Dealership Stealership

As someone that reads a lot of car blogs and such and perpetually buys very used vehicles, I had never really had a proper dealership experience. I figured, hey, it can't really be that bad, can it? I mean, yeah, you read all these dealership horror stories but that's got to be some sort of selection bias. Why would anyone report on a smooth, uneventful interaction?

Being the research-happy couple that we are, we ended up doing 6-8 different test drives. The worst was at a Mazda dealership, where we came in and told the salesman exactly what we were there to test drive (a Mazda3 Sport GS). But obviously we're dumb consumers that don't know what we want, because he made us sit down and grilled us for 10 minutes to understand what we were looking for in a car and what would be a good fit. Surprise, it turned out to be what we had requested in the first place. Then he gave us the salesman-y spiel, where you could tell there were talking points he HAD to rattle off before proceeding further. Half an hour after we arrived, we were finally allowed to go on a test drive on the car we asked about within the first thirty seconds of setting foot in the building. For the record, we loved the looks and the ergonomics and quality of the cabin were amazing, but the power-train was lackluster. I mean, for all the talk of "horse and rider philosophy" and driving dynamics, who thought it was a good idea to automatically turn off sport mode after 30s of sedate driving? Ugh.

We also drove a Kia Forte5 (utterly soulless and uninspired), an Elantra N Line (pretty much the same, but well equipped with a huge sun roof, remote start, and OH MY GOD VENTILATED SEATS ARE AMAZING), a Subaru WRX (good power and engine note, but unpleasant cabin), a G37 Sport (bit of a boat, and the infotainment didn't age well, but the power was addictive), a BMW 240i (which was really quite lovely, but the maintenance is outrageous), and a VW GTI (okay looks and interior, but really solid dynamics and power-train). We finally decided we wanted the latter, but we needed a lightly used example to be able to afford it. We quite liked the sales rep we had for this one - he was laid back and didn't try to push us towards a sale. We emailed him our criteria and asked that he let us know if anything came across his radar.

Oh, we should mention that the first dealership experience we had at the very beginning of this process was for a Tesla Model3. We booked ahead, showed up, and when the saleswoman asked if we were actually looking to buy and we said no, she was happy to take us out anyways. It was wonderfully devoid of the usual dealership/sales tactic garbage, and the car was so impressive the next few cars we test drove were an automatic let down.

Anyways, back to finding a lightly used GTI. We found one, at a different dealership in the opposite quadrant of the city. The ad said it only had about 3500km on the clock and was used as an executive demo. We drove up there and found out it was traded in by a family. Upon starting the car, we discovered it had closer to 7000km.

We told our salesman we were unimpressed by the inaccuracies of the listing, and he told us we could get the 3M protective film at dealership cost. The price they quoted us was about twice what a third-party shop would charge. I know dealerships are more expensive and need to cover their costs, but damn.

Still, the overall price, trim, and usage on the car was the closest we'd been able to find over a couple weeks of looking. So we decided to go ahead with things. We filled out some preliminary paperwork, and by the time we left (with plans to return later in the week to complete the deal), we had been there for four hours.

While we were first testing the car, we specifically asked the salesman if the tires were all weather. He specifically said yes. In the days leading up to picking up the car, I found out that GTIs only come with all season tires as standard (which are useless in winter). I called up our sales rep and asked him to please double confirm that it had all weather tires like he said.

A few hours passed, and he said they were indeed all seasons. I told him we were unimpressed and weren't budgeting the money to get new tires right away. He said he'd talk to his manager and get us a good deal on a new set of tires. They sent us a quote. I made a call to do some basic fact checking. Turns out the 'special price' they gave us after 'pulling some strings' was $100 more PER TIRE than the standard retail price at a different VW dealership within the same goddamn city.

I told my sales rep we were unimpressed. Luckily, he 'has a guy', and was able to get us a cheap quote on a cheap set of rubber. And folks, let me tell you, you do not screw around when it comes to tires. Sure, it may be the least sexy part of a vehicle, but all the performance and traction control and fancy brakes and collision avoidance aren't worth jack if you're skimping on the part that actually connects you to the ground.

We ended up passing on the special tire offers they gave us, bought the car anyways, and booked with a tire shop to get a proper product without all the extra crap.

A couple weeks later I emailed the service department at the VW dealership and asked for copies of previous service records just so that we know the vehicle's full history. I got a call from our sales rep, who said, "I don't know what you mean - it's practically a new car, it won't have any service history." Unfortunately, I had been paying attention when looking at the paperwork for buying the car, and the history form made reference to two prior services. To their credit, they sent us the full records that afternoon and we learned that the car had been brought in to fix an oil leak and a strange vibration in the front. Great.

What a crappy experience. I mean, everyone we interacted with treated us well and were polite and didn't seem too skuzzy. But at it's worst you could say this dealership was doing exactly what all those horror stories say, and at it's best they were just hilariously clueless and just didn't have their act together.

I'll hopefully in the future I'll be better equipped and prepared to detect and call out the bullshit. I think our biggest hindrance was that we were on a bit of a timeline to make a purchase and were restricted by our budget. If, IF we ever need to ride this dealership merry-go-round again for another vehicle, I'm only going to consider it if we're in a position where we can pick, choose, and straight up walk away if we're being jerked around again. I can't believe that my first new car experience was just as bad as people say.

As a condition of making the purchase we had to book our first service at that dealership, but I'm sure we'll conveniently forget to bring it in. We'll take it anywhere but there.

On the plus side, though, the car itself is pretty great.
-Cril