What I learned by buying a car

In between the parties and wine and dinners and coughing from this cold, I bought a car yesterday. A Ford Focus SEL hatchback in sonic blue with butt warmers and a moonroof that I should get toward the end of July.

It amazes me that with all that's advanced in the world of customer service, so little has advanced to make the car dealer buying process less slimy and annoying. I went alone so Beerman could work on the fish tank and C-man could just play and not have to sit in a dealership for hours. I learned a few things in doing so, or at least reaffirmed, about myself. And also about car dealings in general.

• I am not a sympathetic person. Telling me you are only making a few bucks on this doesn't make me sad, it just tells me we still have a few bucks to go on lowering the price.
• I do not appreciate people who are less than straightforward. Do not tell me it's your best price, and then shake my hand as I'm out the door and tell me there's still wiggle room on the price. And do not come back to me each time with a price that is configured differently (one with the taxes, without taxes on another, one not added up on one, just the monthly payment on another, with my supposed down payment included on another, one as a percentage of what the last price was) and expect me to feel you are trustworthy. I can subtract. And add. And that just adds up to a whole lot of shady to me.
• I enjoy haggling over a car as much as I enjoy haggling over the price of a hammock at a fair in the street. It becomes a game to me. Because I don't NEED this. It's only a want. And I can tell the difference between the two.
• A great portion of my work life is devoted to the issue of inventory control and making sure the customer gets the right size and color. So do not punish me and tell me I have to pay more because you have stocked the wrong inventory, or worse, push another model on me. This is not my problem.
• If you force me to draw a line in the sand on my ultimate price, negotiations have in essence just stopped. So you'd better be prepared to meet me at my line, because I am no longer budging once I've shown my hand.
• I am ABSOLUTELY willing to spend my whole day going from dealer to dealer for a couple of hundred bucks, so don't insinuate it's too much trouble "just for a couple of hundred bucks". Because it's my money, goshdarnit. And if you think it's that trivial, then save us the trouble and just lower the price.
• I will not settle for something I don't want.