Category: Funny Things

In which Kristen and I try to get free movie tickets in exchange for test driving a car.

When Kristen and I opened our new credit union account, we noticed a coupon for two free movie tickets if you test drive a new car at any of the dealerships on a list. Now, Monsters University just came out, and Kristen has been dying to see MU since last year, and we’re between jobs, and money is tight. So we found a car that looked promising at one of the dealerships on the list. Promising because she really could use a car once she gets a job, and I haven’t taught her to drive stick yet.

So we drove off to the dealership. As our luck would have it, the car we wanted to look at was in the shop in the back of the dealership getting repairs done. “You can’t test drive it tonight,” said the salesman. “Wanna come back tomorrow?” We agreed on a time to meet him. No test drive, no tickets. Strike one.

But just around the corner was another dealership on the list! We drove down and met a salesman. We told him our price range but didn’t really like anything he had available in our range. “Come back any time. We’ll get a lot more over the weekend.” No test drive, and therefore no tickets.

Frustration was building. It was getting later, and the dealerships were going to be shutting down. “Let’s just test-drive a new car,” I said. There was a Honda dealership across the street. We compared the name to the list and drove over. We fared much better. “We just want to have a look around first.” We browsed. We looked. The salesman gave us a closer look and let us in.

We found one, finally, miles outside of our price range. “Would we be able to drive it around the parking lot?” Kristen asked. The salesman hopped in the back and Kristen drove to the office where the salesman photocopied our driver’s licenses and picked up a license plate. We weren’t really fans of that car, so we sat in a Kia and test-drove a Civic, which we kinda liked.

The time came. We went into the building. The salesman sat us down with his sales manager, who told us what the car was worth. We told them the truth, that we couldn’t afford it, but that maybe when we got jobs and had more money we might like that car. We talked about leasing for a while, but it was still obvious that we couldn’t afford it, not now.

The salesman got up to get us his card, and I handed him the coupon from the credit union. He walked off. I smiled at Kristen. Finally. Our tickets were as good as ours. He returned without the tickets.

“I was talking to my manager, and…” Things had taken a turn for the worse. He showed us the list and pointed to the name of his dealership on the paper, and then to the name of his dealership on the wall. They were not the same. We had misread the name, and they weren’t even part of the offer. Strike three.

Kristen and I walked out. I was grinning because it was all so dumb. We’d struck out three times.

We gave up, went to the theater, and paid for our own tickets.

Edit:
The next day, we went back to the first dealership and test-drove the car we’d seen online. We liked it. The salespeople were relatively high-pressure. They offered us a ridiculously low price on our potential trade, which magically increased by 150% when we told them it wouldn’t work.

Eventually we told them that we weren’t going to buy today and asked for our movie tickets. The salesman went to talk to his manager and came back with a coupon for a couple free nights at a hotel. He said they were all out of movie tickets.

After we got home, I did a little digging around on the internet. The dealership had paid $99 a year  for the right to print off an unlimited amount of those free night at a hotel coupons, and if 33 people use those in that year, they get it all back.

I ripped up the “free movie tickets with a test drive” coupon and threw it in the trash.

I knew when I took out the trash this morning that today was going to be the day that we bought a couch. I could sense it. I just had no idea how difficult that would be.

2:11 I get a text from the guy who was selling it. Kristen and I had both agreed that we wanted said couch. I tell him that we wanted to come look at it. So far, so good.

2:30 We arrive to look at the couch. It smells kinda funky, but it seems clean of all pests and clean overall, and the price is right. We tell the guy that we like it, and would he please hang onto it for us until we can stop at an ATM for cash, then go to Lowe’s and rent a pickup truck because we don’t have one or know anybody in Colorado Springs who has one. He says he’ll wait. So far, so good.

3:00 We arrive at Lowe’s, halfway across town and hop on the kiosk to rent a truck. It’s super-cool because this lady named Taylor talks to us with this videoconferencing kiosk thingy. We give her our information and agree to the terms and conditions. A guy gives us a $15 off your first rental coupon, which she applies to our account. Score! She gives us 5 minutes extra to go find the truck. …So far, so good.

3:15 We’re out in the parking lot looking for the truck. It is frickin’ nowhere to be found. The lady from Lowe’s looks very confused. She has no idea where that truck is. We drive all over the parking lot looking, and even go around back. She starts making calls.

