Saturday, March 3, 2007


This week we bought this 2006 Pontiac Vibe! So far we love it and feel like we made a good purchase. We traded in our Montana minivan, and it feels good to not have to worry about it anymore. We had the Montana nearly three years and overall we were a little disappointed with it. I got to where I just did not like to drive it. The handling was terrible, it was not great on gas, and all the aggravation that we were having with the electrical problems such as the fuel gauge being defective, and the power locks not working properly. It also had a terrible heating and cooling system....ugh!! The Vibe is nice, though....I feel like we got a good deal on it from National Car Sales. I had been researching cars in this class for awhile, looking at the Toyota Matrix, Ford Focus wagons, and such....We decided that we liked the Vibe. We visited three different dealerships and test drive three different Vibes and the one that you see above was the one for us. You hate to sign up for a car that you will have to pay on for so long when you are on the verge of paying off the van, but the van was not a long term vehicle, whereas the Vibe is.

We went through a couple of lousy experiences at the two other dealerships. The first place we went to was Westgate in Plainfield right beside Kohls. That place is terrible - we wasted alot of time because we had to fill out a credit request and test drive the Vibe before we even had any kind of clue what they wanted for it. Then the dude who was the "sales boss" was basically a slimeball and was not straight up with us at any point whatsoever after he came in the "close the deal". Then was went to Hare on the Westside off of 38th street to see their advertised Vibe specials of "11,900".....well, that was with 2000 down, which we were going to do anyway. But that means the actual list price was 13900 and the 2000 down "made" it 11900, according to the salesman. I said: "Ummm, doesn't that make the price of the vehicle 13,900?" He says, well, actually, yes.....Then I said "Then why was it advertised for 11,900?". After the test drive, Kim noticed that the front bumper was messed up in three places, so that was the end of that since I was ticked anyway about the deceit that had occurred. So we went to National and bought the one we wanted, straight up, no deception, no games, no pressure.

For all these people that make a living selling cars: Do everyone a favor and avoid the deceit. It ticks people off. Tricks and small print games simply tick people off. Just be straight up and don't waste your time and the customer's time.