Buying the Van: A Retrospective
The first van we bought never made it out of Washington. It made it most of the way through a ski season before the A/C seized up necessitating a tow and repair. Then, when the weather started warming up in the spring, the engine couldn’t keep its cool. The engine temperature gauge would creep up anytime that the weather got warm or the road got steep or you tried to drive more that 55 miles per hours. The last straw was when I found myself sitting at the top of Steven’s Pass with coolant jetting out of the hood waiting for the engine to cool down. This wasn’t the van we were going to drive across the continent in.
And so, on a beautiful spring day, we set out to visit all of the dealerships in Pugetopolis that sold used cargo vans. Looking for a new home.
Our first stop was place just south of Seattle in Auburn. The dealership was based out of a former bank branch that had been sitting abandoned, it’s lot now packed with used work vehicles. There were a number of vans, but a couple that they had posted on Craigslist piqued our interest. They had less than 100k miles on them and one even had a pretty good roof rack installed.
The guys at the dealership, a bunch of Russians, gave us the keys and we did the test drives. The vans all drove pretty good. Engines rattled a bit, but not more than expected. Interiors were fine. We took some notes. Had a few more van we wanted to look at that day, but this place seemed promising.
As we were preparing to leave though, the salesman made his pitch. Nothing odd about that. Used cars salesmen always want you to buy right then. Usually it’s something like “There’s a lot of interest on this one. Can’t guarantee it’ll still be here if you walk away…”
But this guy had a new tactic. He took a sheet of printer paper and wrote at the top of it Ford E-Series 2014 and then on a new line $8,400. I was about to point out that on craigslist, they were offering the car for sixty five hundred, but before I can, he crossed the $8,400 out, right in front of my eyes, and wrote $6,500.
He says, “A deal I’ll make for you. But only if you sign now.” He holds the paper out for me to sign.
Wow, such a deal. Literally the price they had the van listed for. But at least it was 1,900 dollars less than some random number that he wrote on top of a sheet of paper. I don’t know a lot about negotiating theory and psychological anchoring. But I’m 99% sure that’s not how it works.
At any rate, I didn’t take him up on that deal.
At the next place we went to, there were no people. There were some vans. None of them looked very nice. There were some chickens wandering around amongst them. We checked the hours. This place should have opened hours ago. The chickens offered us no deals, so we drove away.
On the way out, a chihuahua ran in front of our car and barked at us. Maybe he had a deal? We’ll never know though, his owner came and pulled him back inside and we were on our way again.
The third place we visited was somehow worse than the first two. Yes, worse even than the one with the chickens.
At first everything seemed good. Julia had called them ahead of time. Days ahead. They had a van in good condition. Low miles. Good price. It was the one that seemed best suited to our needs that we would be seeing that day.
The dealership itself was clean and new. Purpose built lots were filled with cars and trucks. After checking in, they brought us to a waiting area and gave us some coffee. They said they’d bring the van around. We had some coffee. Waited for a while. Had some more coffee. Finally they came back and told us that actually, they didn’t have the van. The one they’d posted on their site. The one we’d specifically called about and they’d specifically said they had. It was in fact not there.
But they did have a different van! It was only a bit more than double our maximum possible budget! It had a TV built in! I looked at it. It seemed pretty neat. But, as mentioned, more than double what we had to spend on a van. Julia refused to even look.
We were near Tacoma by then, so we went downtown and got some brunch. The morning hadn’t gone great. But there were still a few places to check.
Next up was the big Ford dealership in Tacoma. We assumed they’d have a bunch of options to choose from. Hopefully there’d be something we liked. All their vehicles were a bit on the expensive side, but also newer and in good condition.
We found a dealer and asked about vans. He lead us out to them. Showed us a few that were in good condition basically in our budget. We asked if we could test drive them. No, he told us. Their batteries were dead. Wait, there are three of them. All of their batteries are dead?
He explained that with these new vans there’s so much on board electronics that the batteries die if you don’t drive them for two or three days. That is what’s known in the business as a lie.
But he pointed out that there were some newer vans of the same model. They were too expensive for us, but he suggested that we test drive them, and if we like them, buy the older van. I guess that made sense to him somehow?
So anyway, he dragged out a battery and jump started the newer van, because apparently its battery died every other day too. I’m not sure why he didn’t just jump the older van that we wanted to buy. Maybe there was something really wrong with it? It was all pretty confusing. So we’re like, “Cool, so where should we take it on the test drive.”
And he tells us, “Oh, you’ll have to go one at a time so I can be in the passenger seat with you.”
I asked, “Is that your policy, to have an employee along for all the test drives?” I wasn’t bothered really. Just had never had that happen before and was curious.
And he said, I am not making this up, “Yes, for certain customers.”
Was he trying to neg us? I think he was trying to neg us. Is that a strategy they teach in used car salesman school? I know used car salesmen have a reputation for being scummy, but how was that even supposed to work? Was I supposed to feel so desperate for his approval that I’d throw twenty five thousand dollars at him to earn it? Maybe we should have walked away then.
But instead we stuck around and did two separate test drives for the van. Then, we did a couple more for a truck that we thought maybe we could build out the bed of, but it didn’t drive great and was pretty pricy. Then we asked if we could look inside a transit connect. They seemed too small, but I wanted to try lying down. Maybe it would surprise us. So he tried to find the key for it, but couldn’t, so we’re like, “Alright, I guess we’re going then.”
And then he asked for our number, and we were like, no, because there was only one van they had that interested us and it maybe didn’t even start. So then the dealer threw a small tantrum because we had wasted so much of his time jump starting the wrong van and going on separate test drives and looking for keys. I should mention that it took them upwards of twenty minutes to find a key for a given van. They’d just disappear and then come back half and hour later with a fistful of every van key they would find and hope that they got the right one. I think their organization system was a giant box with literally every key to every car thrown in unlabeled. So I can understand why he was feeling upset, but I’m not totally clear why it was my fault.
But anyway, the negging didn’t work. They didn’t get our number.
Finally, we ended up at a random dealership on the Lakewood strip. They had two vans. The first one was well within our budget and looked it. They hadn’t been able to clean it up yet and the back was an oil stained mess. There was a tool rack with one cubby labeled, “Buttholes”. The engine running sounded like nails getting spun around in an empty paint can.
We asked about the other van. A 2018 Transit with almost no miles on it, it’s price was outside of what we wanted to spend. So we were getting ready to leave, when the manager of the dealership came running up to our car, He asked why we hadn’t tried out the Transit. When we told him it was too expensive, he said, “I’ll make you a rock bottom deal.”
So we gave it a test drive. It ran beautifully. What you’d expect from a basically new car. Then we went in to see what the deal would be.
For the next fifteen to twenty minutes, he said steadily lower prices, and we were like, “No, can’t do that”, until eventually he said a price, and we didn’t say no forcefully enough or something, and next thing we knew there were papers to sign. Classic used car buying experience.
So anyway, we ended up with a new van. Drove it over Steven’s Pass and back and the thermometer didn’t even flinch. Didn’t even end up costing much more than our maximum possible cost. It’s run admirably since then, taking us to Mexico and back without a hiccough. Ready for the next adventure, whatever that ends up being.
