07.24.2004
Cousin Ed
Cousin Ed
Above you can see Cousin Ed silently laughing at his predecessor, Uncle Cletus, who is quietly dead beside him. Behind them, the house with the blue door is our house. The reflection of a tree on Cousin Ed's hood is there by mistake. I'd not be able to do something like that on purpose.
Here's a quote from my previous entry, for anyone playing the home game: "No matter how I try to explain this situation I come out looking like an idiot. Maybe an out-of-luck idiot, but an idiot nonetheless. Every time I get denied I apply somewhere else for a higher amount."
Turns out I wasn't actually being an idiot. In fact, apparently I was going about everything the right way. When you can't get a loan from someone, ask someone else, and ask for a greater amount.
I paid off my wife's car last week. I then spent a few days arguing with the company to which I no longer owed any money, trying to get them to fax me a receipt verifying they'd received my payment. I did the thing electronically, check-by-phone, thinking that was the quickest way to get this thing done. Unfortunately, after the money had come out of my account their customer service people insisted that they couldn't send me any sort of verification for ten days. Needless to say, I was seriously agitated about that, and spent half an hour one particular afternoon arguing with one of these people about the fact that, seriously, we all knew they had my money, my bank knew they had my money, and all I wanted was for a receipt to be faxed to me so that I could give it to my credit union so that I could apply for a new loan for a different car. After insisting for the twelfth time that I talk to a supervisor, the woman I was talking to put me on hold and five minutes later told me that a supervisor had said she'd fax me what I wanted if I gave her my fax number.
In the meantime I had heard about a Nissan dealer out of the range of where I'd made online inquiries before which offered lifetime warranties on every car they sold. That sounded interesting, so I made an online inquiry there. I then got a phone call on the same afternoon I argued with those other people about the previous car loan; the guy there told me he had exactly the car I was looking for on his lot. This took me by surprise: I'd been trying to find a Majestic Blue Altima 2.5s with a particular option package at all the other dealers, and so far had gotten offers only on cars of different colors. So I asked this guy about the lifetime warranty thing, and he said that I'd heard right: they offer a power-train warranty for as long as I own my car.
I talked to this guy about price for a while, and told him the amount of the best offer I'd gotten to that point. He told me that was a low price; I told him I was confident the place offering it was on the level, and asked him to fax me a competing offer.
I received the faxed letter telling me I'd paid off my wife's car the next morning, but I didn't get a worksheet for the blue Altima. I tried calling the guy I'd dealt with in the afternoon, but was told that he wasn't in, and that he'd "probably" be in the next day. I was irked, of course, but I'd been waiting so long that I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Next day I found out he wouldn't get into the office until 11am; I left him a message asking again for him to fax me some numbers. After that I made a phone call to one of the dealer's who'd quoted me a great price on the internet, and asked him to send me a new quote including taxes and tags. I was thinking maybe I'd just go with this guy, though the car wasn't the color I really wanted, since I wasn't feeling great about the blue car guy's not having gotten back to me. By about 12:30 pm I still hadn't heard anything from the dealer with the blue car, so I called again and finally got to talk to him. He told me that he had the numbers there for me, but that he hadn't faxed them because he couldn't beat the other guy's price.
The thing about the other guy's price is that it was significantly below invoice. I'd been researching this car for a while (hell, I couldn't really go shopping for anything since I didn't have any damned financing, so I figured I might as well research exactly what I was doing.) I spent a lot of time on Edmunds.com, where they've got invoice prices for pretty much any new cars available (I think), as well as what they call the TMV of these cars. I think that stands for True Market Value. Basically it's the average price that cars are selling for given whatever options you're shopping for. In the case of this Altima, the previous offer I'd gotten from the first dealer was well below invoice, which was also well below what Edmunds listed as the TMV (the TMV was somewhere between the Invoice price and the MSRP.) I live in a pretty competetive area (there are four Nissan dealerships with 15 miles of here, and when that's expanded to 20 miles I think there are something like seven or eight,) so I figured this other guy's offer made some kind of sense; but on the other hand the car wasn't the color I really wanted, and they didn't offer that lifetime warranty (in fact the dealer with the lower-cost offer nearly choked when I mentioned it.) So I asked the guy with the blue one to fax me his numbers anyway.
The offer on the blue Altima was around 800 bucks higher than the other offer. This put it at just 100 bucks over invoice, though, and still below Edmunds' TMV. Certainly that warranty added value, at least in my mind, and the fact that he had the exact car I wanted was a bonus, too. So I called him again and told him I'd be driving up to take a look at it that afternoon.
