On a stormy day last month Melissa hit an icy patch of the interstate and slid off the highway, through a fence and onto a frontage road. She was able to drive the car home but there was a lot of body damage. Most of the body was going to need to be replaced and, after originally giving us an estimate, the insurance company decided it would be better just to total it.
Every day for the last month, we’ve been looking at craigslist trying to find a slightly used honda or toyota. After seeing more than our fair share of adds for sub $3000 nearly new honda civics and toyota camrys (all who just happen to have sellers living overseas who would need payment to be posted through some suspisous account) we finally made time to go looking today and we ended up getting a car and being very happy with our choice.
He got a 2001 Honda Accord EX from the Honda dealership in town. We actually had a suprisingly similar experience to the last time we bought a car. We shopped all around but mainly looked at the toyota and honda dealerships. The toyota dealership didn’t have great service at all (though the guy who helped us was nice enough) and we felt a lot of the typical uneasy feelings about car shopping while there. The Honda dealership on the other hand was great. We went back three times and never once felt any pressure. We always dealt with a great guy named Sean Farris who shot straight with us the whole time. When it actually came down to numbers he told us that he hates the money games some people play and just asked what we were thinking we would spend. I was a little skeptical at first but ended up just letting him know what Melissa and I had said we’d be happy if we got the car for. He left for a few minutes and came back with a deal. No negotiation. No haggling. He just gave it to us for what we asked (which is good because after saying he didn’t play games we were fine with walking out if they tried to haggle). If you need a car we would highly recommend Sean at Honda.
All in all it was a good day. The process always takes a long time but now we’ve got a cool new Honda with lots of fun features. It even has an in-dash six CD changer (now that we never really listen to CDs anymore). Check it out:
