I recently bought a car from a dealership that wasn’t my favorite dealership.
Let me explain.
For the past couple of months, Allyson and I have been shopping for a new vehicle. Now, I don’t know about you, but buying a car is not exactly my idea of a good time. In fact, I would probably rank it somewhere between getting a root canal and sitting through a particularly painful production of a show I love. And considering how much I love theatre, that’s saying something.
We weren't in a hurry. We were refinancing our home, paying down debt, and trying to make some responsible financial decisions for our family. With Maggie out on her mission and Max hot on her heels, every dollar matters, and we wanted to be intentional about how we spent ours. One of the things we started looking at was my truck, which we'd been paying through the nose for. We wondered whether trading it in for something different might actually put us in a better financial position. After all, the goal wasn't necessarily to buy a new car. It was to find a smarter way to spend our money.
So, naturally, I did what I do best. I researched the living daylights out of everything.
By the time we started visiting dealerships, I was armed with questions and enough information to be either a very informed customer or a complete pain in the ass. Possibly both.
Back in July, Allyson and I walked into Berge Mazda Volkswagen and met a woman named Kami.
And that’s where this story really begins.
Kami has one of those radiant smiles that seems to light up the room, and her personality matches it. She’s down-to-earth, relatable, funny, and genuinely kind. Not the rehearsed, customer-service kind of nice that disappears the moment someone realizes you aren’t buying anything. I mean, she’s the real deal.
Her official title is Customer Care Director, and let me tell you, that woman has earned every letter of it. Frankly, she ought to start a side hustle teaching the rest of the world how to do it. I’d sign a few people up myself. HA!
We explained our situation. We weren’t purchasing a vehicle that day. We were gathering information, test-driving different options, and figuring out what made the most financial sense for our family.
She listened.
Then she introduced us to her son, Jake, who also works at the dealership as a product specialist.
Over the next hour or so, we talked about cars, of course, but we also talked about teaching, theatre, family, college, careers, and life. We drove three or four different vehicles, asked a ridiculous number of questions, and never once felt like we were inconveniencing anyone.
There was no pressure. No manipulation. No desperate attempt to get us to sign something before leaving the building.
They simply helped us.
That might not sound particularly remarkable, but after some of our experiences elsewhere, it certainly felt that way.
At other dealerships, we were rushed, talked down to, or treated as though we were wasting someone’s time because we weren’t ready to buy immediately.
I understand that salespeople have jobs to do. I understand that commissions matter and businesses need to make money. But surely we haven’t reached a point where treating someone with basic dignity depends on whether they’re prepared to hand over their credit card.
Have we?
Meanwhile, Kami and Jake continued checking in with us over the following weeks and months. They remembered our situation. They asked how things were going. They understood why we needed to wait.
And here’s where it gets interesting.
Jake offered advice about our existing truck, including some products we’d purchased when we originally financed it that might be eligible for cancellation and refunds. He encouraged me to do a little digging and ask some questions I never would have thought to ask.
Those conversations uncovered more than $4,500 we could potentially get back.
FOUR. THOUSAND. FIVE. HUNDRED. DOLLARS.
From advice given by a guy who had absolutely no guarantee that we’d ever buy a car from him.
By October, Jon, another member of the Berge team, had joined the conversation and worked incredibly hard to put together a competitive offer. Throughout the process, all three were transparent, responsive, patient, and generous with their time. They helped us understand our options and gave us the information we needed to make a good decision.
And ultimately, we bought a Kia.
I KNOW!
Here’s the thing. We LIKED the Mazda. We really did. But we LOVED the Kia. It was the vehicle we’d wanted, and once the financial pieces finally came together, we decided to go with the car that made us happiest.
Which meant I had to write what can only be described as a Dear John letter to three people I had genuinely come to adore.
I felt awful.
These people had invested months of time, energy, expertise, and genuine care into helping us make a significant financial decision. Their efforts had even helped us negotiate a better deal elsewhere.
And they didn’t get the sale.
The next morning, I woke up to a response from Kami. She congratulated us on our new car, thanked us for allowing her team to be part of the process, and told us that knowing they’d made a positive impact on our experience was exactly what they strive for.
Seriously. These people!
Even after learning that we’d purchased a vehicle somewhere else, she was still gracious, encouraging, and genuinely happy for us.
And that, my friends, is what customer care ought to look like.
But here’s what I’ve been thinking about ever since.
Maybe they got something else.
Because I will recommend Kami, Jake, and Jon to absolutely anyone looking for a Mazda or Volkswagen. Happily. Enthusiastically. Without hesitation. If you’re shopping for a vehicle here in the Phoenix area, do yourself a favor and visit Berge Mazda Volkswagen. Ask for Kami, Jake, or Jon, and tell them I sent you. I can’t promise you’ll find the perfect car, but I can tell you that our experience with these three extraordinary people was unlike anything we encountered elsewhere.
They earned that recommendation through the way they treated us long before there was ever a possibility of a transaction.
They made us feel like we mattered.
And I think that’s something we could all stand to remember.
I’ve spent much of my professional life working in theatre and education, two environments where relationships matter enormously. I’ve learned that people don’t always remember every lesson, every rehearsal note, or every conversation. But they often remember whether they felt respected, encouraged, dismissed, embarrassed, appreciated, or invisible. I’ve been on both sides of that equation, and I’d like to believe those experiences have made me more intentional about how I treat others, although I certainly don’t get it right every time.
Kami, Jake, and Jon demonstrated that you can pursue excellence and treat people with compassion at the same time. They were honest, professional, and exceptionally good at their jobs. They didn’t promise us things they couldn’t deliver or pressure us into decisions we weren’t ready to make. They simply treated us with dignity and respect.
And that brings me to the real point of this whole experience.
Treat people like they matter. Because they do.
If you’re in the business of helping people, then HELP. PEOPLE. And even if you’re not, we can all stand to do a little better. Whether we’re teaching a class, directing a production, managing employees, raising children, or simply interacting with the people we encounter throughout the day, we have opportunities to make someone feel valued.
Being a good person shouldn’t depend on what we stand to gain from it. Kindness isn’t a transaction, and compassion shouldn’t come with an expectation of repayment. We ought to be kind, thoughtful, and generous with one another simply because it’s the right thing to do.
Sometimes that kindness finds its way back to us through gratitude, friendship, or an unexpected opportunity. That’s reciprocity, and it’s a beautiful thing. But it should be a consequence of kindness, never the motivation behind it.
And kindness doesn’t have to be complicated. Sometimes it’s remembering someone’s name, answering one more question, or listening without looking at your phone. Occasionally, it’s taking a few extra minutes to help someone understand something that matters to them.
And once in a while, it’s helping a couple potentially save thousands of dollars on a car, even though they might eventually buy their next vehicle somewhere else.
What has stayed with me most from this entire experience are the people who made us feel like we mattered along the way.
Kami, Jake, and Jon didn’t sell us a car.
But they earned an advocate.
And I hope that, in some small way, this story returns a little of the kindness they so freely gave us.
Oh, and by the way, the whole reason we started this adventure in the first place? We're now saving nearly $200 a month on our car payment.
Mission accomplished.
See what I did there?
