Car Purchase

The master plan was to fly from Sydney to Brisbane, stay there a bit and then get a car, drive along the east coast to Cairns and fly to Darwin. That was after Diana reluctantly agreed to it. She finds roads boring. After arriving in Sydney, I introduced the idea of us going to Brisbane by train because A) there is a train connection and B) we can take our time, do some stops along the way, especially at the Gold Coast. Diana thinks that trains are even more boring than cars, so she agreed to go to Brisbane by car. Victory!

We looked at different options and decided to buy from a car dealer instead of a private person for more reliability. Ha!

Lady in red.

We looked up some cars on the internets, we chose one and then we took the train and the bus to the car dealer which almost took an hour. He made a joke about car dealers being scammers and ruining the reputation of the profession and I laughed. We noticed that one of the break lights didn't work and a the cover of a rear light had a hole in it. We told the guy that we will only take the car if those two things are repaired and we wanted that written on the contract. He told us, there is no need to write down the repair of the break light because he is only allowed to sell the car if is "road worthy" according to Australian law and that is included. So he said he is only writing down about the hole in the casing as we was writing about the break light. I didn't check. That was a mistake.

The car could be ready by tomorrow, he said. He told him, we can wait a few more days if needed. So we agreed on Monday next week.

On Tuesday he called us to tell us to pick it up the next day.

We went there and the hole in the case of the light was still there. After telling his colleague who was the only one there that we won't pay for the car if the light isn't repaired, he told us that we should pay on the spot, take it and they will repair the light later. We refused. He told us the repair of the light would take weeks. We didn't care. He threatened us that he will give us our deposit back and will sell the car to someone else. We agreed. He forgot about he just said immediately, he gave up and told us they will repair the light and they would call us. Diana spoke:

- Don't do that again! We wasted three hours coming here.

- You could have paid for the car.

Diana just looked at him and that was it for the day. The next day they called us to tell us that the job that needs a couple of weeks to get done was miraclously done in a day. The day after we got there, paid for the car, picked it up and went home but not before the original guy tried to make us pay for the repair of the light. First we nervously laughed because we didn't know what he was on about, then we refused, then he told us he tried to by friendly and we are "mean". When we tried to speak, he interrupted us.

I will probably name the dealership when the guarantee is up and I am sure I don't need them any more. Come back in three months!

On the road.

Until then we are travelling.