David Ernst Chats with the World

(Note: If you haven’t already read Episode 1, you should read that first)

Before I left the dealership, I talked for quite a while with Maggie, who does all of their financial stuff. She’s also the daughter of the owner. I would guess that this place has only 6 full time employees. But I digress. Maggie was very helpful. I haven’t bought cars all that often in my life, so I was unsure about lots of things like whether I get the insurance first or the plates first, etc. She was very helpful, both giving official rules and friendly advice. This was nice.

It was curious, though, how we dealt with the deposit. I asked “How much should I leave for the deposit?” “Well, we really like at least $300, but we could go lower if you need. What’s comfortable for you?” Mercy. I explained that I just didn’t have $9000 sitting in my checking account, but that I could easily offer $1000, and wouldn’t that be a nice easy number? Needless to say, they were fine with that, and we ran $1000 on my debit card.

But in the spirit of asking questions, I also said “now, for the final payment, I should bring… what? a cashier’s check?” That was acceptable, she explained, but posed its own problems. If nothing else, they wouldn’t hand over the title to the vehicle until the cash was in their bank, so I’d either have to come back to pick it up, or they could mail it. “But the mail is not always as reliable as you’d like it to be.” She made it pretty clear that her preference would be for cash. But she certainly wasn’t insisting. But it did make sense to me to have the title and be done with the whole process. So, I figured I’d try to bring cash.

Now, it turns out that only a month or two before this, I actually did have over $9000 in my checking account. After a fair amount of deliberation and consultation with friends, I’d moved just a bit more than that from my checking account to a savings account with ING (4.5% on a plain savings account… I definitely recommend it). Of course, when I did that, I wasn’t thinking that I was about to buy a car. So, now I had to move it back. This is a simple enough process, but it does take a couple of business days. So, that was the real cause of the delay.

I paid the deposit on Monday. I arranged to pick up the car on Friday (Priscilla agreed to drive my old car back for me. Thanks, Pri!). But, I was getting closer and closer to having to face the prospect of dealing with that much cash.

I’m sure this is normal for some people. Even some people who aren’t gangsters. But it’s definitely not normal for me I learned. I was very anxious about it. I mean, I enjoyed it as an experiment. But the results of the experiment were definitely that I was anxious. I decided on Friday morning I should call the bank and make sure there were no special requirements to withdraw that much cash. The person who took my call did have to put me on hold and ask someone, but confirmed that yes, I could just go up to a teller, present them with a check made out to “Cash”, and they could give me the cash.

Ok. Naturally I wanted to do this right before we left. I didn’t want to have all that cash any longer than necessary. I walked through the process several times. I had a list in my brain of exactly what I would do. So, it was easy enough to do the mechanics of it, which allowed my brain to spin on things such as whether any hoodloms were taking note of what I was doing, ready to jump me between here and my car.

I entered the bank. I was glad it was cold, because I wore my winter coat that has a nice inside breast pocket. I walked up to the little work area with the plastic date-on-display and the pens-on-leashes. I took out my checkbook and wrote out the check for $8487.00. Eight Thousand Four Hundred Eighty Seven — DOLLARS. IN the memo field I wrote “I’m buying a car” in hopes that the teller and I wouldn’t have to talk very loudly about the amount.

I waited in line, thinking that at this point, I was still safe. Not only did I not have the cash yet, but someone would have had to have been snooping on me really closely to know that this wasn’t an every-day transaction. Then it was my turn. The tellers at my bank are invariably friendly, and so I wasn’t at all surprised by the warm greeting mine offered. “A rather special withdrawal today” I said as I cooly handed her the check. “OH! You’re buying a car!! Oh that’s great! What kind of car!!” So much for that idea. We chatted a bit about the whole thing. And then she explained that she’d need to meet with a bank manager and go back to the vault to get the money. Makes sense, I’ll wait in the lobby.

As I type I realize that I’m probably just outing my naievety to the world, because I’m sure many people go through this kind of thing more often than I do, but whatever. After sweating for a few minutes (not wanting to remove my coat that would soon be holding so much value), I saw my teller return from the vaults. I met her back at the counter, and she started her work:

1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9- One Thousand

1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9- Two Thousand

The cash was wrapped in packages of $2000 each, so she counted out four of those (does it have to be so loud?), and then the remaining $487, which by that point seemed like pocket change. I had brought an empty plain brown envelope with me to carry this around in, so I put it all in there, and cautiously left the building.

My reasoning was that the walk from the teller to the car was the time to be most cautious. Once I’d driven away, someone would have to be following me to know what was going on. But here, anyone might have been able to overhear.

Well, naturally, nothing bad happened, I drove to the practice rooms at the School of Music to pick up Priscilla. I listened to her play through something on the harpsichord, sweating the whole time (not wanting to take off my coat).

But, all that anxiety was either unnecessary or did its job, because nothing else unusual happened. Maggie at the car dealership was very comfortable dealing with all that cash, and of course, once they had it, I was just a few signatures away from driving away in my new car!!

