Cars and dealers and anger, oh my

I'm moving to Guysborough tomorrow! It's all very exciting and happening very fast--and it's a good thing.

The not good thing? Getting ready for the move and changing from a student to a working woman. There's packing, filling out all of my graduation information, changing to a correspondence course for my last workshop--oh, and buying a car and insuring it.

So, I spent all last weekend test driving cars. A stressful experience in itself. Then, I finally made my decision, picking a Mazda3 at City Mazda. I put a deposit down to get the car ready--a hold on my visa and was told I would get the car Wednesday.

Wednesday came, and I hadn't heard anything. After several calls, I found out that not only hadn't the car started to get ready, but they were going to need a co-signer as well. I complained, and they did nothing. I went in twice with my parents, and was told that I wouldn't get my money back--even though the car hadn't been prepared, service wasn't being delivered, and I was told it was a hold when it was a credit. And, apparently a paper I initialed said it was a charge--but I have no copy of such paper. Or anything from Mazda.

I ended up going across the street to Honda, because they treated me like a person and returned my calls. Now, the people at City Mazda are saying that I'm stuck for the $500 (which of course, as a student I can't afford) and the salesman yelled at me for wasting his time, then the sales manager told me he can't believe that I was treated that way--essentially saying that I'm a liar. He says lots of people are happy with the service they receive, and why should he believe that I'm an exception? He also told me that there's no such thing as a hold.

So, I've gotten a car, I've lost $500 that I can't afford, and City Mazda has lost all of my respect. I'll never walk into that dealership or recommend it to anyone.

But, I'm heart broken. This week was supposed to be fun--after all, I'm on Spring Break!--and I'm starting a new job and all other sorts of marvellous things.

Now I just have to find a way to make some extra money, since Mazda certainly doesn't want to give me my money back as I wasted their time--though they wasted mine.

So, tomorrow when I take off in my pretty Honda Civic--which took less than 24 hours to prepare--I'll be happy to be leaving City Mazda behind.