You Can Keep That

I love free things. Honestly, who doesn't? People are so enamored with the idea of getting an item without having to pay for it they will enter into contests without even really wanting the grand prize (which doesn't bother me unless they win). This basic human want to get something without it costing anything is also constantly exploited by advertisers. That is why every commercial on television today tries to throw in something for free, even if it is just the shipping costs. We all know shipping costs are way too high to begin with, so getting those waived almost makes the deal worth it because half the time when the deal features the manufacturer including some other product they happen to make, the free item being offered as a bonus stinks. No where is this more evident than with cars. I've been watching the last couple of days as my parents have been dealing with buying a new car. Every dealership they go to can't wait to include some free perk if the salesperson thinks that will be the thing which gets my parents to sign on the dotted line. The only problem is that even if you are getting something for free it can still sometimes be a rip-off.

Car dealers are notorious for this. Every single one of them offers you the chance to come in and buy a car for little to no money down and they will. It isn't until you've fallen in love with one of their cars they inform you that the advertised deal is only good if you come in between 1 and 1:05 on every third Tuesday, with perfect credit, a brand-new car to trade-in, are willing to finance through the dealership at 10.8% and have recently slayed a dragon which includes the stipulation that you still have the head on a spike to prove it. (Only one of those is made up.) But that isn't the disappointing part - by now I am ready for a deal to never be as good when you get to the store as it appears on paper. After all, there is a reason every ad includes 10 lines of fine-print that you can't read without a magnifying glass and 20/20 vision. So, if it was just that I could live with it. What annoys me more is how they then try to offset your obvious anger at their sales tactics by turning around and offering to give you something you didn't want but they think will calm you down just because it's free.

A lot of times they offer you some kind of extended warranty or membership into their service plan which offers free oil changes for as long as you own the car. The first time this happens it will rope you in because that sounds like big savings over the life of a car you intend to drive for a decade, right up until the first time you go in for your free oil change and discover that only applies for cars which run on one quart of oil and since your particular vehicle requires more than that, you have to pay for the other three quarts which ends up totally more than if you had gone to your normal oil-change station. On top of that the mechanic was looking under your car and, wouldn't you know it, you need some new brakes. In an amazing coincidence the dealership is having a deal on brakes that afternoon. Aren't you lucky? It is at this point that your realize you have been duped, because all you have done is given the dealership the chance to squeeze you for more money every three months or so. Now you never want to go back but you almost feel as though you are obligated to, because otherwise you paid more for the car than you would have if you they hadn't thrown in these "free" services. Not exactly the deal of a lifetime.

In short - stop giving me things I don't want and then trying to convince me that it is some amazing deal which I was lucky to wrangle out of you. What I want salespeople to know is this: I don't want you to give me a free service plan which isn't really free and I don't want six free car washes that it turns out all have to be used by the end of the year. All I really want is to spend less money on a car and if I want any accessories after that I'll pay for them myself once we're done. So, how about you take a couple hundred bucks off the total and keep the oil changes for yourself? (In my experience, car salesmen never seem excited about this counter-offer.) This all just proves the point that there is no such thing as free anymore. If you buy a big-ticket item you are going to be paying for something along the way that would seem ridiculous under any other circumstances. All you can really do is hope to talk them down as much as possible before they start sticking these things onto your bill and jacking the total right back up. Perhaps it has something to do with being such a poor negotiator myself that leads to the weird phenomenon where I love car shopping, but hate car buying. Seriously, I just don't know how Jay Leno does it.