Immigrant Learns Hard Lesson in Land of Opportunists

Ahmed Elzarie is new to this country. He has been here for two years, mostly working long shifts at the pizza parlor, making a down payment on the American dream.

Life in America, until recently, has been pretty straightforward for Ahmed. You work, you save, you inch ahead. Ahmed, who is single and 33, likes it here very much.

He emigrated from Egypt, he says, “simply because here is the land of opportunity.” He puts his hand to his chest when he says that last part. Of course. The obvious. Only an American would ask such a question as this.

But now Ahmed knows that maybe he should start questioning the obvious too. Because he just bought a new car.

“It’s a severe lesson that I have learned,” Ahmed says, eyes lowered, head shaking from side to side, “a very, very hard lesson to learn. The lesson is, unfortunately, ‘Don’t trust everybody you meet and everything that they tell you.’ ”

What happened was this. Ahmed saw a newspaper ad in late January for Toyota of Garden Grove. The price for a new car looked cheap, like something he could afford. His current car, an ’81 Corolla, the only he had ever owned, had seen better days. He bought it used from a friend.

It didn’t occur to Ahmed to shop around before buying new.

“Any product, the price, in my opinion, it wouldn’t vary from place to place,” he says. “I went to a Toyota dealership because it is an official place. I thought the prices would be the same. Just like at one Lucky’s or another, the same. This is my idea for shopping for a car.”

When Ahmed arrived at the dealership, the price in the newspaper ad, it turned out, was not available. So Ahmed looked around to see, perhaps, what else he could afford. He told the salesman he could pay no more than $200 a month.

After a quick tour around the lot, the salesman took him into a room. He told him the Tercel, the bottom of the Toyota line, was the car for him. After some haggling over the price of his trade-in, Ahmed signed on the dotted line.

He bought a ’91 Toyota Tercel--”the last one in stock”--not for the sticker price of $8,728, but for $95 more .

And the interest rate the dealership gave him was 21.2%, more than double the going rates. The salesman pointed out that Ahmed had no credit record at all.

So after putting $4,000 down, Ahmed would be paying $225.96 each month, for three years. Total cost of his nearly new car, what with the accessories, document preparation charge and tax: $12,134.56.

And, driving out of Toyota of Garden Grove, Ahmed was happy as a clam.

“It’s absolutely wonderful, this feeling,” he says. “It’s a gorgeous moment, maybe the best in my life. I am starting to live what I always dream of. I was starting. I want to have a house; I hope, a family. You understand, it’s one of the dreams of my life.”

Then Ahmed went to meet some friends in Huntington Beach, all of them American-born. One of them, who works at a credit union, asked Ahmed about his deal. The guy told him that he had been had.

“I almost died,” Ahmed says. He felt like a fool.

Ahmed is college-educated, with a degree in English literature from Egypt’s University of Assuit. He felt that he should have known, but how? He just assumed that prices were fixed and if not, that he would have been told. In Egypt, yes, of course , he knows how to bargain. But here?

Innocence lost feels like a slug in the gut.

On the advice of the credit union employee, Ahmed went to his bank to see about the possibility of refinancing his loan. They don’t do car loans, they said. Then he called the dealership, repeatedly, over the course of two weeks. There would be no renegotiation of deals.

Ahmed says the sales manager asked him how old he was. “I told him I was 33,” Ahmed recalls. “Then he said, ‘Listen to me. Here’s some advice for you. Go look in the mirror. Do you have a mirror? Look in the mirror and say, ‘I am an adult.’ Tell yourself that.’ ”

Ahmed hung up the phone. “ ‘Thank you for the language,’ I said.”

I called Toyota of Garden Grove, too. The sales manager wouldn’t give me his name, although he says he was not the one who spoke to Ahmed. He says that the dealership only made a profit of $102 on this customer. He repeats this figure when I ask.

He suggests that maybe Ahmed could go to another bank to refinance his loan of 21.2%, that maybe he could get something, say, at 10 or 11%.

“That’s the price you have to pay when you are new to the country,” the sales manager says. “I know. We deal with a lot of minorities, from all different backgrounds. It’s easier if they can pay cash for the car. . . .

“I can’t disagree that the loan rate would be hard to swallow if that would be me,” the man says.

Ahmed is still swallowing hard himself, over a big lump. He tells me that now he can understand “that it’s a business thing.”

“They try to get the most money for their products,” he says. “Myself, I do not think the way that they do.”

At the pizza parlor where he works, Ahmed says he steers tourists away from ordering too much. Extra sauce, that’s free.

“We are not animals, to keep biting each other all the time, to live like a forest animal,” he says. “We are human beings. We are higher level creatures.”

Oh, and Ahmed still likes his car. He says it runs well.

“But, you know, something has changed,” he says. “Here, inside.” Ahmed’s hand goes again to his heart.