I would rather have all of my skin removed with a potato peeler and be immersed in bleach for three weeks while Celine Dion blares in the background than buy a car from these arrogant snobs.
First off, I will give Palace credit for scouring the nation for low-mileage vehicles and putting a roof over their hoods. However, this is where my praise ends. Corvette Palace is an elitist, pompous organization that is very much the opposite of customer-oriented.
I went in to look at a specific car, which I had researched beforehand. I knew the mileage of the car, the asking price, and the installed options, which should clearly differentiate me from some jackass who just wants to take one of their cars for a test drive, ride it hard, and put it away wet. Rather, I wanted to find out a little more about the atomic orange C6 with 8,500 miles, to see if it looked well-taken-care-of, and to see what the GPS interface looked like.
After I arrived, I spent several minutes wandering around the showroom alone before someone came to help me. No big deal - I generally don't want to be mauled by an overzealous car salesman as soon as I open the door anyway, so I let that slide.
Once a salesman approached me, I asked if the car I was looking at was the one with X miles and Y options to confirm that it was the same ride I saw online and to convey that I was serious in my search for a car. When I inquired about the GPS, however, things took an odd turn. The salesman retrieved the keys, jumped in, and let me look over his shoulder while he gave a 12-second demo of the navigation.
"Okay, can I get in the car so that I can see the screen?" I asked.
"No, you'll run the battery down."
What?? I laughed nervously, thinking he was making a bad joke. He just stared blankly at me. After a brief awkward moment, I realized he was serious. I explained that I had been looking for a C6 for over a month, and that this one fit the description of what I wanted and that it was in my target price range, and that I just wanted to see the nav interface because I wasn't sure if that was a feature that I wanted or not.
"Do you want to buy a car or a radio?" he smugly replied.
Frustrated, I decided that I'd had enough. "Okay, then I guess I'm going to leave now," I muttered.
As I got to the door, I thought I should at least find out what jackass salesman was treating me so rudely so that I had the option of alerting management that he was driving off business. I turned around, and politely mentioned that I hadn't caught his name, without any implication in my speech that I doubted his title.
"My name is William, and I'm the owner," he presumptuously snapped at me, mid-sentence.
"Okay, William, there's really no need to be a dick to your customers."
Yeah, maybe I crossed a line there, but I didn't use any of the words that I wanted to call him, and he had definitely earned the title 'dick.' He proceeded to tell me that I could leave now and kept repeating "buh-bye" over and over as he gave me a four-fingered mitten-wave that you would use when parting with a newborn.
Never before in my life have I had a company tell me - to my face, nonetheless - that they didn't want my business. This is their idea of customer service??! I have actually heard other accounts of customers going through similar treatment, and I would absolutely discourage ANYONE from doing business with them.
***UPDATE: Corvette Palace has "retired from the Corvette world to pursue other business interests that have presented new and exciting challenges." I can only assume that these new challenges include unloading all of their inventory in Mexico, trying to figure out how acting like complete assholes didn't make for a good business model, and carefully hand crafting the perfect hot dogs next door at Weinerschnitzel. read more