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canyonwalkerThis past Sunday we bought a new car. Kind of. We agreed to the price and terms with the dealership's general sales manager and F&I guy. By now everything was supposed to be finalized short of us picking up the car and the keys... but it's not.
So, tomorrow morning we're flying down to San Diego, 500 miles away, and going to a dealership to pick up a car I'm not 100% sure will be ready for terms I'm not 100% settled with.
Update: Around 5:30pm today I finally got hold of another F&I Guy— I'll call him F&I Guy #2— via telephone. He answered my questions about the extended warranty. The good news is now I understand the details better. The bad news is they are definitely not what was represented to me originally. So we'll be renegotiating things at the very last minute. This is not what I hoped for in being able to do business remotely with car dealers in 2021.
- The dealership 450 miles away sent paperwork to a dealership near us. The promise was we'd be able to sign everything that needed a signature by Wednesday. Except the local dealership didn't return any of our calls, and a person in another department said the F&I team there was short-staffed and may not be able to help us. They suggested we go back to the selling dealership.
- The car was supposed to be done with reconditioning by Wednesday. It's still in reconditioning today. It's supposed to be ready tomorrow... though I don't know whether that means tomorrow by about 1pm when we're there, or tomorrow by 6pm, or whether "tomorrow" is simply more happy talk.
- When I called back the selling dealership to tell them that the local dealership wouldn't actually help us with the paperwork, the F&I team was short-staffed there, too. The F&I Guy who sold us an extended warranty is on vacation. And when I called asking for anyone in F&I to help us get details about it, nobody answered the phone. Repeatedly. I finally spoke to a salesguy who encouraged me to email them.
- I finally got details via email today. Well, I got some of the details; the emailed document was incomplete. And some of what's there does not match what was represented to me over the phone. We might need to scratch the extended warranty off the purchase. We'll see how hard the dealership pushes back against that. I expect they'll say that we've already bought it. I'll respond that I haven't actually signed anything yet (see above).
So, tomorrow morning we're flying down to San Diego, 500 miles away, and going to a dealership to pick up a car I'm not 100% sure will be ready for terms I'm not 100% settled with.
Update: Around 5:30pm today I finally got hold of another F&I Guy— I'll call him F&I Guy #2— via telephone. He answered my questions about the extended warranty. The good news is now I understand the details better. The bad news is they are definitely not what was represented to me originally. So we'll be renegotiating things at the very last minute. This is not what I hoped for in being able to do business remotely with car dealers in 2021.
