Brutal Day!

The rental property business can be a tough business. As you probably know, the vast majority of new landlords fail in a short period of time due to cash flow issues. Additionally, dealing with tenants can be very difficult and some people literally become sick due to the stress.

I consider myself to be a strong person. However, I had a very long day Thursday that pushed me to the very limit of my patience and endurance. The problem Thursday wan't dealing with a violent drug addict or getting one of my rentals back completely trashed. No, it was much worse than that! I had to go car shopping with my wife to replace her car that was totaled in a recent accident!

There are a bunch of car dealers in Columbus and we started our search at about noon. My wife and I like to drive nice cars and we also like to pay cash for all non-appreciating "assets". Therefore, our goal was to find a used Mercedes or Jaguar (S-type) in excellent condition for about $15,000. Needless to say, that can be a significant challenge, especially in one day. The evening before our car hunting trip, we did some research on the internet and found some interesting possibilities. Our first stop was to an Acura dealer that had a good selection of used Jaguars. They had a couple of very nice S-type Jaguars, but they were about $5K more than we wanted to spend. One was very well equipped and looked new inside, but had a significant scratch on the bumper and did not have heated seats, which my wife wanted.

Next, we went to look at a 2002 Mercedes C240 that was fully loaded. It had low miles and was only $13,900. The moment we saw it, we knew this was our car. It was absolutely spotless and had just about every possible amenity. We decided to take it for a test drive before we bought it. Unfortunately, something was BADLY wrong with the engine. I have owned several Mercedes and I have never heard a Mercedes make a noise like that! The dealer insisted that the noise was only the 2 stage fan, but the car also had a vibration bad enough that you could feel it. We don't need a nice looking car with significant mechanical problems, so we said "no thanks" and moved on.

Next, we went to another large import lot, only to discover that they didn't have even a single car we were interested in.

From there, we went to a large Mercedes dealership. They had a 2001, one-owner, E-class with all the bells and whistles that was in immaculate shape. We drove it and it appeared to be perfect. The only catch - it had 123,000 miles. Mercedes has a reputation of producing excellent vehicles that last a LONG time, but I was still concerned about the miles. The dealer was asking $17,500 for the car, which was about the blue book value. I asked them if they would take $15,000 out-the-door (tax included) for the car, which would bring the pre-tax price down to about $13,500. They played the good cop, bad cop game with the manager coming in to explain to us that they had a lot in the car and their bottom line was $15,500 "out the door". While I might have bought it at $15,000, that was my absolute maximum and we decided to move on.

Next, we went to a CarMax dealership. They had a couple of nice Mercedes, but they were priced about $10,000 above our target price.

By this time, it was after 5pm and we decided to stop for dinner. Almost as soon as we sat down, the salesman from the Acura dealership called to say that they would be willing to come down on the price of the S-type Jaguar AND install seat heaters AND repaint the entire bumper to take care of the scratch. I asked the salesman if they would take $18,000 out the door (which would make the purchase price about $16,500). He said he would call me back. A couple of minutes later he called back and agreed to the price. I told him we would consider his offer.

Not 5 minutes later, another salesman called to say that they would accept $15,000 for the beautiful Mercedes that had $123,000 miles. I told him we would consider it.

A couple of minutes later, the Jaguar salesman called back to say that they would paint the bumper the next day and asked what he could do to put this deal together. I asked him if he could do better on the price and he said that he could probably knock another couple of hundred dollars off if we came back to the dealership. With that, I agreed and after dinner, we drove back to finally buy a car.

When we arrived at the dealership, we asked to test drive the car. It drove well, except for a slight vibration in the steering wheel. I believe that the vibration is a tire problem. The salesman promised to fix this issue. When we arrived back at the dealership, we carefully inspected the car and discovered that it didn't have a CD changer as was identified on the window sticker. By this time, the used car manager was at the car and I asked him if they were going to install the CD Changer. He began to quibble and I told him that this was not negotiable. The sticker said there was a CD Changer and we were not buying it without one. He reluctantly agreed. With all the issues settled, we went inside to sign the paperwork.

When the salesman returned with the paperwork, the out the door price was now about $18,200. I reminded him that we had agreed on $18,000 less a "couple hundred dollars if we came back to the dealership". By my math, that is $17,800. The salesman went back to talk to his manager and I was not happy that they had tried to add about $400 to the agree upon price. When the salesman came back, he had a new price on the form, $18,000. At this point, I was getting quite angry. Being diplomatic is not my strong point and I told him that we agreed upon a price and if he couldn't abide by our agreement, we were leaving. He said "just a minute, I've got to tell my manager that you're leaving". I was furious that they were still playing good cop/bad cop with me and my Christian values weren't quite enough to keep me from saying a few choice words to the salesman.

As we reached our car, the manager was right behind us. He apologized for the confusion and took full responsibility for the problem. He promised to personally make sure that everything else worked out correctly from that point forward. I agreed to go ahead with the purchase and we went back inside to complete the paperwork. By the time everything was finally done, it was after 9 pm. All in all, it was a VERY FRUSTRATING DAY. Dealing with these car salesmen is far worse than dealing with any deadbeat tenant or drug addict! I despise the entire car buying exercise and I put car salesmen next to last on my list of the worst people in society - just one spot ahead of the low-life scumbag contingency lawyers!