I'm not a fan of car shopping. Few people are. I am also not a fan of writing reviews, but I always try to be fair. What I thought would be a decent palatable experience turned into a waste of 5+ hours, a lack of proactivity, and just left a bad taste in my mouth. I do not think it was their actual intent, and I most certainly don't fault the team for trying. There is however much room for making this a smoother experience and to not waste 5 hours of my time or have my family also waste theirs. I'll go into detail here with the good, the bad, and the ugly. Shoutout to Alex for trying his best while thrust into an awkward situation via the manager Ahmad who seems overwhelmed at best or seems to enjoy empty words of flattery.
The good: upon initially being contacted, they were very responsive, and Ahmad got in touch with me quickly. I never got to meet him in person though I was supposed to. I did meet Alex, and he was genuinely - patient, straightforward, let me crawl around the car with a flashlight photographing DOT codes on the tires like a lunatic and never once made me feel strange about it, printed the Carfax without being asked twice, and threw in a car wash for my family member, which was a kind thing to do and which nobody made him do. None of what follows is his fault. He deserves better than the operation around him.
The bad: we drove two and a half hours round trip to look at one specific car. When I got there the front headlight did not work, and the charging cable - which is not an accessory on a plug-in hybrid model car like this one, it is how the car does the thing it was built to do - was missing. Neither of these was mentioned to me beforehand. Both of them are a two-minute phone call. There is something to be said about transparency, which is important. I also want to be clear that I never agreed to a final price, I floated a number, and we ended up stopping by because a family member insisted on taking a look and giving this dealership a shot. I am sorry we wasted our time like this.
The ugly: I arrived at 11:10 on Friday, July 24th, for a scheduled appointment with the manager.
At 11:45am his colleague arrived. He was kind, though I was curt and irritated by the fact that the manager Ahmad was aware someone would be stopping by to see this car (originally it was supposed to be just my family member, but I ended up tagging along). An hour later at 12:43 I was told he was twenty minutes out. Then it was forty-five more minutes. At 1:30, with still nobody there, I said I was leaving, and only then did I get an explanation for any of it, because apparently Ahmad got a flat tire. That sucks, we've all been there, but I wonder, why couldn't you be proactive about it? I never met him. Two hours and twenty-five minutes in the lot, with my family member, who came along because she wanted to give these people a shot. This isn't even including the driving.
I sent a written offer Sunday evening. Nothing. When I followed up Monday afternoon I was told the car had already been sold by their Riverside store - which is to say it was gone, and nobody thought to mention that either.
Every single update I received over four days came because I asked for it. Not one of them arrived on its own: not the delay, not the offer, not the car.
To be fair, the flat tire was real (I checked). That is not the complaint. The complaint is that a phone exists, and the way they do business here is to cover themselves after something happens.
Bottom line: if you're considering a car here, ask for Alex. And before you drive any real distance for a specific car, get it in writing that the car is still there and that whoever you are meeting will be too. I told you at the beginning of this review I'm not a fan of car shopping. I am not a fan of car shopping with this dealership especially.