And so I did. It was a nice day for a nice drive, and I greatly enjoyed cruise control and an open sun roof, both firsts for me on a car that I own. Woohoo!

So, is this the end? No! I now have three motor vehicles! I gotta deal with that fact and several other things. You will be able to read about it all in part three of Car: The Mini-series.

In 1998, half way through what should have been a nine hour drive to my grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving, the engine of my Pontiac LeMans siezed. After renting a car to get home, I ended up purchasing a 1994 Saturn Sedan.

A couple months ago, I got to thinking… This car is 13 years old. It’s still running great, but it has some cosmetic issues:

* the drivers side window doesn’t close all the way, unless you assist it
* some of the trim is coming unattached, which makes it rattle, which
drives me a bit crazy
* the odometer is frozen at 124,477
* it’s got some small body blemishes
* it’s got some interior blemishes
* the ceiling panel stuff is falling down

So I says to myself, I says: you know, you don’t HAVE to drive this car until it dies. You can afford a newer model. Think about it.

I did think about it. I went so far as to set up an RSS read for cars being sold nearby on Craigs List so that I could look for cars that might interest me. I’m not that picky. I was pretty sure I wanted another Saturn, used, and I just sort of watched what little passed by.

Well, while talking with Sue and Michael about their new car, Sue mentioned autotrader.com, and I figured I should check it out. Well! Different scene from Craigslist.

Let me say: I hadn’t realized that the world of used car dealerships was such a prominent item in the long list of things revolutionized by the Internet. But, wow, yeah, totally. When I was shopping for a car back in 1998, I remember visiting a couple of lots, saying the kind of thing I was interested in, seeing what they had, going for a test drive, wondering if I should put up with it even if I am not taken by it. You get the picture.

My point of view now is that the Internet shifts the balance of power hugely in favor of the shopper. Why? Well, the popularity of the Internet means that the dealerships feel compelled to list their cars on sites like autotrader.com. So they do. Then these sites allow one to do things like “show me all of the used, 4 door Saturns for sale within a 50 mile radius between $4000 and $10,000” (with all of those bold entries being up to the shopper). Turns out I had too many to choose from at that rate, so I added “with manual transmission”.

Do you see? Now instead of just asking a dealer what they happen to have, I’m specifying what I want and comparison shopping between essentially all of the dealers I’m likely to drive to. This would have been unthinkable pre-Internet. Obviously, this also puts pressure on them to list a low price, since they know I’m comparing them with other dealers.

As if that weren’t enough, the Internet also makes it easy to run checks like Carfax to see what the vehicle’s history has been like, and sites like Kelley Blue Book to see how the list price compares. Again, the intimidation typically associated with buying a car from a used car dealer is pretty-well squashed by the Information Age. I love it.

So, what do you know, I found a 2004 Four Door Saturn Ion with manual transmission and 38,000 miles listed at $8950, which was more than $3000 less than kbb.com’s suggested dealer price for that car (and still $1000 under the suggested private party price). Woah. Carfax.com told me that it was originally purchased from the Saturn dealership on the south side of Indianapolis, and had had only one owner. I furthermore visited the Saturn web site and priced what I’d likely pay if I were buying a similar Saturn brand new: just over $15,000. So, I reasoned, I’m getting a car three years older but $6000 cheaper. Going by my age-old per-year-price-of-owning-a-car perspective, the car “cost” over $2000 per year for those three years, without even knowing what maintenance it had. My goal is $1000/year, so I’d be lucky if I could do that well buying the car new.

So, I was pretty well convinced before I even left my couch (literally). Indeed, my brain started spinning on “there’s no reason not to buy that car is there? I mean, as long as it seems ok when you see it. You should see it. There’s no reason no to go look at it. You should call them tomorrow. Yes, call tomorrow.” so much that I had difficulty sleeping that night.

But, the next day did roll around and I called them up. “Hi, I’m interested in this particular Saturn. Is it still available?” “Yup” “Ok, I’ll see you later on this afternoon.” Again, the contrast in the experience of dealing with the used car dealer can barely be overstated. I drove up there and said “Yeah, I called about the 2004 Saturn” “ok, I’ll take you to it… there you are, let me know if you have any questions, of if you’d like to take it for a drive.” Sweet! I spent about 15 minutes alone with the car in the lot. Looked in the trunk, under the hood, sat in each of the seats, pressed all the buttons, etc. Everything checked out ok. Not that there weren’t minor issues, but nothing scary. The test drive was similarly reassuring.

So, ok. I actually felt a bit of awkwardness with the sales manager because it seemed to both of us like the process should be more difficult or something. He gave me a talk about the business, how long they’ve been around, how they want to encourage repeat customers and referrals and stuff. Mmhmm. That’s all nice. But eventually we just realized there wasn’t much else to discuss. So, I put a deposit on it, and said I’d be back later in the week to give the rest of the cash and to pick up the car. Done deal.

Did anything bad happen with the car? Were there problems at the bank? What else might have gone wrong? Or right? Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of Car: The Mini-series