BUYING A NEW CAR- Living Retired #155
BUYING A NEW CAR.
What’s worse than a teenaged male with acne trying to chase girls in high school?
A baby boomer male having to negotiate a deal for a new car.
Parents didn’t teach their sons how to to negotiate. Instead, they enrolled them in Boy Scouts to learn important skills they would use for the rest of their life: how to tie a reef knot and opening and eating a can of pork and beans with a Swiss Army knife.
So I guess men are just supposed to know how to negotiate a new car purchase. It’s in our DNA– just like we own the barbecue, own the remote control, and wear nasal strips.
Men begin the car purchasing process by psyching themselves up reading car ads… and convincing their wife that she’ll enjoy having his car all to her own with its radio stuck to the station that plays ‘ALL AC/DC ALL THE TIME.’
Before actually going to a car dealership, men prepare for what will be a tough period of negotiations. This is accomplished by consuming red meat and watching news clips of Donald Trump on CNN talking about how he can do deals!
Eventually, guys take the first step and actually visit a real car dealership– where there are trained commissioned salespeople. This is best done late at night when the trained commissioned salespeople aren’t working and shining a flashlight at price stickers in car windows.
Of course nobody pays the sticker price– except governments purchasing vehicles for their fleet. That’s because the sticker price only includes the cost of the basic car. Features such as an engine and brakes are extra.
Sooner or later though you do need to have a person-to-person conversation with a trained commission salesperson. This occurs when a trained commissioned salesperson spots a prospective buyer– a male cloned to the side of a car at the back of the lot– and approaches as if he’s his absolute best friend!
“Hi there! I’m Jim. I can get you into this beauty for a great price.”
This solicits a fitting response to the trained commission salespersons comment…
“Hi. Did you watch Dancing With The Stars last night?”
The trained commission salesperson knows this means a guy is serious about buying a car so he says, “Let me get some keys and we’ll take this baby for a spin.”
At this point men respond and say something appropriate like, “I heard you’ve got Employee Pricing. Do you have any openings? Ha! Ha! Ha!”
Guys know they’ve achieved the best price when the trained commissioned salesperson says, “Hey man, that’s the best price I can get you” followed by something about his family living on rice and fruit loops.
But WAIT!!!
You’ve got your best deal. Now the trained commission salesperson introduces you to his boss. This person graduated cum laude– Latin for didn’t drink beer as a freshman– from Trump University. Their job is to fleece your pockets of every last cent.
This person is so successful that they don’t sit at a desk out in the middle of the showroom. They have their very own cubicle– with framed pictures of their children and the ‘Best Fleecer of the Month’ certificate. She gets down to business right away…
“Congratulations. You’ve purchased the most reliable, well built, trouble free car our engineers have ever designed. We recommend you buy our bumper to bumper extended warranty. It’s good until the first recall– next weekend.”