My new Prius C sedan (in the background, the Admiral’s 1996 Jag)
Dear friends and readers,
[My allusion is to a wonderfully ironic-naive moment, an utterance by Feynman in Ralph Leighton’s 1988 The Last Journey of a Genius. My blog may be seen as a paean to acting non-competitively as part of a strategy for getting what you want and making a good result for all.]
I felt bad for my Chevy Cavalier when I saw it stripped of its license plates, bare inside (all CDs, books, stuff for removing snow and ice, towels, boots, jump-start cables) removed. But I reminded myself it was not alive, just a machine and from what the dealership said, would not be junked after all. All but air-conditioning and lights in working order so who knows, maybe it’ll have a new owner soon. Had the woman not said we could trade it in, I would have give it to PBS (as I have two cars before) and it’d have been auctioned off.
How long did it take before I drove home in this lovely lovely car, just the right size, comfy, easy to drive, a pretty grey, complete with GPS system, CD or MP3 player, air-conditioning, controls that even I can do, remarkably room-y trunk, and it feels solid on the road — well 6 hours altogether. I know it really didn’t take six hours since the check I wrote ($23,000) was the result of years of work and saving on my parents’ part.
It was much pleasanter than I’ve experienced before. Probably part of the reason I chose the Prius C was the salesman was a woman, Ethopian lady, who didn’t try to play games at all. Within a few minutes we were looking at a Corolla and then a Prius C. She talked reasonably. I didn’t test-drive it because it makes me nervous to get into a new unknown car and I was determined to look at more than these — though I so liked it from the start.
We went to two other places and tried a third. One, the Hundai place, the man was playing some strange games and somehow we never got to see a car before we left. Another, the Chevy, he did wanted so intensely to sell a car now, and took my driver’s license and xeroxed it (to get information? he could use?), but still I felt guilty, but the model he showed us was not as solid as this Prius, and worse, it had not CD player. It’s silly to make that the cut-off. But one problem with my Chevy is the stereo-system (I believe it’s called) is one put into the car after my older one died (I was grief-stricken to lose my audio-cassette player). And it’s unstable. I do care about this. It was cheaper $16,000 and had a bigger trunk but was not as comfy. We couldn’t find the Nissan dealer.
So we went home, I had soup for lunch and insisted on going out again. The admiral wanted to put it off until tomorrow but I worried the woman I was comfortable with would not be there. I felt she would sell me a car. And she did when we returned. I test drove it. The back has plenty of room for putting stuff.
She was endlessly accommodating, courteous, plain-spoken. She showed me patiently over and over how to use the controls. She showed us where we would get 2 years free service. The place where they fix cars looked clean and comfortable. It has customers in it, a good sign. This dealer is in Alexandria, so easy for me to get to.
The Admiral said had we gone through the PFCU buying service, the car would have cost us another $100.
Our small bathroom is coming along (Phase 3 of house-fixing). Now we got the right size mirror with soft-brushed nickel sides and a basket in our shower.
We are still waiting for the wooden cabinet on the other side of the wall.
The admiral says he will begin to look for a new used Jaguar in April or May.
I had dreaded going. In the morning I wrote on face-book my frustration at the idea that buying a car would be awful. It has been in the past. I wondered why what should be just fine since I was eager for a new car should be awful. I put it down to how human nature in social arrangements for money through competition and the need to triumph and beat the other person out were part of it. Also the high price of cars. For some people until they go to college, the only cost more than a car is their apartment or house.
Girl cats make music: I put down how okay the experience was partly to the salesperson being a woman (though Caroline assured me her mother-in-law is a ferocious negotiator)
I mean this blog to be an example of what may be achieved by women’s psychology as outlined in in Lyn Mikel Brown and Carol Gilliagan outline in Meeting at the Crossroads: Women’s Psychology and Girls’ Development, a defense of women’s caring psychology.
The easy day and success was also of course thanks to the money my parents left me. I could just write the check.
I see Caroline coming down the path,
We are off to the Austrian Embassy tonight to hear a young man play the piano, much Beethoven.
Sylvia
Under the Sign of Sylvia II 
My good friend Diane K wrote: thought of u today when i heard this story on npr
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/12/171814201/episode-435-why-buying-a-car-is-so-awful
To which I replied: If you read my blog you’ll find that we didn’t have an unpleasant time after all though I did expect to have one and have had them.
Once when the admiral tried to buy a fancy red convertible the guy acted in such a way (going back and forth to his “boss”, trying to get this absurd price and playing all sorts of idiot games) that Yvette ran a temperature when we got home. She was so stressed she had 104 temperature. She couldn’t go to school the next day. Caroline was jealous. It was our fault in a way or the Admiral’s. He wanted this fancy expensive young man’s car. We should have walked out right away.
We did flee the first man who seemed about to play these counterproductive irritating games; and we did not return to the second man after he began to make up stories how he had to do this or that (like xerox my drivers’ license) because the boss wanted it.
There is nowadays a buying service in the Federal Credit Union and it’s said that if you use it, you will find most salesmen who agree to participate just are people offering a car for such-and-such a price. The Saturn was one of the first cars I remember where you were told you would not have to haggle .
The key of course is we didn’t what’s called negotiate. We didn’t what’s called negotiate for our house either. When we bought the house the landlady offered us a reasonable price and we came close to what she wanted. That was that. This time we just paid the price the woman said was the price. When she offered to accept our old car we were delighted and bought it in .We had intended to give it to PBS. Then when she said her finance office could give $500 we accepted. What that meant was we paid $500 less on the sticker price.
If you want to try to drive the price down, then you are asking for an unpleasant experience. And it was people who wanted to act in this way that were part of what cause salesmen to act this way.
Sylvia
Sounds like you bought exactly the right car (a beauty) at exactly the right price. Well done, and congratulations! It really looks perfect!