DanD
Member
- Joined
- May 20, 2018
- Messages
- 30
- Reaction score
- 19
- Points
- 8
TLDR:
I signed up for TrueCar and was contacted immediately by a rep at Sunset Kia in Auburn. We exchanged details about what I'm interested in, and what I have for trade. They had a car in stock that I liked, so I went to take a look. Brandon communicated over phone and text and was very responsive.
First Visit to the Dealer w/ initial Negotiations
I met with Brandon initially - and he was pretty easy to talk to. We started out talking price on my trade in - which quickly turned into bringing the manager over, his name was Will. Basically, they couldn't get the number I wanted for trade-in and despite Will calling around to a few wholesalers it just wasn't going to happen. So we moved on to negotiating price on the Stinger. Since I was a TrueCar customer, the price was basically the invoice price. After an hour of talking about the cars, and calling whole salers - I decided to head home - I'm not going to buy it today. Will suggested I take the car home, over night, show the wife, and commute in it. Which since my wife hadn't actually seen the car yet, seemed like a great idea. They let me lock my C6 Corvette (trade vehicle) in their secured photo booth too.
I drove the car home, showed the wife - and talked to my friend who had expressed interest in buying my Corvette. Since he was able to buy it at the price I wanted - I decided to buy the Stinger.
Second Visit to the Dealer w/ Final Negotiations
I showed up at the dealer with the Kia the next day. And told Will I'd like to buy the car. We spent about 15 seconds finalizing the negotiations (since we'd basically done all the leg work yesterday). Then Will told me there's a bit of a backup in their finance department, but I'm like 4th or 5th in line.
This is where things get kind of shady...
I was fine waiting and initially, it seemed like it wouldn't be too long of a wait. After about 30 minutes, Brandon showed up and we did the vehicle overview checklist routine which bought them some more time. After about an hour, Will suggested I take their 2017 Corvette Grand Sport for a test drive - since I was talking about it - which I did. When I returned, Will made it sound like I was up soon... Their Finance Guy (Larry) came out and offered to sell me a Warranty... I declined because Kia already has a great warranty - and he left. (This seemed odd to me... Kia's warranty is great, why would they be selling some 3rd party warranty? That just made it seems like either Kia's warranty wasn't that great, or they're trying to milk me... either way it felt shady)
Financing
Finally, after about 2.25 hours, I get in the office with the Finance guy. I'm putting half down, financing the rest. Paperwork took about 15 minutes, total. There was a form about Identity Theft protection that I get coverage for apparently. Larry tried to tell me "Sign here, puts you in the system" but the form CLEARLY says "I waive my rights and coverage". I read it like 3 times, even read it out loud and it was definitely waiving my coverage. So I refused to sign the hard copy - and Larry stopped trying to convince me it "just puts me in the system for protection." Then we moved on to the Digital signatures - all the same documents. Once again this ID Theft waiver form appeared, and I declined to waive my coverage - and Larry reached over and put a line through the signature box in my cell and his cell. I was a little baffled by this - assuming the computer wouldn't let him click next unless the box had something in it. I ended up not making him go back and change the digital one, I have a hard copy without any signature - and I've reached out to the dealer to confirm I did not sign. But I *really* didn't like this Larry guy putting *anything* in the signature box at all....
Their Finance dept seemed shady. Larry tried to sell me unnecessary warranty crap, made me wait over 2.5 hours, tried to mislead me on a waiver and put a mark in a signature box that was definitely not my signature.
I've been reaching out to them to get confirmation on the unsigned document - as well as to share my experience.
I also submitted the feedback to Kia on all of this too...
Seriously... the dealer was fine - all except for the shady finance dept... which is too bad...
- Phone & Text communication with their Sales dept (Brandon) was fast and responsive.
- Negotiations on vehicle price and trade-ins were straight forward and felt honest and fair.
- Finance Guy (Larry) tried to sell me on some "Other" warranty - which seemed a bit shady - I declined.