3:40 We’ve given up on finding it, and I’m on the phone with Hertz. Apparently, someone else has rented the truck that we’ve rented, and they still have it, and that’s why it’s not there, but it’s due back by 4:00. “Do you want to reserve it for then?”

“No,” I tell him. “4:05, just to be safe.”

4:10 There is still no truck. I call Hertz again. The guy says he’ll call the people with the truck and find out why they’re not back yet, because they should be. I ask him to call me back.

4:20 “I couldn’t get ahold of them.” I tell him to make the reservation for 4:30 and if they’re not back yet, we’ll cancel.

4:30 This is getting really old. I call Hertz and cancel. I ask for a credit of some kind, in case hell freezes over and I ever decide to do this again. Then I start looking up numbers for U-Haul.

4:45 I call U-Haul. They definitely have a pickup truck, at a comparable price. “We’ll be there by 5.”

5:00 The line at U-Haul is a mile long.

5:15 It’s been 2 hours and 45 minutes. I’ve been keeping the guy up-to-date, and he agrees to wait. Finally, at

5:30, We have a truck.

5:45 We pull in front of the guy’s house, ready to pick up our couch and give him his… Dangit. We forgot to stop at an ATM. Why does this stuff seem like it only happens to me?

6:00 This is ridiculous. We found a Wells Fargo, but we pulled into the (not-marked-at-all) main lane instead of the ATM lane. We can’t turn around, we can’t back up, and the way to the ATM lane is, predictably for today, blocked. We pull into a service station with a sign that says “ATM INSIDE!” Kristen suggests I get some gas while she runs in and withdraws the money.

6:05 One space clears and I pull in to pump. On the wrong side, of course. Kristen comes out. “The ATM is broken.” Fortunately, Wells Fargo is right next door. I text the guy with the couch. “Ten more minutes isn’t a big deal.” We’ve kept him waiting half the day, so why not?

6:15 We get back to the guy’s house and load up the couch. Finally. But he doesn’t have any change whatsoever. We just give him the extra $5, and he promises to mail  us our change. We hope he does.

6:30 Back to the apartment with our couch. I return the truck. Everything’s fine. We’re both starving. Little Caesar’s is $5 for a large pizza, but Red Baron pizza is $2.99 at Safeway. After we haul the couch in and Kristen dumps half a box of baking soda on the stinky couch, we’re on that pizza like baking soda on a… ya know.

6:45 I thought the tall triangular building was Safeway. Clearly (now) it was Ace. It wasn’t a very helpful place. I drove back toward Safeway and asked Kristen why she didn’t tell me where it was. “I thought it was obvious!” Clearly it wasn’t to me. We go in through the left doors.

7:00 The line at checkout takes forever. We left our Safeway card …somewhere… and our number isn’t in the system. We snag one from the lady behind us and drive back to the apartment before something worse happens, like getting pulled over for speeding. Speaking of which, at least that didn’t happen.

7:25 The timer goes off. We ignore it, but we made it. The pizza was fine. Actually, it was pretty delicious. Thank God.

And now we have a couch. A very expensive couch, time-wise. But a couch nonetheless. Thank you for tolerating my little story.

This morning Ree left the office with a headache. She left me a list of things to buy at Lowe’s. So I asked Andrew to come with me, and we took a maintenance truck down to Lowe’s. It was a very manly truck. It was very dirty, filled with random tools (which were also dirty) and the radio was set to an 80s rock station. Also, the speedometer didn’t work. We felt very manly indeed.

We arrived at Lowe’s, that awesome place where men go shopping. We walked in like we owned the place and headed over to the lumber section. We had to get a special big blue cart to carry our lumber. I found the 2x4s and 4x4s and 4x6s and the sheets of plywood. Andrew pushed the cart by himself. He said it made him feel manly. We got a lot of wood.

We checked out and I pulled the truck around, and we loaded it up. The bed was just the right size to load up with 4×8 sheets of plywood. It was almost as though it was designed for manly men like us to load our manly truck with wood. We attached a red flag to the back of the truck, and I told Andrew that I needed to blog about this experience and how manly it was. Continue reading “man”