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earlier this year my wife and I were looking for a new car. We're Costco members, so we thought we would give their program a shot - they hook you up with a local dealer and promise a certain discount depending on the model. The gave us contact information for a local Honda dealer, so we called them up and set up a time to come in. We already knew exactly what kind of car we wanted, what options, what colors we would accept, even the MSRP and invoice prices. When we got there, the lady who did their Cosco referrals gave us the super-sweet schmoozing and immediately wanted us to test drive. No, I said, we dont need to test drive. We know exactly what we want, what is your price? She says "I cant give you a price without knowing which car you want." I should have walked out then. So I said "We want one with these options." She says "I dont know if we have that exactly, why dont you look at the ones on the lot while I check our list" BS!!! Honda makes very specific options packages, and we wanted one of the common ones. She came back in a few minutes "You're in luck! This one, this one, and this one have the options you want." I said "Great, how much for this one." She said "Dont you want to test drive it first?" Me "No, just tell me how much it costs." Her "Do you have a trade in?" Me "What does that matter? Just tell me the price." Her "I cant give you a price unless I know what kind of trade in you have." Me "Then lets just get a price without a trade in." Her "Lets go inside and look at the computer."
Great. So we go inside, and she prints out a price listing. MSRP, minus Costco discount, plus pin striping, mud flaps, and floor mats. "I dont want pin stiping or mud flaps, whats the price without those?" She says "I cant, those are standard for that model, we add them to every car here." I had finally had enough, and got up and left. She started telling my wife "Wait, sit down! Sit sit sit! Let me run the numbers again and see if we can find a better discount." Never tell my wife what to do. She's incredibly independent. I'm surprized she didnt go off with some bad language - she just laughed and said "yeah, right!".
The next day we got an email from her manager, wanting to know how the meeting went and if we were still interested. My wife answered the email, with several detailed paragraphs about how we had never been treated so badly by a dealer, and would probably never buy a Honda again, and that we ended up buying a Mazda from a dealer just down the street from them. She CC'd it to both Honda US customer service and Costco customer service.
At least Costco was very nice about it. Within a day they called and apologized, and said they were considering dropping this dealer from their program.
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