My husband and I bought a brand new full-size truck last night. Trouble is, my neighbor is a car salesman but we didn’t buy from him. We bought a Ford and he works for another automaker. He and his wife are great neighbors but I suspect there’s going to be some hard feelings when they discover this truck isn’t a rental.
We went to his dealership after hours but the trucks were simply not what we wanted (too small - we bought a F-250 four door).
Any suggestions on how to keep the peace? We certainly don’t want to lie but I don’t know how forthright and open we should be.
You are in no way obligated to buy from your neighbor. Just tell him that you tried to find a model offered by his company that would suit you, but you couldn’t. Had his company offered what you were looking for, then buying from him would have made sense, but don’t feel you should have settled for something other than you wanted just to avoid hurting his feelings. If he’s an adult, he ought to be able to understand that not everybody he knows is going to buy from him.
We had a neighbor who built a deck on his house. It was OK, but when it came time to do ours, we went with another friend, whose design was much more to our liking. The old fucker didn’t speak to us for 3 years!
Anyhoo, your car salesman friend will understand. I seriously doubt he’ll blow a gasket over this one. If he does…fuck 'im.
I agree with both Geobabe and Kalhoun. I think all you need to say is you needed/wanted a bigger truck than his dealer had to offer. If he has a problem with that, well…fall back on Kalhoun’s advice.
I’m with missb on this one. Why do you feel you have to explain anything? Do you plan on broaching the subject or are you asking for advice on how to reply if asked why you didn’t purchase your vehicle from him? If it’s the latter, you’ve got plenty of good advice from which to choose in earlier replies. If you’ll be doing the former, I don’t know what to tell you other than you don’t owe dude anything. Unless, of course, you do.
