the road. The other car was the Mitsubishi Outlander. This car also sat seven, turned into a pillow in a crash and had geegaws all over to keep it on the road. It also was slightly cheaper than the Hyundai and they both offered a five year 60,000 mile bumper-to-bumper warranty.

After test driving both machines and putting the kids in them to see how they fit, my wife approved of both of them. Now starts the bad process...actually negotiating to purchase the car. Armed with the prices from Edmunds.com and eBayMotors and Kelly Blue Book and Carpoint.MSN and CarsDirect.com I prepared to do battle with the unsavory car salesmen!

Buying a car - Part 1

I decided that I would do a few posts about buying the recent new car. Hopefully it will help people out if you are here in the US with some links. It recently came up that I needed to purchase a new car. My wife's 2002 Chevrolet Venture had 97,500 miles on it and we were concerned about turning the odometer over 100,000 since it looks bad when trying to sell it. We have not had any mechanical problems with the car, but it is only front wheel drive and my wife wanted more traction. We both had our jobs during the new car process. My wife's job was to tell me a series of things she wanted in the car and to tell me how much money we could spend on it. My job was to research what were our best options, show them to my wife for approval and then negotiate the deal in the end.

My wife's requirements for her new car were:
Good warranty
All-wheel drive or four-wheel drive
Ability to sit seven people
Neither a minivan (she no longer wants to look like a soccer mom) nor a full-sized beast like an Excursion or a Suburban because she wants to be able to park in lots

With the list of requirements in hand, I set about my work to find what could fit the bill. My information on how I did that in the next installment...

Earthquake!

Today's post was going to be a rant against car dealers and their cheating tactics, but I'll have to save that one for another day. This morning around 0720 we had an actual earthquake here in Utah. The couch moved and a small hanging clock we have on a table was swaying back and forth. Hopefully it was small enough it didn't cause any damage.

Cars

It is time in the Buckley family for a new addition. My wife's current PlastiVan is nearing the 100k mile mark where it loses value because of the stigma of 100k on the clock so we have ramped up efforts recently into what vehicles fit her requirements.

Her number one requirement is that the new vehicle is not a minivan. While she is a soccer mom, she doesn't want a soccer mom's ride so no minivan. The next thing is it needs to have a third row of seats so she can split up the munchkins and have room to haul their friends if needed. She needs a good warranty and most of all Gramps needs to approve of it.

So after test drives and internet research there were two vehicles that meet the needs. The Hyundai Santa Fe and the Mitsubishi Outlander. Now comes the part I really dread...dealing with the car dealer. Ugh.

Incredible response

I mentioned in church a couple weeks ago that the video computer had decided to give up on life and could no longer function. The response to that has been nothing short of incredible! I had a text message come in actually during my sermon (I didn't answer it), we had many people donate funds and their time to it, and I have a couple of people still trying to get parts for it. Right now it looks like we'll have it by the end of the week!

Valentine's Day

So today in the US (I don't know about the rest of the world?) it is Valentine's day. My kids in school will giggle and give valentines to everybody in their classes and eat candy all day long. Older couples will purchase lovey-dovey gifts for each other while they express their undying love.
Many years ago, my wonderful wife let me know she doesn't really care about Valentine's Day and that I was off the hook. I purchased nothing for her...she reciprocated and we were good. Heck, we were great! I went to lunch yesterday with other guys from work and while they lamented the fact they had to go find something for their wives, I was rewarded with the opportunity to gush about my wonderful wife! Nothing needed! Freedom!

Yeah, that was. That was before. She violated the rules. This morning...in violation of everything we agreed upon...she gave me a gift.

sigh

So it appears I am now in the ranks of the severely challenged (read: Lots of guys) who will be forced to go out after work today (couldn't do lunch, had Doc appointment for that) and find something that will express my undying love for her.

Maybe I'll just offer to clean the bathroom!

Busy weekend

For some reason, when I have the opportunity to teach at church those are busy and tiring weekends for me. I ended up taking Friday off work and spending the entire day in my home office working on the message. Then Saturday saw it mostly done, I went ahead and went through it and polished it about three more times and was done by 1300 or so. Then I was able to hang out with the kids...I think we watched American Idol. Saturday evening, I went to bed and then Novell called me with a machine down, so I fixed that and got back to bed to get up at 0500 for Sunday morning. Got to church, got things setup, went to the prayer room to prepare more. I had the opportunity to teach in both services and talk with people after church. Then I went home and I already started getting calls before lunch. For some reason, the days I have the opportunity to teach something seems to come up. So I was able to speak with people and try to help out until around 1600 when I was able to sit down with my wife. We caught Dirty Jobs, ordered a pizza and made the kids clean their rooms. Oh, and we fed the sheep in there somewhere! Whew!

You never know...

When something you have done will come back to you.

About 14 years ago I spent some time at work being in charge of making sure our file servers were backed up to tape. That job only lasted a year or so then I moved on to another position, but I just spent a couple of hours in a meeting with lawyers because we are involved in litigation that requires information from back in that timeframe and they had questions for me on what we did and how we did it and why we did it and where the data may be. You never know but you may be called upon to talk about what you have done 14 years ago!

And I really couldn't remember very much at all. It was just too long ago for me...

Fun time

Had a great time at the SHOT show. Probably walked 15 miles on Saturday and ended up with a 50 pound pack of literature! It was fun to see a lot of new products coming out and some of the older stuff. The company that sells doors with replaceable locks so police departments can practice battering tactics was annoying. People were beating on their door with the battering ram constantly! That took a bit to figure out, but then we finally knew what that awful racket was. Gunney Ermey was there signing pictures at the Glock booth and then there were quite a few other folk around that people wanted photos of or were being interviewed on TV but I didn't know who in the world they were. Good time, lots of spiffs for the kids and I made it back safe! I was able to purchase a couple of lights...one a book light that is soft or medium and then a 130 lumen tactical light that was pretty neat. That was probably the biggest hit on this year's show...the lights have really changed in the last two years and became very affordable. You used to have to drop over $100 for a nice tactical light, but I was able to get one for only $30 at the show this year.