Adventures In Car Buying – 2022

– Monday – April 4th, 2022 —> +9˚C / +48˚F Sunny & Breezy in our little corner of Atlantic Canada –

– “Cathi with Oscar the salesman – learning about her new Nissan Rogue” –

— I haven’t had a lot of positive experiences, shopping for either new or used vehicles. { Scroll down if you really want to read the ‘sordid horror stories’ }

— So, when our thirteen year old Dodge Grand Caravan refused to start for the first time ever on the second week in March of this year – I kind of gritted my teeth and agreed with the love of my life that we should at least look at the possibility of getting a new vehicle. { it turned out that the Grand Caravan only needed a jump, but the only thing we could figure out might have drained the battery was a light that should have turned itself off when we turned the engine off and left the vehicle. }

— We looked at a couple local dealer’s ads and web sites and thought what was going on at Fredericton Nissan during the month of March looked really good. I went to You tube and watched several videos highlighting the newest Rogue and its features.

— The love of my life, *Cathi, looked through several vehicles listed on the the Fredericton Nissan web site and really liked the blue colour that the Rogues and Qashqais  came in – and saw what the listed prices were and realized that the payment schedules she checked out were affordable { * Calling Cathi my ‘wife’ kind of sticks in my throat, she’s so much more than anything that could be limited to the usual definitions associated with ‘wife’. }

— Cathi tried to send a message through the web site – asking when we could come in and schedule a chance to look at and possibly take a test drive. And I guess there was some kind of glitch with the web site’s messaging routine – they might not have gotten the message – but anyway – after we hadn’t heard from them in several days, Cathi asked me to call them while she was busy during the busiest weeks of the year at her high-pressure job.

— I called and Oscar answered, identified himself and asked how he could help me, I told him we’d tried to contact the dealership through the web site and hadn’t heard back and we wanted to look at buying a new vehicle from them. He asked when we might want to come in – I asked him to hold for a second or two and had Cathi pick up an extension phone and we both talked for a couple minutes – and made an appointment for that Friday afternoon.

— That Friday, Cathi, who is working on Vancouver, BC time – took a long lunch break and we drove to the dealership and talked to Adam as Oscar wasn’t in that day – We ‘auditioned’ a Qashqai and discovered that, in the passenger’s seat, I had no headroom. But when I sat in a Rogue I had plenty of headroom. We wanted features that the “S” model didn’t include – but the SV was being test driven so Adam let Cathi take the keys to an “S” model and we went for a short drive to the nearby mall’s parking lot and drove around and she discovered that it was a lot easier to park the Rogue than it was for her to park the Grand Caravan. She also drove it to one of the nearby “round-abouts” and liked the way it handled and turned more smoothly than the Grand Caravan could.

— When we got back to the dealership, Adam told us that a model with the engine and features we wanted was on its way back in from its test drive and I told Adam about the horror stories I’d experienced with dealerships and repair shops and he didn’t roll his eyes and make me feel like a fool about any of that, and I told him that it was a real pleasure to talk to him and the other friendly faces we saw and interacted with at that dealership. One other salesman helped me figure out the coffee maker – which was more complicated than the similar model I had been  familiar with.

— The Rogue with the features we wanted and the ‘turbo’ engine we wanted came in and Adam let me leave my half consumed coffee in his office and set us up in that Rogue and we went for a shorter test drive and found that that model with that engine had an even smoother ride – and we were hooked. 🙂

— When we got back and Cathi said that she really hoped we could get a blue Rogue, Adam told us that not many of this year’s Rogues were coming through with the blue exterior paint – and also said that a new shipment was due in that evening and if there was a blue “SV with All Wheel Drive” in that shipment he would put a hold on it – and let us know, hopefully on the next Monday.

— We didn’t hear from anybody on Monday, or Tuesday – and before I guessed I better call on Wednesday – we heard from Oscar – who apologized and told us that Adam had caught a mild illness from his kids and asked if we could come in the next day – Thursday to talk to their finance guy – Cathi explained that Thursday was the end of the fiscal year and everybody and their relatives were calling her with emergency requests related to her job – but – yeah, we could come in during her lunch break.

— Before we talked to the finance person, Oscar told us that it had been impossible to get a blue Rogue in time to qualify for the month long March special that came with the price we had been impressed by – And, if we chose to wait for the next production run, it might be months before we might not be able to get a blue one then. He also told us he had earmarked a “Gunmetal Grey Silver” SV with All Wheel Drive for us – which was being processed behind the scenes – and had us look at an ‘S’ model with that colour that they had in their parking lot and Cathi thought that was much better than what she’d been afraid a grey model would look like. – We then went back inside and experienced the least stressful interview I’d ever experienced with the dealership’s financial guy, Steve, – who realized that Cathi had our most intelligent questions and did not ignore her and try to talk to me like she couldn’t possibly understand the complicated ‘guy’ things involved with buying a new vehicle. I was impressed. { This is after I was stunned when a Canadian Doctor, head of the Child Psychology department at a famous Toronto Kids’ hospital – talked to me like she wasn’t even in the room when we were there to talk about her son’s problems with compulsiveness and frustration. And I’d heard horror stories where a friend who’d had a credit card on her own, long before she’d gotten married, when she was getting a legal separation from her husband, wanted to take his name off her card – was shocked and dismayed  when the bank that had issued that card to her told her she would have to have her soon to be ex-husband’s permission in writing and preferably in front of a bank officer – before they could remove his name from her card.  }

— Working with the sales people and the financial person at the Fredericton Nissan Dealership was an absolute pleasure – and I told them so.

