Gift Cards for test drives.

tl;dr Made $200 for test driving cars this weekend.

A little background. My wife and I were bored over the last Thanksgiving weekend. Since we live about a mile from our local Subaru dealer, we decided to go test drive one of their new Ascents (7-8 passenger SUV). We had recently bought a horse so we didn't have the money to buy a car at the time, so we thanked him for his time and told him we'd be back after getting the horse funds under control.

With all the talk around here about the $50 gift card from the various dealers, we decided that we could take advantage of the offer and test drive each manufacturer's version of the 7+ passenger SUV/CUV. I started by reaching out to our Subaru dealer and explained what I wanted to do. He excitedly told me to come back out so I could establish a baseline for my other test drives. I then visited every dealer's site I could think of and signed up for every offer that popped up.

When it was all said and done, I had appointments with Subaru and Nissan on Friday night with Dodge and Hyundai on Saturday. I explained to each of them that I had no intention on buying, but I was seriously investigating which care I wanted to consider when it was time to make the switch. Each dealer acted more that happy to visit with me and they each knew what I was talking about when I mentioned the gift card offer.

I test drove the Ascent at Subaru and then drove a Pathfinder and a Maurano at Nissan (the dealer wanted me to drive an Armada, but it was getting late and I knew there was no way I could ever afford a $50,000+ vehicle. The Subaru guy wasn't quite sure what to do with the gift card form, so he stuck it in our file and said he'd figure it out. The Nissan guy asked for the form at the end of our test drive then walked over to his "finance people" and dropped it off. We had two $50 gift cards in my email by 9:00 am Saturday morning.

Around 11:00 on Saturday, the wife and I headed to our local Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep/Ram dealer. The gift card offer was for driving a Ram or a Chrysler Pacifica. I explained to the dealer that I wasn't in the market for a truck or a van and he said it wasn't a problem. He asked for the form right after we got there and he dropped it off before we started talking cars. After test driving a Durango for about 20 minutes, we drove over to the Hyundai dealer. The gift card from the Dodge people arrived in my email before we made it to Hyundai.

We hopped in a Santa Fe XL and immediately decided that I didn't fit (6' 2" and a little broad in the shoulders... and belly.) The dealer wasn't too worried and we proceeded to discuss their recently announced Palisade. Before we left, he walked us over to his manager and introduced us. He told the manager that we drove a Santa Fe even though we didn't and then handed him the form. With a promise to return when they received a Palisade for us to drive, we left and went home. The Hyundai gift card arrived about 2 hours later.

All of that gibberish to say that the process was really simple and the dealers were really cool about the gift card offer. It probably helped that we were semi-serious about our intention to buy a car. We told each one that it would be another 6 months to a year before we were ready, but they were more than happy to visit with us.

I'm not going to debate the morality of taking advantage of the system, but just be honest and open with the dealers. Each dealer contacted me right after filling out the online form. I took advantage of that contact to explain exactly what I was doing and I'd suggest you do the same.

If I'm not mistaken, most of the offers expire at the end of the month and I believe they are restricted to certain dealers and locations. Your best bet is to simply log into your local dealers website and peruse their "New Inventory". If the offer is available, you should get a pop-up letting you know of the offer with a form to fill out.

Okay, sorry for the wall of text, but it was an easy and semi-rewarding experience and I was excited enough that I felt like sharing. I'm done now.

submitted by /u/IamJimmyScrambles
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/beermoney/comments/c4f670/gift_cards_for_test_drives/