So Wednesday afternoon I drove the 30 miles home from work, then the 20 miles north to see the car. I walked around the lot and saw what I assumed was the one I was there to see, idling near the showroom. Here I realized a mistake I'd made: this was the first time I was seeing this car in this color. I saw pictures on the internet, but there the color looked really more royal blue; this was a sort of midnight blue metallic thing. That's not bad; far from it. But it wasn't what I was expecting so I was caught off guard, and wasn't sure whether I should reconsider the other colors. In addition to that, there was another Altima (though not with the options I was looking for,) nearby that was the same color as the one the other guy had offered me. Smoke, with Frost interior. It was a much better looking combination than I'd thought it would be.
Then another flag went up (as yet the salesman I was supposed to be dealing with hadn't come out of the building, though I'd sent another sales guy in to tell him I was there.) This car had pin-stripes. Of course I hate pinstripes as a general rule; big stupid decals that dealerships add to their cars. More than that, to me pin-stripes mean dealer markup. I'm not a veteran at this or anything; but I'd been reading this shit for a month, and I'd read a lot of anecdotal horror stories about people who'd agreed on prices only to find out that the dealership wanted to charge additional money for stupid shit like pinstripes. And, of course, there's Will Macey in Fargo: "Okay, I'll see what I can do, but they put that on at the factory!"
The salesman walked out of the showroom and said, "That's the one!"
I pointed to the pinstripe and said, "Are you going to charge me for that?"
"I don't charge you for anything," he responded. Then he told me that a different dealership put those on, and that he wouldn't charge for them. So I told him that I hated them anyway, and he told me he'd take 'em off if I wanted. But then he went on some tangent that I still don't know that I understand. He began explaining that the paint was bad on this one. He said, "You can't see it out here, but under the showroom lights you'd be able to tell, it's not a good paint job. In a few years it'll start to chip, and then you'll be pissed off at me. I won't sell anyone a car like that." He explained that the detailing guy who'd washed and waxed the car had pointed it out to him. Then he told me not to worry, that he'd already arranged to have another one brought by the next day or the day after.
So we went over numbers and he filled out some preliminary paper work. I decided I liked the guy, which is not necessarily a good thing; I'm a sucker at heart, and I'm easily manipulated by charismatic sales people. At any rate, I wanted the Majestic Blue, because the longer I was able to look at it the more I liked it. Plus this guy was really sticking to the numbers he'd faxed me. He had me sign a pricing sheet that contained the numbers we'd agreed upon.
Of course I was concerned about this "bad paint job." Sounded like a bait 'n' switch sort of thing; so I tried to make sure I wasn't signing any papers that said I was actually buying anything in particular. Hell, I still didn't have the money, and I didn't have a loan secured. He next asked me how I was planning to pay for the car if I bought it. I told him I wasn't sure yet, but that once I'd agreed on the car I was going to want to fax the sales agreement to my Credit Union. He asked which Credit Union it was, and said that the dealership had relationships with some banks might be able to beat that credit union's rates. Nothing I didn't expect him to say. I told him to go ahead and run my credit, but that if he couldn't do at least as good as the Credit Union I'd still want to go to them. Of course I didn't know what rate I would get, if I'd get a loan at all, from the Credit Union. But I told him they'd said they'd give me 4.99%, since that's the best rate they were offering on new cars for 60 months.
I left that night and asked him to call me and let me know when the car was going to be there. I hadn't driven the bad-paint thing, or even gotten inside it, as I didn't want to confuse myself. I wanted to check out the one I'd be buying, not this other thing.
The next morning at about 8:30am he called me and told me Nissan had approved me for their top tier credit, which meant they could offer me a loan for that car at 1.9%.
I think I fell out of my chair. I'm pretty sure I mumbled something to the guy in the cube behind me. I probably walked around the office a few times with my mouth hanging open. Finally, though, I was able to understand that Bob, the sales guy (of course his name was Bob,) was telling me that the car would be there in the afternoon and was asking me when I wanted to come and pick it up. "Uhm. I think I have a meeting," I said confidentlyd. "But I should be able to get there sometime this afternoon."
After hanging up I think I sent my wife an email. Then I wandered around the office explaining to everyone that the world had gone crazy. About a month ago I applied at a credit union for a loan for 6 thousand dollars and was turned down. Now some guy was telling me that Nissan had put me in their "great credit" tier and would give me 1.9% financing on $21k worth of car.
