I waited a few days after my transaction with this dealership to write a review. I was hoping to accomplish 2 things with this.
1. I was hoping that I could be a little more impartial.
2. I wanted to give the dealer a chance to call me back to fix things.
I want to give a little background on myself before I write this. I have been an amazingly loyal Subaru customer for a very, long time. I have personally owned six Subarus since 2005. Not because they are bad vehicles and they break down, but because I am indecisive. I love all of them. I have bought, sold and even wrecked one. I probably can't even count on my fingers the amount of cars that have been purchased in my immediate family. All of this, because of me. I have been a huge "Net Promoter" for Subaru since I was 12 years old playing my first game of Gran Turismo.
I live a very long distance from the dealership, and I was also drawn to the low prices. I cautioned the saleswoman that I will likely have lots of questions, and will want to see lots of documentation on the car.
Everything started to go awry whenever I asked for the "Initial Inspection Record" that the car should have come in with whenever went through service the first time. This particular vehicle had been in a light accident, so my main concern was that the car could be correctly aligned. The saleswoman assured me that the car had been through service and as per her sales manager the vehicle had the alignment checked during this service.
She sent me the paperwork that they had on the car and then left for the day. I was asked to speak with Jeff and Scott from this point forward, but continued to be bounced around between the three of them.
The paperwork that they sent me looked nothing like any "inspection" I had ever seen before, it was merely an invoice that the in-house shop had charged them to fix various things that had gone awry with the car. I was looking for an actual "inspection" because on the invoice, the dealership was definitely charged for one. Tire tread depth, Hoses and Clamps, Power steering Fluid level, Brake Fluid level, Oil level - these are the things that I needed to know.
When I asked for anything like this, you would think that I was speaking a foreign language. I finally pulled the carfax for the car on my own to see what the previous owners had done for maintenance while the car was under warranty. The maintenance was spotty at best, so I asked the dealer if they had any other service records, which they did not. I know that there is a proprietary system which dealers can pull - I've heard it called "Subaru Star?" and it often times doesn't report certain things to CarFax, I asked the saleswoman about this over email and there was no offer to pull these records for me. So one of my many contacts in the Subaru community for help. He was able to lookup the car and see that there was nothing to worry about, so I went ahead and agreed to buy the car. I was still somewhat leery, but It was a great price and I didn't want anyone else to swoop in and snag it.
I booked a non-refundable plane ticket and paid a deposit on the car. I made a direct request asking for the alignment sheet on a Wednesday. I became increasingly frustrated as the week went on and finally Saturday morning sent an email stating that I was going to start looking for other cars since I had not received the requested information in a reasonable amount of time.
Not even 20 minutes after sending this email - I received a response with the alignment sheet. However, was not put at ease. The alignment was 'in spec' but it was not a 'good' alignment by any means. The toe was less than .01 off from being out of spec in several corners. For those that are not technically inclined toe being out of spec is what eats tires -quick-. I put in a call to the dealership and asked to speak with the tech who did the alignment check. His response was that he was asked to just do the check and that unless the used car manager wanted to pay for an alignment I was out of luck. My frustration with the tech was, he had setup the car on the alignment machine - to adjust the toe on the rear of the car is 2 lock nuts and then 2 adjustments to the tie rods. In his eyes, because it would pass an alignment check it was "good enough".
After this conversation I had decided against buying the car, I called Scott to get my deposit back. His response was "No problem" in the most condescending tone anyone has ever spoken to me, and he hung up the phone without even trying to figure out what had happened.
So, at this point I am shopping for another car - but not another Subaru. Audi A3/A4, Lexus CT, Volvo XC70, Volvo V60, TSX wagon etc. Subaru is not unique to the AWD wagon/crossover market anymore. Net promoter to Detractor in one interaction with this dealership.
TLDR - Buy here if you like the price, can handle being patronized and made to feel like the dealer is doing you a favor by selling you a car. read more