Some of these tactics sound familiar. In 2005, I got my heart set on a Mazda3 hatchback, my first new car. There was a Mazda dealership litterally 3 blocks from my house in California, so naturally I tried to buy one there. Test drove, told them what I wanted, and while they didn't literally lock me in the office, I was blocked in while they tried to pressure me into buying a car with more options than I wanted. Finally got out of there, and a week or two later, they called and said "we have your care here for you, come on down." I go over and there is the care with options (none) and color I wanted, but it already had 450 miles on it and was scratched. Apparently they'd driven it a couple hundred miles and not even bothered to wash it, much less try to buff the scratches out. I asked how much they were going to discount this car, since it was clearly used. They gave me a guilt trip about how it only had all those miles because they were bringing it here like I asked. Umm, no you didn't check with me on this. Take your scratched up used car and F-off. A couple days later the manager called and gave me this half-assed apology and I told him there was no way he'd be getting my business.
Last March, when I bought my Juke, I had what I view as good fortune of having a fairly new, and non-too-bright salesman. Of course he wanted to run my credit, and I said no; we'll negotiate the out the door price first. My credit will not be a problem. They neglected to tell me about the 36 month, 0% interest financing that was splashed on the front page of Nissan's website. I go in, they keep trying to do that 4-square bullshit, and I'm on my phone's calculator punching numbers and going... that doesn't make any sense Randy. Tell me the price of the actual car. He says he needs to know how much my max payment can be. I say "the car price, plus tax and title, minus my trade. Divide that by 36." Well, I need a max number. I say, "fine, I need my payment to be under $1,000 a month." He shakes his head and capitulates. Then they try to drive down the value of my trade in by saying it needed new tires, when I'd put brand new tires on about 3 months before. At least go for something more believable. It was actually kind of funny, because I didn't need to buy the car, and was 100% prepared to walk out the door (had the spare key to my car in my pocket). In fact, I started to do just that and the price came down another $1,000. This is why I go by myself when buying cars; makes it easier to unilaterally say F-no and walk out, and there's no playing the spouses against each other.