For my regular visitors, if you find that this blog hasn't been updating much lately, chances are pretty good I've been spending my writing energy on my companion blog. Feel free to pop over to Moving On, and see what else has been going on.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Yes, then no, then yes after all!

Buying our new van has been an interesting experience. Long story short, though, we do have the same van we took home for an "extended text drive" that I wrote about in my last post.

Shortly after we took the van home, we got a call telling us the monthly payments would actually be much higher than what we were talking about when we agreed to buy it. After some back and forth-ing, it turned out that the original payment we were quoted (based on a 72 month contract) did not include life/disability insurance or warranty, but the second amount did. This was well above our budgeted amount, so we were going to take the van back.

We ended up dealing with a different manager. This turned out to be someone we enjoyed working with a lot more - the other one that gave us the original numbers was much more of a hustler type. Anyhow, after some discussion, we figured out where the miscommunication was - we'd thought the original numbers we'd agreed to included all taxes, insurances and warranties. Since it was outside of our budgeted amount, we started talking about lower priced vehicles. It turns out they only had one older mini-van in stock - all the others were the same year or newer. We test drove the other van (a 2002 Venture), and it really sucked. The payments wouldn't have been any different, either, as the older van would have been on a 4 year term, instead of 6 years. The payments would have been only about $20 a month less than the newer van, and we'd be paying more interest, because the banks charger higher interest rates on older vehicles.

They were going to get a couple more mini-vans in later in the week, though. These were 2005's, one of which had things like the bucket seats in the middle instead of a bench seat. The dealership's garage needed time to go over them and fix anything that needed fixing, we couldn't actually see them until the day after they came in. At this point, we were no longer expecting to get the 2006 we already had on loan and were going to go home in our old car. Instead, they told us to keep it until we came back to test drive the other vans! That was fine with us!

So we come back on the Friday, late enough in the day that I could pick my husband up from work. The van we wanted to test drive, also a Grand Caravan, was so fresh out of servicing, the carpets were still wet from the steam cleaning. In most things, it was identical to the 2006 we'd been using. It had a few extra toys, like a dvd player for the rear passengers. The mileage was still quite low, too - only another 5000km more than the newer vehicle.

Then we test drove it.

It was a short drive - pretty much just around the block - but it was enough. It didn't handle corners or bumps in the road as well, and the engine seemed less responsive. Since one of the main purposes we have for getting a new vehicle is to be able to do road trips, these were things that were important to us. In comparing the financial side of things, the older vehicle was a slightly cheaper base price, but that 1 year added another 1% on the interest rate. That was enough to put the total cost and payments at just about the same! At that point, it made no sense to take the older vehicle.

So we decide on the 2006 Grand Caravan we'd had for almost a week already. We start talking to the finance guy so did some juggling of numbers and managed to get us payments that we could live with that also included life/disability insurance and even a warranty, though not a premium one, by any means. The total payments were still higher that we wanted, but live-able. It means some other purchases we wanted to save up for will take longer to get. We've also delayed our trip to visit family until Thanksgiving weekend in October. I'd hope to get out there this month, but that just wasn't a possibility anymore.

Things should have been finished at that point, but it didn't quite work out that way. As if anything ever does work out the way it should? *L*

Because of our move, our driver's licenses still aren't updated. We just kept forgetting to do it. Normally, that's not a problem, and for my husband, it wasn't. The loan is in both our names, but we ended up just registering the van in my name, as we'd done with the car. The bank needed a couple of recent pay stubs from my husband, which had our new address on them, but of course, my name isn't on those. I was going to give them my updated vehicle registration, only to discover that the person had made a mistake and put our old address on it. That was what they had on file, since we hadn't bothered updating the registration due to our plans to get rid of the car soon. I was able to get it fixed and the finance guy faxed a copy to the bank. We both that that would be it.

Of course, that wasn't good enough.

The bank said that a bill would be enough. That's when I realized that none of the bills coming to our home have my name on them! Since my husband came out here 6 months ahead of us, he set all this stuff up in his name, and we've just kept it that way. We had nothing!

Talking to the finance guy again, he told me the bank said they'd be willing to take just about any piece of official mail (not personal mail) with my name on it! The only thing I could think of was my personal bank account statements, which I certainly wasn't comfortable giving them. I finally thought of our occupancy agreement. It has both our names on it. When I looked at it to bring it in, though, I noticed that it doesn't have my hyphenated name. I usually use my full name, but when space is an issue (a lot of forms, both written and on computer, don't have enough spaces for my full name), I just use the half that's my husband's name. Just in case, though, I grabbed the vehicle insurance papers that just happened to come in the mail the day before, just in case!

When I got to the dealership, I had a chance to talk to the finance guy again. He told me that the bank had said they don't normally accept lease-type agreements, which he thought was strange. After all, if you're looking for proof of address, wouldn't an occupancy or lease agreement be the best thing? He told them that it had better be good enough for them, because if it wasn't, he wasn't going to be sending any more business their way! Still, he took a copy of the insurance paper, just in case they had issues with the name thing after all.

Meanwhile, he'd also had the folks upstairs (various managers in their upstairs offices) questioning him about why our purchase wasn't financed yet. He told them about how we've only been living here for 5 months and hadn't changed our driver's license yet. Not only where they understanding, but several of them admitted that their driver's licenses still had their old addresses, too - and I don't think any of them had moved within the last 6 months!

I haven't had any calls back, so it looks like things were finally worked out. They'd better be, as our first car payment is supposed to come out next week!

In the mean time, we're really enjoying our new mini-van!

1 comment:

The Travelers Journal said...

So glad it finally worked out!!