When I drove to the dealership that afternoon I was pretty much positive someone was lying about something. There was some angle here, some trickery involving bad paint jobs that were undetectable under normal lighting conditions, banking representatives who'd never tell me why they wouldn't pre-approve a loan, and some gibberish about lifetime drivetrain warranties. I knew the conspiracy was there, I just couldn't put the pieces together. Had there been a body in the trunk of that other car? Was I going to be thrown into some other trunk when I got to the dealership with one-point-nine-percents in my eyes? Was I the star of a new hidden-camera, reality TV show called, "Let's Make This Idiot Think We're Actually Going to Sell him a Car with a Good Price and Give Him A Loan With a Good Interest Rate?"
I pulled into the lot and saw the car. No pin stripes. Right color outside, right color inside. Bob came out of the showroom right away this time. "There she is!" he said. Definitely scripted, I thought.
"Looks nice," I said. Yes, that was in the script too. They'd somehow pulled off the additional trickery of having me memorize a script I couldn't remember having seen.
"It's gonna get rained on in a second," he said. Of course there was a storm coming now. When I'd left home it was hot as hell and pretty damn bright. No skimping on the special effects budget on this show.
"Could I drive it?" I asked. Could I? Or would an unremarkably attractive woman in a business suit pop out of the trunk to show me where the cameras were hidden?
"Do you want to?" he asked. Then he headed into the building to get the keys. Or maybe I answered him first. Either way, a minute later when he came back out the rain had started. "You know your way around well enough, right?" he asked.
"Sure," I said.
"Have fun," he said as he handed me the keys. Then he ran back inside the building.
I spent maybe ten minutes driving around in sometimes nearly torrential rains. Nothing was amiss that I could detect. The options that I knew off the top of my head came with the option package I wanted were there: power seats, alloy wheels, stereo controls on the steering wheel, which was leather wrapped... When I parked the car I opened up the inside compartments, made sure nothing looked damaged.
Bob spent about half an hour going over things with me inside the showroom about the various warranties and the car and the dealership. A couple of times he checked to see if the girl who did financing was available, but she was taking some time with another customer. He told me some stories about all the cars he'd owned. He told me that the financing girl would go over my two primary financing options: they could offer me a 4.9% loan, in which case I'd get $1000 cash back, or they could offer me the 1.9% Nissan financing in lieu of the cash back. Of course I figured that out before coming to the dealership, and I'd calculated all the numbers and had them on a sheet in a folder sitting on the table in front of me. Finally he had other customers waiting and the financing lady wasn't ready yet so he went away for a minute and came back to show me that he'd calculated and that the 4.9% would be a better deal, as the two options worked out to nearly the same amount which meant that the cash back would be better.
Of course that wasn't right. The amount of the monthly payment for the 4.9% loan was exactly the same number I had on my little piece of paper. But that number was about 15 bucks a month higher than the other number which was with the 1.9%. I didn't call him on it (again, one reason that it sucks when I like the sales guy,) and instead let him go deal with his other customers while I waited for the financing lady.
Five minutes or so later she came out of her office and sat down with me and quickly talked right through the fact that I was doing this with the 4.9% and the cash back. I stopped her and asked what the numbers were for the 1.9% thingy. She said she hadn't looked to know the exact numbers. I asked her to do so. She went away then came back and told me the monthly amount with the 1.9, and it matched the number on my paper.
"That's fifteen dollars a month less," I said.
"The wife of one of the salesmen who work here had an accident about six months ago. She'd done Nissan financing and not taken cash back, and the amount of money the insurance gave her didn't pay off the entire loan. If she'd done the cash back she'd have had that much more equity in the car, and the insurance would've covered the entire amount," she read from the teleprompter hidden somewhere behind my head. Then she stared right at me so I had to look at my hands (which is pretty much where I'm usually lookin' anyway.)
"I don't know," I mumbled. Some message was flashing in my head. There's this loan payment calculator somewhere, probably on Edmunds, that helps you compare cash back/regular rates to no cash back/dealer special rates to determine which is a better deal. It's a pretty simple thing it does, and I'd gone through it only that afternoon, as one of the three or four things I'd done to verify that I'd calculated all my numbers correctly. That message said, "Take the Financing!" All the message was based on was the numbers. I hadn't seen anything about any damned "equity in the car" thing. That message was flashing in my head and I was saying to myself, "She just wants to sell me the loan, because that's how she gets her bonuses and raises and that's really what her job is. They get nothing out of the financing if I do it through Nissan." But what I said was, again, "Erm, uh, err, I don't know."
