For those who have been following the straysheepie saga, believe it or not, I almost bought a car today!! Unfortunately, in the end all I got was hard lesson learned
After everyone's advice against the Accent with > $2k damage, I looked in the Buy and Sell again for a listing. One caught my attention - another 2003 Accent GSi for around $9900 at Brian Jessel BMW. So I called yesterday and spoke to a very nice rep who impressed me by pulling up the ICBC record for the Accent even before I asked for it, and told me there was only a $500 claim on the windshield. I was pleasantly surprised, and told him I would visit tomorrow morning.
So this morning I dragged my Mom and Uncle there and test drove the Hyundai. It was decent, although the engine huffed and puffed uphill which left me worried about whether it can manage to go up to SFU (my university on top of a mountain, for people not in Vancouver). After we got out of the car, my uncle noticed a Civic sitting nearby. He asked about it, and it was a 1997 with very low mileage (~50k kms) and in good shape. I thought, what the heck, might as well test drive it since I'm here and it's in the same price range.
It blew the Hyundai away. It was 6 years older, but it handled very well going up the hill and down, and everyone (including the salesman) was telling me to go with the Civic because it is a lot better built and had a higher resell value. It only had a $600 claim on it so it seemed like a decent deal. So on the way back to the dealer we were finalizing the price and what things would be touched up/included etc, and I was happy that it looked like I would FINALLY have a car!
When we got back to the lot and stepped out, another BMW sales gestured to the one with us and whispered something to him. After their conversation, our salesman turned back to us and told us the car was sold!!! Then I remembered that before we left the lot, the other sales and another man were standing very close to our car, and the sales rep with us waved to his colleague to indicate the other buyer could take it for a spin after we finished.
Well, it turns out the other sales sold it (since the buyer didn't want a test drive) and did the paperwork while we were out on the test drive without consulting the sales rep that was with us! He could easily have called and said his client wanted to put in an offer for sale, and worked something out with the 'our' rep to ascertain priority.
I feel cheated and disgusted by what happened. The salesman helping us was extremely courteous and polite even though he knew right off the bat that we weren't buying a brand spankin' new BMW, and I was ready to give him my money. I'm not as concerned for myself since there are a billion Civics out there for sale, but I felt awful for the salesman since he spent an hour with us and he had the sale snatched away from him.
I know I'm ranting here, but I'm also curious - does this happen often? It seems horribly unethical given that the other rep could have called us at least to say there was an offer on the car while we were gone. And now I'm paranoid since I'm thinking that, what, we now have to put a deposit on a car to "claim" it before test driving it?!
That's my lesson for today, I guess... get rid of any other potential buyers nearby before I go for a test drive
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