Do your homework

One of our cars was in an accident recently. The accident was deemed our fault and the repairs to our vehicle were going to be upwards of four thousand dollars. That was not in our budget this week. It was quickly decided that we needed to get another vehicle as soon as possible.

We found someone who was willing to sell us a car that they had for about half of what the repairs on our current car would cost. We were assured that the car was in great condition. It needed refrigerant for the air conditioner but the brakes and tires were brand new.We agreed to buy this car and went through all the paperwork involved including paying up front for the first half of the agreed amount.

The car drove okay. There was an issue with the locks that was a bit annoying but nothing major. The next day we took the car to our mechanic and after spending some time going over the car he gave us a call. He informed us that the air conditioner was not out of refrigerant. The reason it did not work properly was because there was an oil leak that had saturated most of the engine compartment and badly damaged the air compressor. The brakes had not been recently replaced. And not only were the tires not new but they were mismatched. Two of them in fact were not even the right tires for the car.
 It would be about $600 just to make it safe to drive and $2100 to fix everything that was wrong with it. The bottom line was that fixing the "new" car was going to cost us more than buying it had.

The person that sold us the car felt that he was doing us a favor because he was selling us the car for less than he actually bought it for. But he had been trying to sell the car through a used car lot and did not have accurate information about what had and had not been done to the car. He was just repeating to us the false things that the person at the car dealership had told him. We spent a good deal of time communicating with him today about this and have come up with an acceptable alternative that it looks like is going to work for all parties involved.

We are going to get a different car that this person has available. He is going to take the second car to his mechanic to make sure there is nothing wrong with it. Then we are going to bring this second car to our mechanic and have him look it over as well. After that we will take the second car home and continue through with the rest of the original payment arrangement.

There are a lot more details than what has been presented here. This is the short version. But several things were definitely learned today and a thing or two that we already knew were reinforced. The chiefest among them was the mistake we made in taking on faith the words of someone else without doing our own independent research. We should never have paid a cent until after we had taken the car to our mechanic. And after taking the car to our mechanic we would have simply laughed and mentioned that there was no way on earth we were going to pay $1900 for a car that needed $2100 in work done to it when the whole reason we were buying a new car was that we could not afford to pay $4000 to fix the car we already had. In hindsight, I find it both ironic and perfect that both situations totaled up to the same dollar amount.

Seriously. Always do your research. Take what others say with a grain of salt. Use it as a starting point and then look for evidence that both supports and invalidates what you have been told. Only then can you make a truly informed decision. Know ahead of time just what it is that you are getting yourself involved in before you agree to anything in writing or any outlay of cash.