It has been a little over a week since my last post. Several things have happened that has kept me offline, but I am back. So, one thing that kept me away is that I bought a new 2007 Acura RDX and got a heck of a deal. But more on this in a minute…

We purchased a new car because, we have two Mini Coopers and our son (William -5 yo) has gotten too large for the back seat. So, we decided to trade in my wife’s car and get something larger.

Enter Mac Churchill Acura in Ft. Worth. Jennifer (my wife) put in an Internet query for the 2007 Acura RDX and got a great offer over the phone. So we drove over an hour to Ft. Worth to close the deal. The test drive was great, the sales person was nice, we met the Internet Representative that gave us the offer – it was going good. But then things turned sour…

• First, the dealer INSISTED on knowing what our payoff was on the Mini Cooper before we proceeded.
• Secondly, they came back with a number that was $1,000 less than the payoff and over $3,000 less than the actual Kelly Blue Book dealer trade-in value.
• Next, the price we were promised over the Internet did not include over $5,000 worth of aftermarket crap the dealer already placed on the car – and “could not remove.”
• Finally, when the “manager” came out to smooth things over he actually lectured my wife and got belligerent with us – so we walked out.

So we swore off Acura at that point and were actually considering a BMW. But Jennifer decided to give David McDavid Acura in Plano, Texas a try. In 2 hours flat, they won our business by treating us right and giving us a VERY fair trade in. They even beat the Internet deal we were offered by MacChurchill Acura – without all the extra crap tacked to the car.

• David McDavid= 1
• Mac Churchill = 0

So the lesson here and why I think we got a fair trade-in with David McDavid was that we insisted and REFUSED to give our payoff amount on the Mini Cooper and expressed at that moment to the salesperson collecting the information that we would walk if we felt the trade-in value was not equitable. The result was much better. Anyway, this was a significant event that I had to share, but now I am back to blogging about gadgets…