— Oscar got in touch early the next morning and told us that Cathi’s new car was there and was ready for us to come in and pick it up – When Cathi said she was hopelessly tied to her office dealing with all the absolutely critical details she had to get out of the way before the end of the work day – and her work day would end at 7:00 pm our time – or later – Oscar told us he could drive the new Rogue out to us and drive back our 13 year old Grand Caravan during Cathi’s lunch break. —> And he did exactly that.

– “Cathi smiling at her new Nissan Rogue in our driveway.” –

– ” Shiny new Rogue in Early morning light in our driveway – photographed from the road.” –

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—> Okay, the sordid back story begins here:

—> U.S.A. memories:

— When I went with a friend who wanted to look at the then new styled Volkswagen ‘Bus’ – when they first changed from the iconic ‘Hippy Vans’ to the more ‘modern’ shape of vans. A salesman sneered at the two of us and said, “I can’t even get one of those, You certainly couldn’t get one.” Made us feel like he thought we were 3rd or 4th class citizens – and he didn’t think we had a right to be in his showroom.

— When Subarus had just been introduced to the U.S.A. – I went to the first Subaru dealer in my home town in Connecticut and when I sat in the driver’s seat – I couldn’t sit up straight and my right foot touched both the gas pedal and the brake – I complained about that to the salesman hovering at my side, and he said, “You’ll get used to that-”

— My cousin who was taller than me { I was 6’3″ – he was more like 6’4 & 1/2″ and weighed closer to 300 muscular pounds while I was probably about 125 pounds. } stopped in to a Datsun dealer in the town across the river from where I lived while I was along for the ride.  I Was looking at a Datsun Pickup truck while my cousin was talking to a salesman near one of their vehicles that were identified with numbers back then, I think he was looking at a “510” – Another Datsun salesman came over to me and smiled, “Looking for a pickup truck?” – I pointed to my cousin and said, “I’m here with my cousin – and I can’t afford a new car or truck right now.” The salesman shrugged, did not sneer at me, said, “Go ahead and sit in it if you want – Come back when you’re ready to buy -” I sat in the smallish truck and I was amazed to discover that I had headroom, and said so to the salesman – He smiled and responded, “I was impressed by these vehicles myself.” —> That might have been the most positive interaction I ever had with a new car salesman up to that point.

— The first new car I bought was an Oldsmobile “J” car – The salesman looked like he was trying not to wince when I asked him about the car and reluctantly took my information and went to his financial guy – came back after I’d walked around with my baby sister and looked at several other vehicles – feeling it couldn’t hurt to window shop – { and that Oldsmobile dealership had a special, “Fifteen hundred dollars trade in for anything you can push pull or drag in for this special deal,” going on at that time – } The salesman came back, looking like he was in shock and said, “You must have amazing good credit! You’ve been approved!” – That was probably my second best experience back then. —> But that was in the days when banks were laying off employees like crazy and somebody who probably received a pink slip during work didn’t process one payment I’d made on time in one of that bank’s branches – and for the next six months I kept getting nasty letters from the bank saying I owed them that payment plus mounting interest – and once a month I went into the same branch of that bank with the cancelled check and talked to somebody different almost every time – and got an, “Oops, our mistake – you don’t owe us anything -” letter in the mail a couple days later – followed by another nasty letter demanding the payment they claimed I’d missed with its mounting interest – I finally refinanced through the Post Office Credit Union while I was working as a Postal Clerk – and when I went into the bank’s branch and told the last person that I’d dealt with there that I’d refinanced with my credit union – she looked broken hearted and apologized profusely. —> And then, as soon as the car was paid off – the automatic Transmission’s shifter’s knob came off in my hand while I down shifting on a steep hill.

—> Up here in Canada : —>

— When I first followed my heart and came to Canada – and was seriously applying to become a permanent resident first – before I could apply for citizenship – And while it was against the law for me { in my status as a visitor } to ‘take a job away from a Canadian’ – The woman I fell in love with – and who – amazingly – felt the same way toward me – convinced me that it wouldn’t be worth it to go through all the hassle of ‘importing’ the aging general motors hatchback I was driving at the time – We followed an ad to a used car dealer who had a silvery grey Mazda van. – The salesman asked if we wanted to go for a test drive, we said yes – and the salesman drove and wouldn’t let me or the woman I loved drive it – We got the van anyway – And encountered a series of problems when we tried to drive it on the 401 – { a limited access highway } through the Toronto, Ontario area – we learned that the warranty we’d purchased with the vehicle specified that we had to take the van to a specific repair shop – That repair shop charged us $3,000.00 plus – and ‘fixed the problem’ with duct tape. After we moved from the Toronto area to just west of the Ottawa city limits – a friend we made during that move took one look at the van’s engine and saw what the problem was, a hole in an air hose. We got a new hose and the van was a whole lot better – until we traded it in on a Jeep Liberty, that we picked up on the first day of the first job I could get after securing my permanent resident status.

= = = = =

— So Yes! Both Cathi and I really enjoyed dealing with everybody at the Fredericton Nissan dealership and every time we drove anywhere in the last few days we’ve been absolutely thrilled with that Nissan Rogue.

– “Cathi & me celebrating our recent good luck at the Diplomat Restaurant on Woodstock Road.” –

— And I thank the people at Fredericton Nissan for helping restore my faith in automobile dealerships.

— Jim