TMagda
05-24-2013, 01:50 AM
Rant on: I cannot believe how difficult a time I am having trying to acquire a new car. My summer nanny lost her car so I have to give her mine to get the kids where they need to be. This just happened and school ends in 4 weeks so I have a couple of weeks to get this done. My wife and I were planning to get a "fun" car later in the summer anyway so this just accelerates our plans. We need to lease it due to the cyclical nature of her business cash flows, i.e. no cash until fall! Fun means 3 pedals and a top that goes down. It has to be a car we can both drive. After much discussion we settled on a Jeep Wrangler Unlimited. I have had a Wrangler before and it was a lot of fun. I found one in local inventory that would work (not easy, they build mostly automatics) and priced out a lease using the the Jeep lease calculator. I have been working in accounting for 35 years and am an expert in lease accounting. The payment it delivered was perfect, so off to the dealer. One lap around the block, I'll take it. Let's do the paperwork. The "best" price was double the Jeep website calculation. I asked how it could be so far off, salesman said I must have put the numbers in wrong. No, I did it right and showed him. Oh, this does not include tax! OK, so the tax on $350 is $350? I got tired of this quickly and left. Problem not solved. Tried another dealer 350 miles away, the closest with an appropriate configuration. Asked him first if his leases would approximate the Jeep website. He said no, there is something wrong with the site and Jeeps do not lease well. I asked him if the Wrangler has traditionally high residual values, and he said they were the highest of any 3 year old car. So with high residuals and historically low interest rates, how can you explain these enormous lease payments? Manual transmission cars have high payments because the dealers do not want them back because they are too hard to sell. That is a quote. Long story short, same at Ford on a Mustang, same at Chevrolet on a Camaro. Basically it was the amount I calculated either myself or on the dealer website + $200 to $300. I do not begrudge anyone a fair profit or even a maximized profit, but I expect a published deal to be honored, and do not expect the financing to be equal to the MSRP! It almost seems as though the standard practice has become to ignore the math and try to guess how knowledgeable a customer is or is not, and throw out a number. I must come off as an idiot! Sorry for the rant, I just don't have this kind of free time!