Mac Haik Ford, Houston, TX

If you like wasting time, they will help you at Mac Haik Ford in Houston Texas.

Hopefully an entertaining read, and a lesson to others as well:

I stopped by on a Friday night, because I saw one of their vehicles for sale on the internet. I know it was for sale for 25,998. Trained not to give away anything, chit-chatted with the sales guy, how about this car .. yes let's make a test drive.

Test drive was fine, into his office. He is off to the manager, comes back: "Looks like it was a little more expensive than I said at first" (he said it would be around 26K before we made the test drive) : $27700 (about $30K drive out).

I told him about the internet. We looked up the vehicle on his PC on their website (still at 25988). Egg on his face, he did not know what happened, back to his manager. (For those initiated, this is part of the older games: wear you out. My advice - bring a computer game and play it while they are away, you will be amazed how much faster they are back in the office).

Anyway, we do the back and forth for a while, and I leave because we could not get close enough on price. So far nothing new.

Next day - I get "the call". Other manager came in, if I still want it, I can get it for the price I wanted it for yesterday. So I pack up the family, let's go for a test drive.

We arrive, and the game begins. Looking for the key ... where is it ... walk outside, take it from another salesmen. "You are here first, his customer is also coming in for a test drive". We get the key and drive off.

We all like it, come back, tell him to get the contract so we can get on our way.

Key disappears again, so does the car - with the other customer (we really never saw them, so I don't know whether they were there). It will be just five minutes, please wait in the office. I start to get the feeling that I know what is going on - they want to start a bidding war. This is not what I signed up for, so I told them: "Honour the price you said, or I will walk" . Apologies, apologies, but the other customer wants to pay more. So we leave.

You might have guessed, but there was another call this morning. The sales guy said "I got upset with management, went over their head, and they will still sell you the car for the price you wanted". I said I would think about it (please ...) and looked on the website of the dealer. I was no longer surprised to see the car was still for sale.

It turned out he is the internet fleet manager. I would think he would have been very aware of the internet price before.

I can't blame people for trying to make a living, or a profit. But have we really come to this? I learned we haven't all the time, and found other dealers who operate with way more integrity.