One more cup of coffee

On buying an Audi

My last entry horrified one reader of my blog with its (and I am paraphrasing here, but only a bit) 'mind-numbing boringness' -- so much so, that he felt the need to call me and berate me personally. Ah, ya gotta love marketing ;)

At any rate, lest I lose one of my handful of readers, I'll try to write about something less geeky. So I'll tell the tale of buying a car. It has villains (don't all car purchase stories?), dragons, and, in an unusual twist, that rare find for such tales: a hero in the form of a car salesman. (Well, OK, there aren't actually any dragons in the story. Unless you count Meredith wanting to breathe fire on some of the salesman we encountered.)

As I mentioned last week, I am now the proud owner of a brand-new Audi. I really do have it now -- we took delivery on Thursday. I have been enjoying riding around in it a great deal so far -- so much so, that I have the sunburn to prove it. Time to start keeping sunscreen lotion in the car.

The car buying experience was, shall we say, interesting. (A side note: can it really be described as 'interesting', with the obvious implications that this experience was somehow unique within the set of car buying experiences when, really, all car buying experiences are terrible? Or perhaps the comparison is not to other car purchases, but, rather, purchases in general. In that case, buying a car could honestly be described as a more 'interesting' process than, say, a copy of the latest X-Box game from Fry's. Well, maybe Fry's is a bad example. But I digress.)

After looking at and test-driving various cars, I decided on the Audi A4 cabriolet. After test-driving the 3.0L engine version of the A4 at Stephens Creek Audi, and the 1.8L version at Carlsen Audi (on Embarcadero Rd in Palo Alto), I decided on the 1.8L version. The 3.0L was definitely nicer, but not, I decided, $5000 nicer.

So, one Sunday, I went to the web site for Carlsen Audi and submitted a quote request for the car I wanted. I tried to do the same thing at Stephens Creek Audi, only their web site wasn't really working -- everytime I hit the 'submit' button on the web form, it reset. Not a good sign. Eventually I did it through edmunds.com.

The next day, Carlsen Audi called me and said they'd sell me one of the three cars they had on their lot for "$500 over invoice". I went by the day after that to look at the cars and ask how much, exactly, invoice was. Well, he couldn't really tell me the exact number, he explained -- he couldn't get to the invoice until I decided to buy the car. It's hard to decide whether or not to buy a car when you don't really know how much you're agreeing to. He finally gave me a 'pretty close estimate'.

Still no word from Stephens Creek Audi, either. I finally called, talked to the salesman I had met there before, and asked if they could match the price Carlsen was offering. "No problem!"

Meredith and I went down there, where we discovered that, well, it might actually be a little problem. But after much discussion (and several breaks for him to 'consult with' his manager), the salesman offered us a price. He explained that he was giving us a deal because it was just his second day on the job, so he was trying extra hard to get the sale. This statement seemed contradicted by the sign in his office with his name and the notation 'certified dealer since 2000'. Two days, three years, what's the difference? It's not a good sign when the lies are this bizarre and this transparent.

The next morning, I went back again to Carlsen Audi, where I was suddenly dealing with a new salesman -- Desmond Lovas. I explained that I needed to know the price they were really offering. "No problem," he says. Yeah, right, I think -- I've heard that before. But, ten minutes later, I'm holding a piece of paper in my hand with not only the price they are offering the car at, but also showing the DMV fees, random other CA fees, taxes -- everything. To the penny. This was a surprising twist. (Remember the promise of a hero in the story?)

If I had been smart, I would have just stopped here and gone with the guy giving me a straight answer on the price. But no. Stephens Creek called me 'to see what was going on'. The one thing they had going for them is that they were offerering a car with one feature that I wanted that the car at Carlsen didn't have -- the Bose audio system. After talking to him some more on the phone, he agreed to lower the price some more, to something that, while a little higher than I was hoping for, was something that I could live with, especially to get the Bose system. Finally, I was done. I called him back later to say I'd buy the car.

Can this be the end? Can the hero of our story have come and gone so quickly? Does the salesman from Stephens Creek on his second day (or is that third year?) get the sale?

Of course not.

The next day, I called to see where my car was. "Well, we found a dealer that's got it, and we're waiting to hear back from them, so we should have it soon. Oh, and it turns out I made a small mistake -- I didn't realize that you wanted the Bose system. So the price is actually going to be --" and named a price not only higher than we had agreed on the day before, but even higher than the first price offered when we were sitting in his office. I guess when he said, "this car has every option -- there's nothing it doesn't have", I must have missed the "except for the Bose system."

Back to Carlsen. I decided the Bose system certainly isn't worth the now almost $2000 difference between the two dealers. I went back in, signed the initial paperwork -- with a price identical, to the penny, to what he had stated before -- and arranged a time later that I could come in with Meredith and pick up the car. In the end, the car wasn't ready when expected, but Desmond arranged for an almost identical loaner car and came to my work personally to pick me up so I could get the loaner. Given the ease with which he could have just arranged for some crappy rental car -- or done nothing at all -- this got him major points.

When we did finally pick up the car, Desmond got even more points by giving Meredith with the same respect and attention he was giving me. Most car dealers, in our experience, have had a hard time acknowledging Meredith as an actual person, much less someone who might actually be influencing the decision. This was true even when we were shopping for her car, and telling all the salesmen that it was going to be her car. Most of them still talked mostly to me, as if they expected that the decision was solely mine to make. After all, why would the woman have anything to do with this? Not a smart attitude.

Now, finally, I have the car, and I couldn't be happier. If you're looking for an Audi in the South Bay, I highly recommend calling Desmond Lovas at Carlsen Audi. This is the fourth car I've purchased, and he's been by far the best salesman I've ever dealt with.

Posted by Mike at June 16, 2003 08:30 AM