Poor customer service, tired sleazy car lot games. We visited this establishment twice in consecutive days interested in purchasing a used vehicle. On the first day present, we came in for a test drive and informed the sales manager and the associate helping us that we already had a loan with a low interest rate and wanted to see if they worked with a lender who could beat the rate we were given. The first red flag is that no spoke to my wife when she went into the showroom. When she was able to locate someone (an associate she told me had previously walked past her) he promptly located the car and took her for a test drive. The test drive went well, but things started to break down when we actually started talking about purchasing the vehicle. The associate asked whether we should talk about "pricing", which I agreed to. He left and went to get a "menu" for me, which was no more than a template containing supposed MONTHLY payments for their sticker price of the car (at a 6% interest rate). I told the associate that monthly payments (at an interest rate almost 3x higher than the one we already had a check for) weren't what I had in mind when he asked about pricing. I actually wanted to talk about the price of the vehicle. I did my research on the vehicle, and stated what I would have liked to paid on the vehicle, starting the negotiation process. The associate informed me that company was moving towards not negotiating on vehicles anymore and alleged the price they were selling for was over a thousand dollars under the kelly blue book (unless we have different Kelly Blue Books, this was NOT true) but that they weren't willing to lose a potential customer over a few hundred dollars. He tried to pressure us into "evaluating" our trade, but we had another appointment, so I told him to call me when he got in the next day and left. Needless to say, he never called the next day until we called the dealership with questions. When he called back, I asked a few questions. The questions were simple - 1) An in-service date of the vehicle (to determine manufacturer warranty coverage) 2) Could they do better than my interest rate my wife had already secured? 3) A negotiated price of the vehicle. 4) An estimate of our trade in value. He claimed that he was going to send me an email with a credit application and a form to give as a worst case estimate of our trade in. He never did. The workday passed, and around 7pm we tired of waiting. On our way to the dealership, I was finally able to get in contact with him (he alleged he had the wrong email address, and he sent the "forms" to us on the way to the dealership). He obviously didn't send the right thing, because I had to find the credit application myself on the website (which he could have told me earlier and I could have just gotten the application myself). The form didn't work well on a mobile device, and i wasn't able to complete it in 20 minutes before arriving to the dealership. The associate called me back when we arrived in the parking lot and told me to just complete the electronic forms before coming in and sitting down. My wife went into the dealership, while I tried completing the electronic form. After 15 minutes of not completing it (very frustrating mobile UX, but that's a separate, smaller, and more understandable issue), she pulled me into the dealership and the associate presented a paper application. I filled it out for my wife(skipping a bunch of totally unneccesary questions for a credit application) and we gave it to the associate to process. We entertained him "evaluating" our trade as well, because we were ready to buy. The sales manager stopped by to say hello, and we tell him that were are interested in working out a deal that day if the terms were right. The associate leaves with the credit application and our trade. We give him 15 minutes - because I am not into wasting time - before we decide to leave. In this 15 minutes, we got no value for our trade, no interest rate, and none of the questions i previously enumerated were answered although I asked them several hours before. We decide to leave, and ask the sales manager, where the associate is. The associate all of a sudden pops out of nowhere and proceeds go to give us back our keys saying that whomever should be almost done evaluating our trade in. My wife smartly asks to come with him. He leads us to the next building, grabs our keys out of a random empty office, and leads us to our vehicle behind that building (the garage is NOT in that building). I express my disgust with the whole process and he says that he will prompty send us an email with the interest rate. I get an email and a phone call (while i'm at an appointment at the next dealership we eventually buy from), with the proposed interest rate and evaluation for our trade. The interest rate is 5.99%!!! If you couldn't give us a better interest rate, why waste our time? Why not say "we can't do better than that" and proceed to hammer out the other issues surrounding the deal. After fussing the associate out, I get ANOTHER email saying that they never actually ran our credit and they'd get us a real interest rate in the morning when the banks were open! I obviously told them, don't bother. I know these are high pressure sales tactics are endemic to the sales process, but you should really get a read on your customers. If they are hip to it and intolerant towards that type of treatment, lets get down to business and stop pussyfooting around. I will never go back to this dealership, for anything and wouldn't suggest it for anyone.
Derrick Witherspoon
Dec 24, 2016
