Car Salesman of the year!

[luckykaa]

Decided to step up my search for a new car. I really love the look of the BMW Z4 in Burgundy. Checked Auto Trader. One had appeared just on the edge of my search radius (which is about 100 road miles). So I rang up and arranged to see it.

Had a look around. Paint was a little damaged. Alloys weren't in excellent nick. But then it is 12 years old. And that's all fixable. The price itself seemed pretty good.

Walked in, expecting an enthusisatic welcome. Salesman handed me the key with a grunt and let me look at it. Was expecting a little more of an attempt to, you know, sell me a car. Okayyyy... So I sat in. It's a very comfortable cosy car compared with the spartan MR2. Very BMW. Was a little disapointed that it was an automatic. Should have checked before but that's not a deal breaker.

Played with it a bit. Roof opened and closed nicely. Even the CD changer still worked, which was a surprise; this is the only time I've seen a 10 year old CD changer that still works! But I don't *want* a CD changer. I want bluetooth and a line-in. And a 12 year old car doesn't have those. Nor does it look like it's easy to change it.

Also the satnav wasn't worth having. Once again the problem with advanced 10-year-old technology. It becomes old fashioned incredibly quickly! No touch screen, rubbish UI. I have my Tomtom so it doesn't matter too much but it rubs me uop the wrong way to have satnav that I'd never use.

Still, was still considering it. Good price and nothing inherently wrong. It might be possible to replace the stereo. I know people do it although it might be model dependent. So I walked in and asked to take it for a test drive. The salesman grunted "£10 deposit", and pointed to a sign on the wall. Apparently they charge a tenner for a test drive that they only refund if I buy the car.

"Okay", I said, then handed the keys back, and decided he can get stuffed.

Is it too entitled to expect a little bit of respect when you're planning to give someone several thousand quid?

So that one's a "no". Which is a shame. But "no" while not very satisfying is still a valuable datum. And I learned a few more things.

• I need to reduce my search radius. Welwyn is 2 hours drive in reasonably good traffic. I wouldn't have minded if I wanted the car (I drove 70 miles to look at the MR2 I bought last year)
• I need to check what sort of transmission a car has before going to look at it.
• I'm not so sure a Z4 is the car for me. Still a contender - Apart from radio and satnav it was a nice car - but I need to compare with others.
• Ask about test drives before going to see a car.
• Research aftermarket stereos.

And I got to drive my mum's car with the roof down which is always fun. So it was a fun day out.

Comments

Old tech

[aperrott.livejournal.com]

Proprietary car entertainment kit is a pain, particularly when it extends to weird protocols for the buttons on the steering wheel and using the buttons on the radio to control the trip computer. :-(

In the end I settled for adding a small MP3 player unit and connecting it to the radio using an in-line RF modulator. It's not the greatest solution, but it was reasonably cheap and works well enough.

I'm hoping that things will have improved by the time I next buy a car.

[ingaborg.livejournal.com]

Pfft! As you say, highly unimpressive service, not the people to give your business to.

[blue-sun-scribe.livejournal.com]

That's terrible customer service, not worht your business.