- Finance dept ended up taking 2.5 hours to get me in their office... (VERY slow)
- Finance dept only took 15 minutes once in - so why was I waiting 2.5 hours?
- Finance dept tried to mislead me on a waiver of coverage - SHADY AF!
- Finance dept put a squiggle mark in a "signature box" that I declined to sign - More SHADY AF
- Overall - Sales was great - Finance was SHADY - I'd say "Good" overall... but could be better...
- Pay attention when you get to finance... they're shifty
I signed up for TrueCar and was contacted immediately by a rep at Sunset Kia in Auburn. We exchanged details about what I'm interested in, and what I have for trade. They had a car in stock that I liked, so I went to take a look. Brandon communicated over phone and text and was very responsive.
First Visit to the Dealer w/ initial Negotiations
I met with Brandon initially - and he was pretty easy to talk to. We started out talking price on my trade in - which quickly turned into bringing the manager over, his name was Will. Basically, they couldn't get the number I wanted for trade-in and despite Will calling around to a few wholesalers it just wasn't going to happen. So we moved on to negotiating price on the Stinger. Since I was a TrueCar customer, the price was basically the invoice price. After an hour of talking about the cars, and calling whole salers - I decided to head home - I'm not going to buy it today. Will suggested I take the car home, over night, show the wife, and commute in it. Which since my wife hadn't actually seen the car yet, seemed like a great idea. They let me lock my C6 Corvette (trade vehicle) in their secured photo booth too.
I drove the car home, showed the wife - and talked to my friend who had expressed interest in buying my Corvette. Since he was able to buy it at the price I wanted - I decided to buy the Stinger.
Second Visit to the Dealer w/ Final Negotiations
I showed up at the dealer with the Kia the next day. And told Will I'd like to buy the car. We spent about 15 seconds finalizing the negotiations (since we'd basically done all the leg work yesterday). Then Will told me there's a bit of a backup in their finance department, but I'm like 4th or 5th in line.
This is where things get kind of shady...
I was fine waiting and initially, it seemed like it wouldn't be too long of a wait. After about 30 minutes, Brandon showed up and we did the vehicle overview checklist routine which bought them some more time. After about an hour, Will suggested I take their 2017 Corvette Grand Sport for a test drive - since I was talking about it - which I did. When I returned, Will made it sound like I was up soon... Their Finance Guy (Larry) came out and offered to sell me a Warranty... I declined because Kia already has a great warranty - and he left. (This seemed odd to me... Kia's warranty is great, why would they be selling some 3rd party warranty? That just made it seems like either Kia's warranty wasn't that great, or they're trying to milk me... either way it felt shady)
Financing
Finally, after about 2.25 hours, I get in the office with the Finance guy. I'm putting half down, financing the rest. Paperwork took about 15 minutes, total. There was a form about Identity Theft protection that I get coverage for apparently. Larry tried to tell me "Sign here, puts you in the system" but the form CLEARLY says "I waive my rights and coverage". I read it like 3 times, even read it out loud and it was definitely waiving my coverage. So I refused to sign the hard copy - and Larry stopped trying to convince me it "just puts me in the system for protection." Then we moved on to the Digital signatures - all the same documents. Once again this ID Theft waiver form appeared, and I declined to waive my coverage - and Larry reached over and put a line through the signature box in my cell and his cell. I was a little baffled by this - assuming the computer wouldn't let him click next unless the box had something in it. I ended up not making him go back and change the digital one, I have a hard copy without any signature - and I've reached out to the dealer to confirm I did not sign. But I *really* didn't like this Larry guy putting *anything* in the signature box at all....
Their Finance dept seemed shady. Larry tried to sell me unnecessary warranty crap, made me wait over 2.5 hours, tried to mislead me on a waiver and put a mark in a signature box that was definitely not my signature.
I've been reaching out to them to get confirmation on the unsigned document - as well as to share my experience.
I also submitted the feedback to Kia on all of this too...
Seriously... the dealer was fine - all except for the shady finance dept... which is too bad...
