Posted on Fri Jul 25, 08:37 PM in Music
A week of practicing, memorizing, and remembering why I hate car dealerships.
Good practice, much better. No music this time, and we could pretty much run through the whole set. Feeling much more confident about this entire thing. I’m amazed at what I find I can memorize. Now if I can just get those patch changes coordinated.
So I mentioned last week that we bought a used van. What I’ve been not mentioning is the absolute ass-hattery of our salesman in the follow-up to our sale. In a nutshell, we were promised 1) a new battery, 2) a replacement driver’s side mirror, and 3) a transmission flush as part of the sale. When we picked up the van, only the battery had been replaced. Our salesman asked me (?) to call him (?) next week Monday to remind him (?) to set up an appointment for these things on Tuesday. Whatever. So I do, and on Monday he’s all “Ok, ok… let me get right back to you.” Monday goes by and no call. Tuesday I get his voicemail, but no follow-up call. Wednesday I call again and this time he’s all like “Ok, ok… let me talk to [somebody] Cox and set this up. I’ll call you right back.” I do not get a call for the rest of the day.
The deal has been done, the paperwork signed, the loan application approved, the checks cut. I’m basically left hanging. So, at 9pm, which is closing time for them, I go to their website and use their “Contact Us” form to write a polite but firm missive about how I feel that this dealership has been with us before and during the sale, but left us afterwards. I asked “Is there anyone there willing to do their job?”
The next day at 10:30 a.m. I got a nice phone call from the head of preowned sales, telling me he didn’t know why my salesman didn’t get back to me or set up an appointment, because he did order the part, and it was in stock waiting for me to come in. WTF? After the apologies, we set up an appointment for the next day (which was today) and I have to say that the service department of this dealership is 180 degrees from the sales side. Nice, friendly, on the ball… while they did the trans flush, it turned out they needed a different (heated) mirror assembly, so they ordered it and we set up another appointment for next week for that. Getting kind of close with us leaving on a trip with this van, and needing to put a trailer hitch on it… but at least something is getting done. And I hope I never have to buy a used vehicle again. Why are they so slimy???
We also paid our respects to the SO’s Saturn. After it blew a cylinder this February, we hadn’t moved it from the garage. Turned out that the battery discharged during that time and the emergency brake seized, making it entirely undriveable, so there was no way of turning this into a trade-in opportunity. So, we had a salvage company drag it out of our driveway (nice ballet they had to perform getting a full-bed towing truck back there without taking out our house or the fence) and got $200, which will pay for a lot of the hitch job on the van.
Go ahead, have your say!