Dichroic Reflections

the Mozzie goes surreal

Well, that experience was somewhat more surreal than href="http://www.ucomics.com/calvinandhobbes/">Calvin's brain or a Dali
painting. Yesterday I got a letter from the car dealer where I'd puchased the
Mozzie, or rather from a service group (what's that?) with whom they'd partnered.
The gist of the letter was that they're desperate for some makes of used cars,
would I be interested in letting them buy back mine, they were having an event at
which we could dicker (and they could try to sell me a new car) and oh by the way
go to this website and type in this PIN and I could win $20,000.

That dealership are not among my favorite people (or even my
favorite sleazy car dealer people) but that $20K was persuasive, so I brought
the letter to work today to look into it. Melting clock #1: on inspecting the
letter more closely (remember, this owuld be the letter that arrived yesterday) I
noticed that the event was actually held last week. Not a good sign, but I figured
the blame in that case could actually lie with those convenient scapegoats the US
Post Orifice. Melting clock #2: Undeterred, I dialed up the website and plugged in
my PIN, only to have it tell me I'd typed in one it didn't recognize. I have, in
fact, been known to mistype numbers, so I tried again. And again, with and without
the dashes shown in the letter. I also tried the phone number they'd given me as
an alternate, but got no recognition of the number on their very own
letter.

Melting clock #3: Too bad to lose my chance to WIN BIG! but
after all, the main purpose of the letter was to discuss buying back my car "at or
even above market value". So I gave up on winning the price of a new vehicle and
dialed the dealer, at the tollfree number listed in the letter. (It did seem a bit
odd to call a tollfree number for a local company, but it was their letter and
their dime, after all.) I reached a message saying that the number had changed,
but giving me the new one. I dutifully wrote it down, and dialed that one. I
reached a very nice man at a Toyota dealer who gave me information about the
event. He didn' sound very impressed with the promotion but loves the MR-2 Spyder
and told me they would be very interested in looking at it. He said that since
it's a convertible, it would bring a much better price in March or April, when
spring weather comes around. In retrospect, this should have been clue. He also
recommended that I try taking it to another used car dealer on a road I'd never
heard of. I asked him for more detail and he mentioned taking a Higgins road.
Well, we do have a Higley Road, so I asked if it were out there south of WIlliams
Gateway (a small airport). He said yes, past the mall, which confused me further,
since there's not much south of Willie but farms and desert. After a bit more
mutual confusion, it finally transpired that he was in Missoula, Montana! I, as
any regular reader will know, lived in the Phoenix area. Furthermore, the dealer
where I bought my car is also in the Phx area. We parted with mutual thanks, and
he went off to pass the story on to his manager.

The denouement is
that I figured I ought to tell my dealer, skanks though they are, of the
surrealism perpetrated in their name. I called up and spoke to someone in the
sales department and passed on my whole story. While I was there, I asked for a
rough idea on what the buyback price might be for my vehicle. His answer? For this
low-mileage car, 3 years old, of a model of which Toyota releases only 5000
vehicles/year, at a time when he's supposedly hurting for used cars to sell, his
price is 2/3 of what I paid less than a year ago for a car then two years
old.

Phooey.