Buy Used Car

I got inspiration to do a blog on a guide to buying a used car. I'm no expert by any mean, but I did learn a lot from my recent adventure. I've learned that if you have the time, patience is the key to finding the good car at good price. If you don't have the time and do not spend the effort, you probably won't get good result, although it's possible you might just get lucky.

There are 2 different ways to buy the car: from private party or dealer. Everyone says to go with private party because it's cheaper, but they don't consider that private parties are also harder to get hold of. I don't know how many times I emailed or called someone about the car and 3 days later I would get a response.

That's one thing that's nice about dealer. He's always there, always open and ready and willing to sell the car. They will even go past the closing hour if they need to. The dealer also puts in the time to make the care look nice and saleable which is not always the case with private party. I looked at one Honda Civic Si from a Korean guy. He was really pushy, had a nasty gash in the back of the bumper. He referred to the gash as a "scratch" but it was more than a scratch, it looked like an accident.

The Korean guy didn't bother to fix the car before selling. It's something the dealer would definitely have done because it took that Korean guy at least a month to sell his car. He was trying to go for a quick sale on a very low price but he had trouble soliciting real offers. It didn't help that the clutch was largely worn down. I could feel it on the test drive, and I got the feeling the car was either driven hard, or there was an issue with the tranny.

When I look at a car I try to get a mental picture of what the previous owner did with it. I look at the Carfax history as well as the condition of the car. I know the previous owner of my car let it get quite dirty, as I could find dirt and dust in nooks and crannies. But I also know the previous owner didn't drive the car much, which was one reason I found it attractive.

I used Kelley Blue book and NADA as well as forums from the Honda Civic Si to get an accurate picture of what my car was worth. I figured $15k was what I was looking for and I got it. I feel fortunate now because the Japan earthquakes have caused used car values to go up slightly. The dealer didn't like haggling, which is weird for a dealer, because that's the nature of their job. They had priced the car kind of low so it would sell quickly but I think they were being nice to me cause the next Civic Si was being sold for considerably more.

I used Patelco credit Union, however, I learned that it's not a bad thing to use the dealers financing. A lot of the small credit unions people like to use, actually are part of the dealer's network so it's entirely possible you could use the dealer financing and STILL wind up using the credit union you were already pre-approved with! Of course that wasn't the case with me, since my Credit Union was based in San Francisco and my dealer was clear up in Seattle.

Given my experience with Patelco I would have stood pat on the monthly payments (rates) but I would have gone with the dealer financing because dealing with Patelco was a pain in the ass. I called them to find out if everything was going smoothly with the purchase and they said they could not find my application so they had me fill out a new one. Lost my application! What the hell? It turned out the girl had not extended the "search" date to January when I first filled out the application stupid girl.

Also, the person who I was working with, was taking a vacation that particular week, and apparently, she was the only person that would do anything since that's how they do things at Patelco. Come again? Someone takes a vacation so I have to wait until they come back to finalize my purchase??? Eventually, the stupid girl, took charge since the lady on vacation didn't bother to follow up with my purchase, even after she got back from vacation.

I finally wound up finishing everything. I didn't send in any proof of insurance or any of the paperworks that explained that I would have to send in, in order to finalize the purchase. I guess this was the only positive part of the experience with Patelco, although I think working with the dealer financing would have been much more streamlined and easier. And my payments would be the same if not lower.