I went in to try to trade in two cars and purchase...
I went in to try to trade in two cars and purchase a used Civic. I had two financing options pre-arranged and made an appt online. It should have been a very easy experience. When I arrived, I was greeted by Linda. Very nice, helpful, perfect experience with her. But when we started talking numbers, things went south.
First, they valued my cars appropriately, but wanted to reduce the amount they gave me for both of them considerably for a "reconditioning fee" which resulted in rolling way too much into the loan on the car I wanted to purchase as negative equity. I've never heard of essentially making the customer pay this cost. Basically, this pushed my loan terms over the line so they pressured me to explore other lending options. I went against my better judgement and agreed to the credit inquiry, but they came back with a financing option that exceeded my budget at nearly double the APR I had previously arranged with a payment that was way over what I told them I could pay. It all felt wrong and I expressed to Linda that I wasn't happy with it. They tried again and came back with an offer to finance a brand new car which wasn't at all what I wanted or could afford.
Lastly, they sent over their Finance Manager (whose name I don't recall unfortunately) as a last ditch attempt to get me to agree to something - anything. He really put the pressure on. He tried the trick I've seen so many times of turning the paper over and writing down some quick math (that didn't make any sense to me) to justify the loan terms he was pressuring me into. And then he tried telling me that if my credit was better, they could give me better options. It doesn't matter that I'd just looked at my credit scores a week before and seen them 80 points higher; it was just plain insulting to say that to someone and completely useless. I can't understand why anyone would think that's useful. Convince your customer to buy something they can't afford by telling them they can't do any better? Nope. Lots and lots of nope.
Linda was great and very nice, but everything else about what should've been an easy car buying experience was awful and I left without the car I wanted.