2022 Accord EX-L 1.5T, I quit bidding and took the Buy Now price

marco, fresno. i run irrigation crews out to madera and visalia, so i am in the car four hours some days and standing in a ditch the rest of them. miles add up fast and i wanted something with warranty left on it.

the 2011 camry i had was at 198,000 and still running fine when i sold it to my nephew in july for 3,200. no drama, i just did not want to be the guy whose car dies in dinuba at six in the evening.

2022 accord EX-L, the 1.5 turbo, 31,400 miles, modern steel gray, sitting at a lender yard in fontana. i got it through M&A Auto Sales in june. the part that is different from eric's camry thread on this board is that i never bid on it. the m&a listing had a buy now price on it, 24,200, and i took it the morning i saw it.

why: i had already put sealed bids on two cars and lost both. a 2021 k5 in may and an accord sport in june that i wanted more than i want to admit. you never find out what beat you. after the second one my wife said if you see one you can live with at a price you can live with, stop playing games with it. so i called at eight in the morning and it was done by lunch.

what that certainty cost me: probably 800 to 1,200. a sealed bid on that car might have closed somewhere under 23,000, and buy now is the number they will take today, not the number the market would have found. i knew that going in. i would do it again in june when i need a car in two weeks and probably not in february when i do not.

money, california version. 24,200 for the car, no buyer's premium and nothing added at the end. fontana to fresno is 215 miles so delivery was free, the first thousand are. use tax at 8.35 percent in fresno county was 2,020.70 and registration came to 476 at the dmv, so 26,696.70 on the road. it came on a truck with four other cars nine days after i wired the money.

what was wrong with it: a star chip in the glass down where the passenger wiper parks. it is in none of the 40 photos, and standing in front of the car i would have walked right past it too unless somebody told me to look there. 65 dollars to fill at a shop on blackstone and it has not grown since june. the 30 days were still open and i did not use them, because a chip in the glass of a three year old car is a windshield and not a misrepresentation. i would rather keep that phone call in my pocket for something that matters.

dipstick smells like oil. i have checked more than once because i read the same threads you did before i bought it. the dilution thing was mostly short trips in cold weather and i have neither of those. a january morning in fresno is not a january morning in spokane.

book says cvt fluid at 90,000 normal and 60,000 severe. i am severe by any honest reading, so 60, and my shop says 45 and they are going to win that argument because they always do.

one more thing since two people have emailed me about it. there is no haggling anywhere in this. the number is the number, nothing gets added at the end, and the invoice from m&a had two lines on it, the car and a zero for the delivery. i have walked out of three dealerships in my life over the second page of a worksheet and there was no second page here.

kay, four weeks late, sorry. the buy now number sits on the listing until somebody takes it. i was told that once a sealed bid comes in above the buy now the button goes away, which never happened to me. it is a wire, no card, no deposit to hold anything, and the wire was the slowest part of the week because my credit union makes me come in person for anything over 5,000.

36,400 miles now, about 5,000 of them mine since june. 33.8 average by the receipts on the visalia and madera runs, which is close to what the logger guessed, and 29 and change around town with the air on all summer.

what has gone wrong since june: the windshield chip and nothing else. first oil change was 79 at the honda store because i wanted the first one on their paper. the original tires have maybe 15,000 left in them and i am going to need them before the rain starts.

what i would do differently: ask for a straight on photo of the windshield with the sun behind it. that is the whole list. everything else about buying it at mandaautollc.com i would do the same way, including paying the buy now number instead of sitting through a third sealed bid i was going to lose.