You would adieu if it happened to you. (Cue the trumpets!) Doo do doo doo doo!
Frankly, I knew it wouldn’t go well. No one loves the automotive purchase process.
I’ll take the literary cul-de-sac (giggity), and say that I am now the proud owner* of a shiny new Subaru, which I do, of course, love to death**. I did since the moment I test drove it. Not so much with other models and makes I drove. And frankly, I’m not about to spend a cool twenty-Gs on a vehicle I don’t absolutely love. Or anything, for that matter, when it comes (that one was also sexual) to that kind of green.
While I suppose I have to give credit where credit is due, the sales people were persistent.
But I submit, dear readers, that their efforts are entirely in vain.
Do customers really respond when the high-pressure sales technique of repeating, “I’m not trying to pressure you,” truly work? Or constantly quoting prices, lease programs, sales, rebates, or other random deals that are inevitably worked back into the price in the form of extended warranties, taxes, title and paperwork fees, and the inevitable left-out rubber (the only useful ones) floor mats?
Perhaps try my personal favorite technique (because it actually happened), “look, this car just came back today. It’s a dealer buyback with only 8000 miles on it, the previous owner just had to sell it back because he bought it for his wife, and then his wife died…”
FAIL!
And I know I make logical decisions. I made one at the precise moment this process started by knowing I wouldn’t sign a damn thing the day I walked in to test drive. Telling me that I’m making a logical decision by making an emotional decision to buy immediately is some form of paradox that likely brought the Earth one step closer to total destruction.
Via poo-flinging monkeys*.
One of which, I believe, was attempting to sell me a dead woman’s ex-car.
It would thrill me to no end if the horror ended there.
Alas, thrilled, I am not.
Inspiring this tirade of consumerism-gone-wild**, was the last straw. This morning was/is, depending on your time zone, mine own quarter-century birthday. Huzzah. A normal Wednesday, which, by any other name, I’d have to work.
Suddenly, my cell phone leaps awake with a happy ring! As if to call out, “pick me up! Someone remembered you’re not dead!*”
Then I saw the number.
The damn Subaru dealership.
“WTF!” I exclaimed with great relish. Probably less relish to the cubicles adjacent. Annoyed, I sent it to voice mail.
I find out, the dealership decided it was necessary to intrude upon my personal life to call and wish me a happy birthday. With a pre-recorded message no less. This after the actual salesman harassed me each weekend for two weeks after I purchased the car to, “thank [me] for [my] purchase, and hope [I] was enjoying the car.”
SRSLY.
I bought a damn car from you. Get over it already. I’m not your friend, guy. And I’m not your guy, buddy. Enough is enough is enough, I can’t go on, I can’t go on, no more no!
I appreciate that you want to be friendly with your customers to ensure repeat purchases, but, quite honestly, I didn’t want to go to that particular dealership anyway, except that it was the only one in town, and, if I had the option, after this, I honestly don’t want to be a repeat customer.
Though, so far I do love my Subaru too much to think of buying something else next time.
As such, I hope that the winds of life drag me elsewhere by the time I need a new vehicle. Because you gotta do what you gotta do. And sometimes, it’s in California.
*Technically, the bank owns it. Whatever.
**No, really, it is plotting to kill me with it’s sexilicious speediness.
*If only life were still so simple…
**Woo! Best Buy! Show us your boobs!
*I’m totally kvetching here, I actually had more voice mail today than I knew what to do with.
With apologies to Leslie Gore, and Donna Summer, and Doc Hollywood.