These Boots Were Made for Walking

To briefly summarize the futility of today, I've exchanged e-mails today with a salesman at our local Toyota dealership, and he has pretty much promised to match the sale price offered by the dealership on the other side of the city for the new Sienna... And he'll install a DVD player for $1050...which is a whopping $150 less than the other dealership... He'll have to look at my current van before making his trade-in offer (fair enough)... But he's wishy-washy about the finance rate...

I also e-mailed the dealership on the other side of the city, where we walked out of yesterday... The sales lady said she would check with her manager (of course) to see what they could do about installing the DVD player at no charge...but he was in a meeting, so she may not have an answer for me "for a little while"... That was at 10:30am... Approaching 10 hours later, I still haven't heard from her about what her manager said... I sure hope the poor guy's okay and hasn't been taken hostage or anything... Maybe I should send the police up there to check on him...

While I was waiting for the Faraway Dealership to get back with me, I had the bright idea to see how much it would cost for me to buy a DVD player on my own and have it professionally installed... For about $200-$300, I can pick from a number of run-of-the-mill DVD players... For $700, I can buy a kick-ass Alpine with a 10.2-inch screen (the Toyota DVD player is a 9-inch screen) that gets nothing but five-star reviews on every website I could find about it... My best friend "knows a guy" (he's legendary for that) who says he can probably install it for $200 or $300... I'm also waiting to hear back from a couple of professional installation places in the city to get their installation prices... But I basically have my answer... I can get a REALLY nice DVD player installed for less, or for about the same price as what the local dealership wants to slap a smaller, lower quality player in there... I can get an average DVD player--which is what I'd be getting from Toyota--installed for WAY less than $1050...

So here's where I stand at this point... The Faraway Dealership did the worst possible thing they could do when dealing with me... They ignored me... So unless they put that DVD player in there for free, I have no motivation to drive over an hour each way to deal with them anymore... It's incredible to me how badly they have blown this deal...

I refuse to pay $1050 for a DVD player unless it's the ass-kickin' 10.2-inch Alpine that has such a clear picture that four cars behind me can watch Max & Ruby with my kids...especially when it doesn't cost the dealership anywhere near $1050 for the hardware and labor...

My other choice is to buy the van without the DVD player, at the sale price, which is $3000 less than MSRP... But then I'm left with the nagging question in my brain..."Why?"

I simply stumbled across the sale price at the Faraway Dealership... They could have that sale all the time for all I know...

The Local Dealership agreed to match the Faraway Dealership's sale price in an eye-blink...which tells me that it's not difficult to get them to knock $3000 off their prices...

The only "specials" that Toyota is running right now are $1000 cash back (which I've been told by both dealerships has already been worked into the "sale price") or 4.9% financing for 60 months... Can't do both, according to the Local Dealership, even though the Faraway Dealership was offering to do just that...well, before the manager was abducted by aliens this morning... Those "specials" make me yawn...

If I buy a Sienna now, I'll have to make two car payments for two months until our Malibu is paid off... I don't need that headache when I'm only getting a so-so deal on the Sienna...

Plus I'd have to order a DVD player and get it installed...

So unless something unexpectedly Earth-shattering happens tomorrow, I'm done dealing with these knot-heads... They can keep their Siennas... I'm tired of being jerked around, lied to, and ignored... I'll get the struts replaced on my current van for a few hundred dollars--or about one month's worth of Sienna payments--and keep on driving it... Heck, maybe I'll save a couple months' worth of Sienna payments and get that kick-ass Alpine installed in my current van! With any luck, my Dodge will last long enough that by the time I need a new car, my kids will be old enough that it will be practical to purchase a crossover instead of a minivan...and I will buy it from Blanck Chevrolet, which is apparently the only dealership around here that knows how to treat people like valued customers instead of marks in a con...