I am still mind numb. here is a summary courtesy mostly of Mrs. BoostAddict, with a few edits by me.
Giving up the FieSTa, Episode III, the Wait-ening at Dysfunction Junction.
It looked like a normal dealership. Normal enough - Cheap Christmas decor, posters and promotional material in place.
Our first clue was when we were asked if we were in for service. “No, we were thinking of buying a car” The service people looked at each other somewhat quizzical and worried looks, and then sent us off with a service department guy. We test-drove the Kona Limited again and then pondered the green versus the blue before settling on blue.
When we got back into the dealership, they seemed to have a hard time thinking through who might be able to help us buy the car. They had no dedicated sales staff in the store that day. One had been fired, one was out sick, and the third was a no-show, no-call AWOL. One of the service department people sat us down at the sales desk, though, and we got to what should have been the fast and easy part?
Hour 1 - Jawzx2 showed the FieSTa (with a brand new transmission, thanks Ford! (mostly, I guess...)) to the Boss Man while Mrs. Boost started the paperwork. Helpful Service Lady (subbing for absent sales people) kept getting signed out of the sales software. We are offered cookies and coffee while we wait.
Hour 2- Sales(usually service)lady is on speakerphone with the software company. Turns out that their software allows you to set up your password with special characters, but won’t accept it when you enter it later. The technician on the phone said it was a known issue. Service/Saleslady gets lunch delivered and starts eating. She offers us some of the pizza she ordered. Other folks who work at the dealership pop in to offer help, but no one seems to actually know the software well enough to actually help her through all of the credit and discount info to actually provide material help selling the car.
Hour 3 - Jawzx2 is on the phone with Transunion. Hyundai wants credit info from two agencies, but Jawzx2 had some info stolen and put his credit on lockdown. The Equifax app unlocks that account fine (and the credit score is really super excellent, just so we’re clear here), but The Transunion website won’t let him unlock his credit. The Transunion phone rep says that his credit is unlocked. Boss-man has Hyundai on the phone and they are saying that they can’t call Transunion on our behalf to get a verbal report, they only work through the electronic system.
Hour 4 - Helpful Service-cum-Saleslady is getting ever more punchy. She’s really tired, and so are we. We find out that Transunion’s whole website is now down, and they automatically put a second hold on Jawzx2's account because of all of the inquiries coming from Hyundai. Helpful saleslady offers to take us out for drinks, while the other service-gal actually gives Mrs. BoostAddict a backrub.
Hour 5 - We realize that our credit approval has a misentered VIN- thanks Mr. Bossman. We ask for our top offer for the trade in on the FieSTa and we get it because the dealership folks are all terribly embarrassed about what a disaster this whole thing has been. So they accept our trade in, and they accept that we will get A loan, whether or not it is from Hyundai. We have to wait for the temporary hold to come off Mr. BoostAddicts’s account because of the excessive inquiries.
We arrived at the dealership at 12:30ish. At 5:10, helpful now-saleslady hands us the keys and pretty much asks us to leave because there’s nothing more she can do. We do not get a vehicle orientation. We have dealer plates. Helpful Saleslady is coming 100 miles to our house on Monday with final loan information, a final price (as there is a rebate that depends on getting Hyundai financing or not) and our registration info.
We would have had a much more streamlined experience if we had gone to our first choice dealer, but we maximized our trade in, and were able to leave with a car in a color we like with the features we wanted.
The Kona Limited is really nice. We like it. It’s got spunk
Holy Hell.