I remember watching the local news when I grew up in Maine. About 95% of the commercials were car dealership commercials.
I remember “Jolly John” used to give me nightmares.
Well, no matter what the mileage is, it’s better that those miles (whether or not they exceed the average mileage per year) are highway-type miles, so it’s pretty much impossible to disprove (or verify, for that matter).
It’s best to disclose that you are trading in a car as late as possible, because once the salesman knows that, he/she will treat the new car and the trade-in as a “package” and use one to make up losses on the other. So they can give you what looks like a great price on the new car because they know they’ll make that money back on shafting you for your trade-in, or vice versa. That’s why everyone advises you to negotiate the trade-in and the new car separately, and why people would lie about having a trade-in.
Alternatively, the other way buyers can lie about that is by stating that they want to trade in their car, accept the lowball offer so that the salesman feels comfortable lowering the price on the new car, and then suddenly have a “change of heart” and pull the trade-in off the table.
What the situation described in the OP comes down to is that the car dealer is playing a game (by not giving a price quote which was the whole point of sparky!'s contact and which the dealer could easily do by e-mail) and sparky! is playing a game (not returning calls and seeing how long the dealer will persist before giving up).
The bottom line is that sparky! is not finding a car. A better strategy is to e-mail the dealer (ignoring the phone call history) and request info on availability and price of what he wants, to be provided by e-mail only. If it’s no go and the other dealers in his area similarly refuse to provide quotes, it’s time to bite the bullet and visit them, armed with pricing and buying strategy info available online.
The difference is that salesmen and managers are pros at lying. It’s what they do for a living.
I always used to say that I might be trading in my old car for just this reason - sticking to negotiating the new car price first and then working on the trade-in later. But you know what? The dealership would give me a decent price on the new car and then try to shaft me on the trade-in anyway. These days I find it simpler to research the new car cost and trade-in value and make a package offer. If the counter-offer isn’t reasonable and there’s little to no wiggle room, I walk. Saves a lot of psychic wear and tear. 
Jackmannii: Exactly!
Again, I’m not annoyed or angry or anything with the dealership. I just think it’s nuts for them to keep calling over and over instead of just a quick email stating that they have the model I’m looking for in-stock. Hell, don’t even give me a price. How about just state that they have it or not, and if they do maybe throw in something about available interest rates.
But instead they’re calling and calling.
No amount of calling is going to get me into the dealership. Know what will? Info! And info is something that is easily transmitted via email.
So the game continues…
Man, this is all nuts.
I could so go for cashews right now.
Yup. Email only. I literally bought my last two cars going back and forth on email never speaking or meeting the actual salesmen until I went to pick up the new car. I knew what I wanted, what I thought was a fair price and didn’t have time for games. It is the only way to go.
Buy a Volt and they will charge 2 K over list. If they don’t need your business, they are as arrogant and deceitful as ever.
While i’ll concede that there might be a certain amount of arrogance involved (maybe), i simply don’t see how this is deceitful.
List price is the manufacturer’s list price, and almost no car is ever sold for list price. Most times, cars are sold for considerably less than list. Is it deceitful for a buyer to try and purchase a car for less than list price? If not, why can’t a dealer ask more than list for a car where demand apparently exceeds supply?
If people aren’t willing to pay more than list, and the car sits in the showroom for weeks or months on end, you can be pretty damn sure that its price will drop to reflect that fact. One of the biggest issues faced by car dealerships is inventory control, and no dealer wants a car on his lot any longer than necessary.
We bought a new car five years ago, and we still marvel at the Hyundai dealerships in Calgary. There was the one that practically held us hostage (being Canadians, we’re polite, and the only way to get away from that guy would have been to yell, “FUCK OFF!” at him), and the other dealership where we went back three separate times, prepared to sign on the dotted line and buy an Elantra, and ended up with a Toyota Corolla.
“That deal advertised in the paper? Oh, we were just lying about that!”
“That deal we were willing to give you yesterday? Oh, we were just lying about that!”
I can’t really get behind this rant, though - answer the phone, talk to them, figure out if you can do business with them or not - you started this. I know it’s annoying when you want to email and they want to phone, but no one forced you to give them your phone number.
