I was looking for a car for my son and found the following advertisement from Sands Chevrolet in the Arizona Republic (Febr., 14 - Page AC3): 2009 Chevy Cobalt $ 129 mo. *, MSRP $ 15,725 GM Rebate $ 3,000 Sands Disc $ 3,750 SANDS PRICE $ 8,975.—
We called several times to confirm that this was an automatic Cobalt with A/C (many times car dealers advertise cars for a low price and then it is "manual, no A/C" and a car without A/C is practically worthless in Arizona) Each time it was "Don" on the phone, we called 2 or 3 times, the last time to ask for directions. When we arrived at the dealership nobody seemed to know this "Don" and nobody made any attempt to find out who we had talked to.
When we tried to insist to get the advertised price it was "all the dealerships advertise cars at a low price that you won't get, why waste your time, we will get you as close as possible to this price."
"As close as possible" turned out about 30% more expensive (almost $ 12,000) with monthly payments of almost $ 240, - When I asked "how many payments?" the answer was "I don't know, usually the contracts are for 72 months". Later I started to think "how is it possible that he does not know, - how was the exact amount calculated without knowing the number of payments" the payments were even showing the cents, it was not an estimate.
Then the next thing: We had agreed that Sands would install power locks for a certain price and after they charged a downpayment of $ 2,000 to my credit card it was "you have to take the car home tonight and bring it back in about 4 days when the financing is approved" (this seemed kind of stupid to me since this dealership is about 50 miles from our home. We suggested to pick it up after the completion of the job but the salesperson insisted that it was absolutely necessary for us to take the car home the same evening of the purchase.)
At this point in time I started to get a bad gut feeling... What was the problem about leaving the car until the modification was completed? The sales guy talked something about laws, regulations and insurance problems but it did not make sense to me, then I started to put all these things together: a guy on the phone that nobody at the dealership knows and who made false promises, a downpayment before we had actually seen the purchase agreement, the necessity to drive the car off the lot immediately... This set off all the red warning lights in my brain and we decided to leave as fast as possible. When we were getting into our car suddenly there were about 4 guys, one holding the open door on the passenger side and preventing me to take off. Suddenly there were all kind of new offers but I had seen and heard enough.
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