So last night, we went and bought my wife a new car. We’d been talking about it for a while. She loves her current car, but it’s getting older and we’ve had to sink some money into repairs lately and she just wanted something new.

Therefore, I started to do some research, I know her tastes and I know what kind of things she wants. High on her list of essentials is seat warmers, since it gets really cold here in the winter. So I made my list, she looked it over, picked out the ones that really interested her and we went out last night to look at cars.

Boy, was that a mistake!

At least for the first dealership. They were the only ones that closed early so we went to Hyundai first. She had a couple models she wanted to look at. We weren’t planning on buying, we didn’t even have our trade with us, we were just looking and putting hands on physical objects.

The local Hyundai dealership is terrible. I didn’t know that until after, but the second we put foot on the lot, their sales idiots descended on us like vultures. I told the first one, very clearly, that we are not there to buy. We are just going to look at the cars that we’re interested in and then leave. There is no sale to make. We just want to be left alone in peace to talk and if we have any questions, we’ll come and find him.

The guy got pissed and stomped off, only to have another one, literally 30 seconds later, try the same thing. He was very aggressive. I’m not talking passive aggressive, I mean actually aggressive. He came and followed us around at an absurdly close distance. More than once, I stopped and he ran into the back of me, that’s how close he was.

I got tired of it and told him to leave us alone. He has no possible sale. We are not there to buy, we are there to look and nothing he can do is going to change that. He’s just making us uncomfortable and if that’s what he wants to do, we’ll go elsewhere. Eventually, he stomped away mad.

Then, again, 30 seconds later, the sales manager came over and he was the worst of all. He was mad that I was telling his people not to do their job. Well, if their job is to harass people and drive them away, they’re doing just fine. Keep in mind, we were the only people on the lot. Apparently, people were not beating down their door to buy cars from them and I can see why. They were all assholes.

Finally, we left without even looking at the cars and went to four other dealers, every single one of which was a much better experience. Every single one of them, if someone came over at all, and that didn’t happen at all at one dealership, we just told them that we’re there to look, not to buy and if we need you, we’ll find you. Every single one of them said okay and left. We didn’t have to get upset that we were being harassed. They just respected our wishes.

Anyhow, we did buy a car last night from a really fantastic dealership where everyone was incredibly helpful and nice and they were willing to bend over backwards to get our business. It didn’t bother them that we didn’t have our trade-in with us. They gave us a really good deal and said “bring it in when you get a chance”. We drove away with a $10k downpayment and my wife now has a really nice new car. We’re probably going to just pay it off in the next month or so, the only reason we didn’t just do it last night is because we didn’t have the liquid cash on hand. Today, my wife is calling our financial adviser to have money transferred out of our investment cash account to cover the $10k we spent. Like I said, we weren’t planning on doing this at all.

This morning, I woke up and got on Yelp to leave the Hyundai dealership a bad review, only to find that everyone hates them. They have like 5 5-star reviews and virtually everything else is a 1-star. It’s no wonder they had no one on the lot. These people are assholes. I left a very negative review for them, something that’s going to get lost in the sea of terrible reviews, I’m sure, then went to the dealership that we actually used and left a glowing review. They were fantastic people, unlike Hyundai.

It’s not like I hate Hyundai. I rented an Elantra many years ago and really liked it, so my wife wanted to see some of their models in person. We just won’t buy from pricks and from the reviews I was reading, they sounded like con-men, willing to lie to get your money, so I think we dodged a bullet.

Seriously, how can these people think that tactic is effective? They have to know they’re not selling anything. They have to know that people are walking away and going elsewhere. How can they be this stupid? I don’t know, but people in the reviews were saying that they’d rather drive 40 miles to the next Hyundai dealership than ever have to deal with these morons again. That’s not a good thing. Maybe I should have looked up reviews on the dealers and not just the cars, but since we were just going to look, I didn’t bother. Next time, I think I will. Oh, and for the good dealership, their reviews are almost all 5-star. I’m not surprised at that. They were really good, maybe one of the best car-buying experiences that I’ve had in a long time. That’s how you do business. That Hyundai dealership needs to figure it out.