DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME HERE. Where do I start? I went with my daughter to buy a used car at the Fairfield location in August.
1. She made an appointment with a salesperson to see a specific vehicle. Although she called the afternoon before to make sure the vehicle she was interested in was still there, and was told it WAS STILL THERE, we showed up for the appointment to be told it had sold, “conveniently,” the night before.
2. We showed up for the appointment and the person she had the appointment with (Seif) didn’t recall he had an appointment with her.
3. I purchased the car since I live in Ohio. However, she gave her out of state license for the test drive. (This is important later.)
4. Salesman told us that a certified preowned vehicle will always cost 2-4K more than the price listed on the website since they have to pay to certify it (I don’t know if this is true, but if so, that’s shady.)
5. She test drove two vehicles and liked one enough for me to buy it. It smelled strongly of cigarettes and had trash in the center console. When she decided to buy it, on the condition the stink was mitigated, the salesman assured her multiple times the car would be detailed (worth 400$!! according to him) and the smell would be gone, the trash, taken care of.
6. We go through the entire process. The invoice shows 1500 of fees and add ons she didn’t consent to and didn’t want. After heavy sales talk to convince her she needed the three add ons, she was able to finally convince the salesman to take them off. We had to do this for about twenty minutes as he kept insisting she might want one? Two? If she had to pick any of the three, which would she want? Finally, he said he'd throw in some kind of brake pulse thing for “free” since it was already on the car. (Again, she had not agreed to any of this.) Finally, he removes the 1500 extra costs. At this point, we’ve been there for hours. She didn’t even negotiate the sticker price at this point. She signs off on the agreed price. (Actually this happens back and forth a few times as each time he disappears to “ask his manager” if it’s ok that he sells the car for such a low price, aka, the literal sticker price without unrequested additional things)
7. Someone else comes back and tells her that “someone” messed up the tax amount, based off her out of state license and not Ohio. Huh? If she’s not allowed to buy a car using an out of state license, and we are literally in Ohio, how are you charging a different state’s tax? So we go back and forth on that, since of course the Ohio state tax is oh, twice the amount as what they told her would be, which put the car beyond what we’d decided to spend. The finance guy says, kind of snarky “I can’t do anything about the taxes.” Well he did, in fact, end up doing something about the taxes in that he agreed to cover half of the difference between what they told her it would be vs. what it actually was. So, took about 500 off the price. AGAIN, not off the sticker price of the car, just the tax amount, they covered some of that.
8. Somewhere along the way, salesman strong arms my daughter into giving him a five star google review, right then and there (asks me too, but I don’t have google on my phone, so I said I’d have to do it later.) The pressure is HIGH. She gave the review but has since deleted it after all the other rigamarole and the car still stinking when we got it home, etc.
9. We go through the whole purchase process. Throughout, we’re told by several people that the title will arrive in 2-3 weeks, which is important, since she’s got to leave the state again for a temporary job. (The title didn’t show up until more than 4 weeks later.)
10. We were finally able to get the car. It still reeked of cigarettes. The trash was still in the console, which we didn’t see until we got home. It was clearly NOT detailed. In retrospect, we shouldn’t have taken it that way, but after hours and hours…at least four!!! We were numbed, starving, and wanted to get the hell out of there.
We came in with an issue with one of our tires leaking air after taking a bad hit from a sudden shoulder drop off. After inspecting the wheel, they informed us it would "require" a total replacement, involving a $1500 repair and a 7 day turnover to order the OEM parts. Problem was, we were only in town for a few days over the weekend and had to drive back to Texas. Despite knowing us, they still sold us the "doom and gloom" scenario and said the car was undriveable.
My common sense finally kicked in and realized that this was a wheel repair job and didn't require a total replacement. Besides the minor inconvenience of filling up air every couple of hundred miles, our car drove back over 1000 miles with minimal wear to our tire tread or damage to our alignment. They still charged us $100 for this inspection and took up our entire evening doing so (plus the anxiety of figuring out how to get home). But hey, they filled our tire back up with air so there is that.
This repair shop either doesn't know what they're doing, or they do and are purposefully misleading just to make a sale. Either way, I wouldn't trust them with your car. I've been to plenty of shops that in this scenario would do the right thing and tell the customer they need a repair that they didn't offer and even go further recommending a local shop they trusted. Go elsewhere for your repair needs.