Buying my first Harley
On Thursday, April 24, 2008 I went to the Harley-Davidson dealership to look into purchasing a new 2008 XL883c Sportster. Up arriving at the dealership they had a silver one and a vivid black one. I liked both and truly didn’t care the color. After sitting on it, it felt very comfortable and very well balanced and the forward mount controls fit very well. I was getting anxious.
So we fill out the paperwork (credit app etc.) and I wait for them to run everything through. Now I know my credit along with my wife’s credit is not the greatest, but anyways. HD was running a special on Sportsters – no money down and $99 for the first 24 months and then something along $150 a month for the remainder. Well, I knew that was for “well qualified buyers” so we waited. The salesman came back with some figures – $1600 down and $245 per month. I laughed, told him that was not workable. So he suggested I get a different cosigner.
I called my father that night and he said he would cosign. He called the dealership the next day and gave them all his pertinent information and they ran it through and called me back. This time, they said they would still need $1100 down but the payments would only be $180 per month because of the lower interest rate. At this point I asked about the balloon payment option (cheap payment first two years, increases the remainder deal). I asked because they do 6 credit tiers and the top 3 qualified for the balloon payment option. The finance manager says sure he can run the figures because we scored high enough to qualify for it.
A few hours later he called me at work and said they would need a “couple” hundred dollars up front and the payments would be about $120-130 per month for the first 2 years and go up to $180-190 the remainder. My wife and I were okay with that so after work off we went to the dealership. Story is they still wanted $1100 down – I told the guy I was looking to do $500 or less and he said he would see what the could do. So we waited for nearly an hour. Finally he comes back with $620 down, $125 for the first 24 months and then about $180-190 per month for the remainder of the term. We say we need a night to think about it since it is still more than we wanted to put upfront.
Saturday rolls around and we decide we’re going to go ahead and go purchase the bike, so off to the dealership we go. Anxious, excited and hopeful to get the bike, we get there to find all is not well. The finance manger met us in the bike section and asked if we were there to go ahead and get the bike. We said yes, we were. He then informs us that they could not do the deal as offered the day before. When asked why, he stated that HD Corporate had ended the balloon payment option on the Sportster line without notice, and he had already lost 2 sales that morning on the bikes I had looked at. He noted they had taken down all ads that pertained to this. I noted to him that the HD corporate web site still was offering it as of that morning on their hompage and that one of them was wrong, and he had better get it figured out and make the offer good, since it was not my fault. I also iterrated some concern over false advertisement.
He went made a few calls and said he didn’t think it would happen. At that point I asked for the direct number of the dealership owners, the number for corporate offices as well as for numbers concerning the local dealership and corporate legal teams. He says there is not need to go that far, and I explain that false advertisement is not taken lightly, which is what happened. He told me to hold on while he made some more phone calls. Another hour goes by, and he is on the phone, running around, back on the phone and so on. Finally he comes over and says they will honor the deal and make the sale. I told him that was great!
So we start signing all the paper work and basically they still needed $1100 down, but due to the mix up on the balloon program, and the fact that the day before the down was less, the dealership basically gave me $500 off the price to offset the difference between what I had been told was required for the down payment the day before and this day. So I got all my part signed, ran the papers to my father and he signed them later that week. Harley purchase finalized, now I just need to go pick it up.
Tags: buying, harley, purchase experience