We are buying a used car for the 1st time but due to the risks involved, we only bought new until now.
our requirements for our second vehicle were:
budget of Rs. 2.5 L [no loan due to high fees / interest]
automatic
certified
loan or card payment without any fees / surcharges
under warranty
most of these were met by first choice in thane:
we are getting a 2004 sonata gold with under 45, 000 km and 2.5% card fees waived off which is about Rs. 6 k in bank fee
since we were ready to pay with cheque as backup we now get the bonus of frequent flyer miles with our purchase also and it covers a mumbai - delhi one way ticket on jet
so the singular question most used car buyers have is did we overpay?
the hdfc insurance had an IDV of Rs. 5 L which is a good start
the online valuation on carwale was Rs. 4 L which is better
12 of the 15 sonata golds being sold in mumbai were worse off in terms of age, price, or km
the best deal was one being offered for Rs. 2.3 L on carwale in mumbai so we paid about 15% more for peace of mind and brand trust
the nice thing is that mahindra buys the used cars and shares the risk with the customer instead of selling on pure commission basis like 99% of used car dealers who take virtually zero risk and pass it all on to the buyer
1st choice will never buy any car that’s been in accidents, flood damaged, odometer rollback, rusted etc and do a 100 point check before purchase
they also take care of all RTO formalities and insurance for a complete solution
unfortunately they only offer warranties for cars below 7 years and ours was a month over but it was also priced lower
since there was no warranty, we decided to take the car to an authorised service centre for a full checkup before buying - something which ALL used car buyers should do in any case
a call to a hyundai ASC revelaled that the car was last serviced in 2008 at 28, 000 km so it must have been locally serviced after that
other dealers had mentioned a lack of spare parts so I double checked with my trusted mechanic and he confirmed that most parts could be obtained in 1-2 days which is no big deal for a 2nd car
my rule of thumb is Rs. 10/km for ’breakeven’ on your car purchase so we only have to drive it for 27, 000 km more to get our ’paisa vasool’ then we can get rid of it and upgrade to something else
in comparison our current car has 106, 000 km and still not reached breakeven for another 29, 000 km so that sonata might get there sooner than our 2006 corolla!
if all goes well, we will never need to buy a new car again and save a ton of money with certified used cars ...
it was also my dream to be able to buy a used car on my cards without fees and I reached that goal this week!
its our 1st car with a v6 engine and leather seats.
its was a bit scary to see uniformly negative reviews about 1st choice so we’ll update this one a month from now but so far so good [most of the reviews were in 2009 or earlier so things might have improved a little]
Update:
in the first few days of use, I noticed that despite ’certification’ the alignment was off - the car drifts to the right with the steering in the ’neutral’ position [no hands].
also the clock on the central console was missing and the CD player did not work [error 6]
we even tried a cd cleaner disc without any luck
needless to say the dealer is not answering his mobile now!
let’s see what the total cost of repairs comes to for my next update...
can’t understand how the 100 point certification missed these obvious issues.