My New Car is a Cylon
I really like the new Mazda3 we bought the other day despite advice that buying a new car is like buying $2k of depreciation as soon as you drive it out the dealership door. Sometimes, however, you realise that you only live once and maybe you just want to experience rolling down the street in your own brand spanking new shining silver rocket with cylon interior. Yeah the car has pulsing cylon lights on the stereo when you turn it on and all red backlighting with a bit of blue so that you feel like you’re in an episode of BSG when driving it.
Of course there is also the fear that you might be driving along Sir Fred Schonell Drive when suddenly out of the blue the back of the car is struck by a large object – say a truck – which causes a bit of fishtailing and crazed braking as you try not to go into the oncoming traffic moments before the the truck slams into the driver side door and rolls you half up on it’s bumper bar. Actually I’m surprised that Steph is driving so well after that really did happen to her (which is why we needed a new car in the first place)
On surveying the accident scene I was pretty amazed (and relieved) that Steph got out of the car without a scratch and actually reports that her neck and back feel looser than they ever have (maybe the accident was chiropractic somehow) and the doctor gave her a clean bill of health too (after a little joy ride in the ambulance).
Having a car accident launches you on a little journey – a bit like a quest where you meet some strange characters and find yourself in unfamiliar surroundings. After telling our story to some slightly disinterested police officers we embarked on our mission to get a new car. Steph trolled some car selling sites on the internetz for a night or two whilst I went to see the dragon, er, I mean bank who were doing their best to put the ‘W’ into banker.
You gotta hand it to our bank. I ring up to ask about a car loan and they tell me my home loan is in the red. So I get through to their debt collection people who tell me I missed a payment. So I get off the phone and go through all my statements looking for the payment. Ring them back and put the challenge to them. Actually it turns out I didn’t miss a payment, they just pressed the wrong button and turned my loan into a different type and then tried to tell me that I didn’t know what my own loan was supposed to be about. A quick consultation with the actual loan contract set things back on track but they still couldn’t give me a car loan because the computer wouldn’t let them. I had another loan approved over the phone in about five minutes flat so I guess it’s their loss.
We were also less than impressed with the lady at the car yard who’s job was to sell us the paint/rust/fabric protection and window tinting etc… She put the hard sell on us and I got confused and accidentally bought something off her. She told us that the paint on our car was going to turn into a pile of crap if we didn’t get this protection put on. I was pretty sceptical but hadn’t come prepared for this kind of assault and I should have just told her that I didn’t want to be pushed into buying anything. Instead we got suckered with the paint protection which is probably not terrible but I truly doubt that new car paint is so cheap and nasty that it needs this special magic coating.
For future reference: the best way to get a pushy salesperson off your back is to critique their sales technique: tell them you feel like they are pushing you into it, or you can also say that you don’t feel you can trust them because you feel manipulated. They are then either forced to defend themselves and deny that they are pushing you into it (thus backing off) or admit that they are being pushy in which case you can tell them that you don’t appreciate it.
Anyway, that’s most of the story of the new car (which is silver and has cylon lights on the stereo). I’ll leave it there as my new version of WordPress is hassling me with a real-time word count and 760 words is probably a bit long for a blog post.
