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July 14, 2005
location, location, location
So, I just bought a car today. That's a big thing. And truthfully, I didn't want to buy one. I really liked not having a car the last few years. I liked public transportation. It gave me lots of time to read, and was so much more relaxing than driving myself. But where I will be going to school, there is no public transport, so I have to have a car.
But the dispersed locations of the transaction made it weird. I went shopping last week in Huntington. I looked around on all the used car lots and found a possibility. I took it for a test drive and liked it. So I went home and looked up reliability records on the internet and got a few insurance quotes from the internet too. Then I came to Grand Rapids, MI (where I am now). I looked around a little more here. and while I was here, I asked my dad to take the car to a shop and have a mechanic check it out. Then as that was going on I was searching for cheaper insurance. So I submitted my information to a web site that compares rates from several different insurance companies. An agent from one of these companies called me. But to give me insurance in Indiana, she had to transfer me to a different agent. This agent then found a cheap policy from yet another insurance company. So my one request went through four different companies before it was finished. and the weird part is that I don't know where any of these companies are. They could be anywhere in America, or heck, even in India for all I know.
Once i got the final approval on the insurance, I called the car dealer back and bought the car. With my credit card! Yes I bought a car in a different state with my credit card. (I do have the money to pay off the cost of the car, I just needed to pay today and this was easiest, plus I get money back from the credit card...) I'll get it in a few days when I get back to my folks place.
Plus I was doing this all on a cell phone as I roamed all over Grand Rapids running errands and visiting friends.
This all seemed so easy, yet so odd. I'm hundreds of miles from the dealer, and the insurance company (maybe). I guess my point is that location isn't important any more. From anywhere we can get ahold of anyone anywhere and business has been retooled to work with that. This is convenient, but is this good?
Oh, in case you were wondering, I got a 2000 Hyundai Elantra. It's efficient.
Posted by neal on July 14, 2005 07:12 AM
Comments
Congratulations! I hope you will enjoy your new car:)
Maybe you should upload a picture.
Posted by: Balázs on July 14, 2005 05:39 PM
I'll add a picture when I have one. I'm still in a different state than the car.
Posted by: Neal Ericsson on July 15, 2005 01:52 PM