That’s kinda weird, 'cause 14 months ago we replaced both our cars with new Hyundais and honest to God we couldn’t find anyone in the dealership to even look at us. Eventually the sales manager, after passing us many times, asked if he could help. The other sales people were just milling about and wouldn’t even make eye contact with us. I’m pretty sure we didn’t look like destitute street bums.
Anyway, it was a total, no pressure, pleasant car-buying experience. The negotiations went well and we were treated just great.
Off topic, but what do you think of your Hyundai? Do you get it serviced at the dealer?
Reason I ask is that I’m thinking of getting one (been a long time Subaru owner).
That was part of the experience for us, too - the sales people ignoring us (well, other than the one who held us captive). I know a lot of people have posted here about how great their local Hyundai dealerships are - we’ve got a bum bunch around here.
Bolding mine.
It’s not “weird” at all.
I’m not sure if some people are under a misapprehension here, but in case they are, it’s worth noting that the salespeople at your typical Hyundai (or Toyota or Ford) dealer are not clones who are distributed to dealerships by corporate headquarters. They don’t all come with a Hyundai-guaranteed level of consistent behavior.
Car dealerships are, for the most part, independent businesses run not by the auto makers, but by the people who own the dealerships. For this reason, there’s nothing at all strange about getting a good Hyundai dealership in one place and a bad one in another; there’s nothing odd about the fact that some Hyundai salespeople might be lying assholes, while others might be friendly, honest, and helpful.
If someone tells you that their experience with a Hyundai dealer in Canton, Ohio was awesome, about the only way to guarantee the same experience is to use the same dealership and the same salesperson. The praise might be completely irrelevant if you want to buy a Hyundai in Boise, Idaho or Sarasota, Florida.
Fine. No real issues at all.
The only servicing I’ve done so far has been oil changes, and I’ve had those done at the no appointment, drive up places. I really should get my transmission fluid changed though.
Hyundai seems to have come a long way, quality-wise, in a relatively short period of time, and the price is pretty damned good, IMHO.
There is a such a thing as “Corporate Culture” and training. Every Toyota dealer/saleman I know has been dodgy. Every Saturn (now gone!:() Sales-staff great. Hyundai does seem to have a pretty large variation, agreed.
Leaffan: The experts here (Hi Rick !) all agree to stay away from those “no appointment, drive up places”. For maintenance during warrenty, I suggest the dealership. Afterwards, your trusted local mechanic.
Yeah, but how do you screw up an oil change? They show me the dipstick after the job’s done and everything. 
The maintenance that these places do is pretty darned basic stuff: changing fluids and filters for the most part. I’m sure there are horror stories about wrong fluids, or filters, but that can happen anywhere, really.
There is, but it’s far less all-encompassing in car dealerships than in a more tightly-structured organization like Apple or IBM, or even food franchises like McDonald’s. The auto makers are primarily concerned with how many cars you shift, and play very little role in the day-to-day operations of the dealerships, or in the training of salespeople and managers. That’s nearly all done at the dealer level.
When i sold cars (admittedly, 20 years ago, in Australia), the culture of every dealership was most strongly influenced by its Sales Manager, with some input also from the General Manager (or Dealer Principle, as he was sometimes known). The Dealer Principle was the guy with his name on the door, but the Sales Manager did the hiring and firing of sales staff, set targets, chewed you out if you did something wrong, and generally set the tone for the way that salespeople interacted with customers.
The Sales Manager where i worked was an asshole. He was known by a lot of people in the industry as a “turn 'em and burn 'em” sort of guy. That is, he pushed the hard sell and would do anything to make the sale, but would often leave his customers feeling like they had been ripped off in some way, so that they would never come back. That’s the “burn 'em” part; he was someone who didn’t even think about repeat business down the line, let alone allow it to affect his management style. Asshole, Grade A.
Well, it’s not so much screw up, it’s add ons that are unnessary, for example showing you “how dirty your air filter is” and selling you a new one 3x as often as needed.
http://autorepair.about.com/od/quicktips/a/oilchange_ripoffs.htm
I don’t get the ire at the op. Why not leave a message on the second call instead of acting like a creepy ex?