If you are behind on the goings-on of the Jones' (it's okay, I'll forgive you this one time) Greg sold his motorcycle and got a semi-running Jeep. Our plan is to fix the Jeep up to become a reliable car and then sell the Escape and the F-150 for one car that is a little bit bigger.
Going on this knowledge, I get this letter in the mail from the Ford dealership proclaiming they want to buy my Escape back because it is in such high demand. What the heck, we went down there just to check it out. What proceeded was quite funny, a little embarrassing and very time consuming.
We took the kids with us and got there around 4:30. Greg made it pretty clear that we wanted an even trade. "I give you the Escape, you give me a bigger car for the same worth." The car dealer was highly confused by this concept. He kept asking," So how much money do you want to spend?" Greg said, "none, just the trade-in value." The car dealer told us we needed to go through loan approval. Why, you ask?? I have no idea either.
Finally, Greg takes the car dealer out to the car to complete the checklist and see how much it was worth and the car doesn't start. It doesn't even roll over. That's pretty embarrassing. I'm sitting inside (with AC) and watching through the window Greg and the car dealer jumping the car so it would start. He checks everything out and we come to an agreement of how much they would give us.
So, we ask, do you have anything worth $7500? No, but they do have this really nice mini-van for $11,000. I know I can do math, and I know you can do math, so that does NOT work out to an even trade. We tell him no, and then he tells us he's got a really nice van on another lot. He pulls up in the $11,000 mini-van to drive us to the other lot to look at the cheaper one. After moving the carseats, we are on our way. The whole way we are told numerous things about "how great" this van is. I must admit, it was a little spiffy, but too expensive. We get to the other lot and look at the other car, and it's missing the 3rd row....hhmmpphh. This huge car only has 4 seats (3 of them missing). That's not very helpful. I could see why it was the cheaper van, because parts were missing!
We get back to the original dealership and load up the kids in the Escape, get a bid in writing for our car and we are on our way home. Something that I thought would take 1 hour took over 2 hours. But to look on the bright side:
1. the kids behaved extremely well, which was a miracle within itself
2. we got snowcones for dinner from JJ's...way better than real food
3. I got a chuckle when the car wouldn't start and Greg was trying to convince him that it really was a good car
4. mini-vans might be growing on me a little bit
The worst part that came out of the whole thing happened today. In some way, Greg broke the driver-side window and it will no longer roll down. It did it for ME earlier in the day, so now I'm blaming Greg for it not working. Anyways, I roll up to the drive-thru looking forward to a cool drink on a hot day and roll down my window....you know where this is going....it didn't work. I really did feel a little bit sadder inside that I can no longer use my window; a stupid convenience of life that I have gotten very used to.
In the end, I don't know if I would chalk up the whole experience as bad or good. It definitely wasn't my favorite. I just kept on feeling that the dealer was thinking, "why are you wasting my time with this?" I guess it just falls in the middle of things we have to do even though they aren't our favorite, liking getting shots or getting a physical, not necessarily horrible but not fun either.
Maybe we'll go back soon and get a car (used)...I guess you'll have to keep reading to find out!!
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