They sell your reserved car and scramble to get you another and turn around and sell that one too. The incompetence level is off the charts with this dealer. I hope they loss their dealership with smartusa.
Got to the Center, waited until they were done with a customer.
At some point of the conversation, the Sales Manager added that she was told that someone left me a message telling me the (original) car was there. Frankly, I was offended. I reacted that there was no message left; if there were, I would definitely have returned call. I blankly said someone was lying to her and told her to check the (company's) phone record. As said early, my tolerance level was low.
It happened that they are running a special and knocking (at least) $100 off every single Smart they have on hand. Of course, they insisted they have very low margin and are barely making a few hundred $ on each sale. Anyway, I got them to knock another $100 off. No free stuff other than the rubber mats first offered; however, those were out of stock, so have to wait to get them. I asked about extended warranty, they said they could take $100 off the 48mos/48K mile one. I also asked about the tire warranty. Michelle kept showing me her folder, inside listed the costs of packages and the respective charges, i.e. the differences are their profit. I asked her to take only 50% profit on one package, she okayed. So, I took that tire warranty package at a (~30% off) discount.
I don't know, maybe I am not a good at bargaining/negotiating. These are all I got, a bit shabby maybe to some of you. Nonetheless, I did not want to dread on. I guess I have convinced myself to accept some 'gives and takes'. At the end, I did hear from the sales manager that she's sorry. And I would "let Kirit go". He was only careless or, as I understood, too overloaded by the recent wave of transactions (drawn by the Clunker program). He did a good job in the check-out process. I don't mind dealing with him again.
So, the story pretty much wraps up here. I hope from here on it is smooth sailing for both the Center as well as their future customers, especially those who may have to go through the reservation procedure for the ED Smarts.
Thanks again for all the concern, info and suggestions.
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1999 Ford Expedition
Smart
"the car", "la voiture"
Today
Linear Mode
