I had memorial day off again this year. I didn't really have anything planned... well, I take that back. I had a whole lot of nothing planned... until I got a call to play some tennis. So, I penciled in Tennis Scramble for my 9-12AM spot and scratched 'Matlock' and 'Murder, She Wrote'.
After I got back from Tennis, I turned the bathroom radio on and got into the shower when I heard an ad for a lease on a new accord SE for $189/month. $189/mo. sounded like a great deal to me... I just didn't get a chance to hear that fast talking fine print at the end. So, I looked up the dealer's web site, had a look at the offer and convinced Katie to go out for a test drive. So, test drive we did. Loved the car. Didn't like the lease so much.
We played the numbers game for about 2 hours before Katie and I finally decided we'd had enough. The first monthly payment was $268. The second round began at $240. We never did see anything resembling $189. I was prepared to postpone my lexus dream for three years for a new v6 accord. Alas, Holmes Honda wasn't prepared to deal with my lack of understanding of advertisements (read: lack of ability to understand/predict what fine print actually meant).
After another call tonight from Holmes Honda (3 or 4 actually), I talked to the General Sales Manager there who cleared up a few things for me. First, the $189 was for people with super preferred credit... whereas I was 11 points under 'super' credit. It was also $2500 cash or trade down plus Tax, Title and License plus first month's payment (more like $4800 down). After clearing that up, we talked about the sticker price and the so called 'tax' payment of 1800 dollars, which isn't actually a tax at all. It's an amount you pay to buy down the monthly payment. Nice.
So, at the end of it all, they offered an LX model for $198/mo. with $2500 down. It was a pretty big step down, and would be a rush to finalize all the details (trade-in, current loan details) so I've decided to stop considering it... though it was fun to fantasize about being in a new, problem free, warrantied car.
I'm still bothered by the fact that I wasted 4 hours or so total chasing a pipe dream. This imaginary great deal that Holmes Honda cooked up and put out there really lured me in. I went against my general principle of not leasing since I have an older car with a heavy repair bill in the wings and was considering a purchase soon anyway. I hate that advertising still has that power over me. I still tend to believe that if someone says something on the radio that I may not have to listen to the micro machines man give his 30 second detail/fine print speech. Ads like these just confirm the opposite though... that if it sounds like it's too good to be true, it probably is.
Posted by Jordan at May 29, 2007 9:13 PM | TrackBack