When I risked a quick glance up she was still staring at me. Finally she asked if I needed a minute. I said yes. My face was probably red at that point, and I was trying to figure out just why, exactly, I couldn't trust what I knew intellectually was my very sound judgement. She walked into her office. I pulled out my cell phone and almost called my brother. I'd talked to him a few minutes before when he'd called while I was talking to Bob. I thought I should ask him; except then I thought that that was ridiculous because I already knew the answer, and I'd be using a crutch like I always did. I'd done all the preparation I'd done in order to avoid having to deal with this kind of shit. But I'd known that somewhere there'd be this kind of shit to deal with. I put the phone away.
After a few minutes during which I saw some other employee in her office talking to her, the financing lady finally came back to where I was. "I want the 1.9%," I said.
"You sure?" she asked.
"Yes," I answered. So we went into her office so I could sign six hundred and seventeen pieces of paper. First, though, she presented me with four different options for extended warranties. For reasons that I'd go into now if this were supposed to be the book it's turning out to be, I'd decided that getting some sort of bumper-to-bumper extended warranty would be a good idea. But all four packages she had on her little piece of paper were too expensive. "I don't want an extended warranty," I said. I'd like to think I was negotiating, but probably I was just thinking I could always add an extended warranty sometime later.
"Why?" she asked.
"I'm on a tight budget," I said. "That's why I got the car I got with the options I picked. I need this to fit my budget."
"What if the payments were lower?" she asked.
"Maybe," I said. So she pushed buttons on her keyboard for a while, then reached over and crossed out something on the breakdown for the least expensive package on the piece of paper. What she crossed out was some crap about tire-coverage. Then she said, "without that, and with the employee discount, the payment's'll be $381 a month." Ah, the non-employee employee discount. Makes sense, since, really, aren't we ALL employees of this particular Nissan dealership?
This was a pretty good number. It meant that the extended warranty was about 900 bucks; in addition to the bumper-to-bumper parts and labor warranty, it included rental coverage, which is a pretty cool thing even if it doesn't work out to having that much financial value. So I agreed, and then we began the process of turning our hands into an assembly line.
"This says that you're buying your car at this price," she said, handing me some green or white or purple piece of paper that was longer than a regular piece of paper. I signed it.
"This says we offered you something to eat when you got here," she said, handing me a notecard with a coffee stain on it. I wrote, "Boo!" on it.
"This says I fucking rule," she said, handing me a pamphlet with a picture of a tree on the front. I scribbled on it.
"This is the TV guide," she said, handing me a TV Guide. I threw it out the door.
"This says that you acknowledge that you're not on a reality TV show even though you've been under the impression that you were for a couple of hours now," she said, handing me an old newspaper. I crossed out the words, "architect of the," and carved my initials in the desk.
"This verifies that you have insurance," she said, amazingly handing me a normal piece of paper that talked about car insurance. I signed it.
"This is the Johnson clause," she said. "It basically says that we still technically own the car until Nissan actually gives us the money." Mmm, ah, I thought. So that's the other shoe, huh? I've been wondering where you were, you fucking penny loafer. Hiding in the Johnson clause, I see. I'll be driving to work tomorrow in this incredible new car and some guy in a gray suit with a Nissan nametag on the lapel will jump out waving a piece of paper in his hand; I'll hit him and he'll wind up against the windshield showing me the paper and shouting, "The Johnson clause! We can't approve this 1.9% crap! We never agreed to that! This car does not belong to you!"
But hey, what the hell. At least I'd have a new car for a few days. I signed the paper.
Eventually, I was done. Eventually, all weblog entries must come to an end. Even the profusely boring ones that no one reads all the way through, which start out blandly explaining mundane car shopping minutiae and turn into horrible mish-mashes of movie misquotes and rip-offs of other-peoples'-writing-styles. Here, look at more pictures.
Click on the thumbnails for bigger images, if you're interested.
 Cousin Ed leers menacingly at the other cars |
 Cousin Ed leers menacingly at the idiot with the camera in the middle of the parking lot |
 Instrument Panel |
 Cousin Ed's Innards |
 Cousin Ed's CD player, and other fancy buttons and chrome stuff |
(Cousin Ed is a Nissan Altima 2.5s, Majestic Blue with Charcoal interior, Automatic transmission, with the Convenience Package and the Floor/trunk mat set.)
