Your Day (apart from gardening) - what took place?

I confess that did kind of "disturb" me when that happened so casually and easily When I bought the previous car, from the same Dealer, I had to go to the Bank to get a Banker's Order as I don't use cheques so there was that few hours delay........but now

 

Just been looking at the blue sky and feeling the warmth of the sun on my back and counting my blessings

 

I can't think of any Dealer that even think of letting you do that! Firstly, as you said the, car is not yours so you couldn't tax it in your name as you're not the listed owner without proof of ownership, secondly most/all test drives are accompanied by an employee of the Dealers.

 

I have a huge car sales site within 2 miles of my house and they don't have salesmen harassing you or following you. You need a flask and sandwiches when you go there as they have over 2000 cars on site all neatly in ranks by make and type and nobody bothers you whatsoever. If you want to look properly at a particular car you can book the keys out for 3 days!!, but you can't start the car unsupervised. Nowadays they will offer the Wholesale Book Price and that is it.......no changes, no bargaining. Any Dealer that offers you deals is just using smoke and mirrors to con you. So this particular Dealer will offer just Book price and nothing else but their selling prices are also fair and fairly low to compensate.

 

My situation in buying cars is slightly different as I only buy new cars. Before internet I used to phone loads of main dealers and bargain with them - playing one off against the other. Nowadays I let these internet car sales companies do it for me. The, old, car I'm driving at the moment was bought from a dealer in Harrogate (I'm in the SE) and they drove it down to me after getting 3k more discount than from any other dealer.

I have a car on order at the moment. The best deal was from a dealer in Poole but I then managed to get my nearest main dealer to match the price. I then went into their place and sat and worked out all the nitty gritty - including the bad choice of available colour! After I'd agreed the deal I said that before I sign I want to know what price they would give me for my old car. He looked rather shocked and said "you didn't mention anything about part exchange"! My answer was that's because I'm not part exchanging it - I'm selling it to you and want a good deal. We ended up agreeing a price that was £500 more than the top book price (it's in good condition apart from never having been washed in ten years ).

When salesmen know you want to PX they quite often give a reasonable price for the old one but not as good a price as they could give for the one you're buying.

I've paid my deposit of £500 (they take credit cards for that but not for the full price). When it comes to paying the final price - only when I see the car - I certainly won't use a debit card but shall do a simple bank transfer over the phone.

Since having ordered my car (it's not on the production line yet - for technical reasons) the price has gone up and they've added a few things 'as standard' to the ones yet to come off the production line. It wasn't too hard to argue that our deal is for the price agreed and it isn't my fault if you can't deliver exactly what I ordered and in a timely fashion. The sales manager agreed to cover the price rise (just over £1,000 ) as he didn't want to lose a customer (the small print says that if the price goes up they can charge me the extra or I can cancel).

 

And a caffeine high!