When I bought my last car in August of 2007, a Saturn Ion; conditions were already a little shaky. I couldn’t see into the future just yet but my dealer likely could. The economy was already reacting a little irksome just ahead of the housing mess whose ripple effects would still follow us today. That and Saturn was already being openly talked about being sold or shut down; even as early as 2007.
My own story had its own asterisk. My then girlfriend and I were getting married later that week and taking our still un-bought car, filling it with all of our stuff and moving across the country from New York City to Los Angeles. So yeah, everything was a little loopy.
But while the dealer was just trying to close the sale, we were still able to make a lot of discounts happen by playing good cop/bad cop and not getting too gushy. When the time came to sit down and look over the contract my wife and I went on these charges line by line and took them on at every turn.
My wife was the one who spotted all these nonsensical charges and brought them all up. When the dealer gave some ridiculous answer for why we had to pay for things I had heard been advertised as standard, he threw up his brick wall. Fortunately for us we continued to play hardball and we deconstructed his wall one by one.
The GM OnStar feature was a big deal. Since we were going into uncharted territories, we both felt like it was a good idea. However our dealer thought he could get us to pay face value for it from the get-go; we had other ideas. We told him all sorts of lies:
“Oh it’s no big deal; I drove to California every summer growing up” (I didn’t)
“Well our friend who was here recently got the OnStar added in for free” (I’m sure it happened; because we were able to get it; it just didn’t happen for anyone we knew)
Then when he told me he could give it to me for a “monthly fee added to my finance” or “a once a year fee” I was insulted. The one time per year fee ($200) and the monthly fee ($20×12 months) didn’t even add up. And why would I want to finance this silly operator feature; maybe we should go back to Volkswagen.
That was the kicker. As soon as I mentioned that we had looked elsewhere he was all about giving us free stuff. We got free floor mats, free oil changes, free 100K mile checkup, and free OnStar.
The OnStar didn’t last forever though and that’s okay because we never used the stupid thing. But we would have paid a lot more for this OnStar and all these other things if we hadn’t been so eager to fly.
Telling a car dealership about the other car dealerships you’re thinking of visiting does it to them every time.
OnStar – Saved $1000/5yrs or $1200/5 yrs. Floor mats $80. 100K Chcekup $200. Oil changes (3) $210.
Total saved: $1490-$1690+ (time invested 15 minutes)