Cars and trucks and things that can be bought only with demand drafts

Car buying in the United States is generally an unpleasant experience at best.  Slimy salespeople, haggling, paperwork, lemons... Who knows what lurks in the shadows of the showroom.  

In India, it seems, it's much the same.  I wish I had counted the number of hours I spent in Ahmed's office.  Ahmed is the sales manager at the dealer where we bought our car, which means he's very busy: people in his office, using his computer, calling on the phone, calling on his mobile, etc.  This did not contribute to a speedy conclusion to the process.  Though a cup of tea here and there was rather nice, and, astonishingly, it seems that while Indians love to negotiate, haggling over car prices is minimal.  

Here was the problem: imagine trying to buy a car in the States with no checks and no credit cards.  How would you do it?  The typical way here is what they call a "demand draft", or DD, which is essentially a cashier's check.  But how do you get the money for the cashier's check if you have no account at the bank and they won't take your checks?  The answer?  Open an account at the bank.  After a week of trying to get a single credit card transaction to go through (with no success), I was done with Capital One.  

There are really two stories worth telling.  

1. On the first night when we tried to buy the car, expecting to use some cash and two different credit cards, one of the credit cards decided to set off a fraud alert, despite the fact that we had called the company just six weeks earlier to tell them we'd be in India for two years.  Anyway, in the wrangling with their own bank over all this, the bank claimed there was something wrong with the dealer's credit card machine, and suggested they try a different machine.  So, unbeknownst to me, in a fit of creative madness, Ahmed absconded with my credit card and sent it to his company's service shop the next town over!  I found out about 10 minutes later, and Ahmed was very proud of himself for his moment of service-oriented genius.  I was obviously less than thrilled.  After a moment pondering the situation, and after deciding that recalling the cards would do no good (it was, after all, a worthwhile effort, if poorly executed), I announced to Ahmed that I was going to follow the cards.  So off we went to Secunderabad to follow the cards, at 9:00 at night.  Fun.  But, sadly, to no avail.  (Yes, we're watching the cards closely, and no, nothing fraudulent has showed up.)

2.  Several days later, I was making one of my daily calls to Capital One, trying to get them to cancel this transaction that was destined to spend its four day life in a state of purgatory, approved by my bank, but never to be seen by the dealer's.  But of course the customer can't just up and cancel a credit card transaction without the merchant's approval.  So I would have to get Ahmed to talk to Capital One, whence the logistical nightmare ensued.  Ahmed, being a lowly corporate lackey in a country where people don't really completely trust each other, cannot call internationally from his office.  I, as a lowly government service, cannot call internationally from my mobile phone.  Collect calls are an unknown quantity here in India.  So how to get Ahmed on the phone with Capital One?  Then I learned a fascinating tidbit that I thought would be the golden key, the silver bullet: the Capital One call center was in Bombay.  We were all in India!  The call would be domestic!  Outstanding, I thought.  But wait: the call center, a mere 500 or so miles away, was devoid of domestic phone lines.  They could only call the States.  It was at this point that I curled up on the floor and wept.  

So what happened?  I opened an Indian bank account, wired money from the US, and had a DD of my very own, all within about three days - less time than it took for the stinking credit card transaction to cancel.  So now we have the car, a lovely red Mahindra Xylo E6 (no ski rack), which is destined to be dented and dinged as soon as it leaves the garage.  But it is ours, and William can have his very own seat.  

The postscript: The dealer, with a tiny garage underground in the middle of a major commercial district, delivers cars sans gas, but with a coupon to buy it.  But on the way home, a massive Congress party rally starring Sonia Gandhi herself had traffic snarled city-wide, blocking our way to the gas station to which the dealer normally sends customers post-purchase.  So we ran out of gas on the way home.  Luckily the driver pumped enough air into the engine (no, I have no idea what that means or why he did it) to get us to a gas station, and we made it home.