If you are considering purchasing a vehicle from Hawthorne Chevrolet and, by extension, using the financing company, GM Financial, that they use for there leases, I would highly recommend thinking twice about your purchase and reading this honest review before making your decision.
Because of the experience that I had with these businesses, I would advise that you look elsewhere for your next vehicle. There are several dealerships in the area that I have used in the past that never would have displayed the same level of unprofessionalism and ineptitude that I experienced with Chevy and GM in the past few weeks.
I feel that it is my responsibility as a customer to follow up after my recent purchase and warn others of the experience that I have had. Hopefully this review will rescue some readers from making a terrible mistake.
Recently, I was leaving for work early in the morning only to discover that my car was missing from my driveway. Naturally, as any reasonable person would, I thought that my car had been stolen in the night.
Having to abruptly take off from work to figure out what happened, I called the local police only to discover that my car was repossessed due to delinquent payments. This, of course, came as quite a shock as I created an account with GM Financial, just as my sales representative at Hawthorne Chevy instructed me to, and scheduled for automatic payments to be withdrawn from my account each month.
I have never missed a payment on anything in my life and would never allow my car to be repossessed - especially considering the monthly payment is by far the lowest one that I have.
The strange part was that I never once received any sort of indication that my payments were not being made. I continued to receive advertisements from Hawthorne Chevy and GM, but not one message about my actual account.
Trying to get into contact with anyone from GM or Hawthorne Chevy was nearly impossible that day. I was disconnected at least six times while waiting on hold and when I finally did get a representative on the phone, and I explained my situation, I was treated like a delinquent. The tone that the representatives took was dehumanizing and belittling.
After wiring the alleged missed payments (including $800.00 in towing and holding fees) to GM, I eventually got on the phone with the manager of the reinstatement department. She, much like the representatives at Hawthorne Chevy, suggested that GM went through a "systems change" in early 2018 that resulted in several other complaints much like the one that I was reporting. She claimed that "many people" who created GM accounts or set up payment plans during the transitional period from my area experienced issues with their payments being cancelled and the ending dates of automatic payment pays being "depopulated" on the online payment calendars within customer accounts.
I later learned that my mother (who also purchased a car from the same dealership as me only a few weeks earlier) experienced the same issue. She signed up for automatic payments in early 2018 and received a late notice via phone claiming that her payment for her first month was not submitted. She immediately created another account online and re-enrolled in automatic payments. I, on the other hand, never received any sort of notification via mail, e-mail, phone, or otherwise that there was any issue with my account. Because the monthly payment was so low, I never realized that they were not being withdrawn.
I explained my concerns to reinstatement manager about my credit score and how repossession could impact me in the long term. Given to totality of my situation, she told me that I had every right to be upset and should certainly file a dispute with the Credit Bureau and reach out to the Better Business Bureau. I asked her if GM could simply submit a form verifying that it was an error on their part, but she advised me that I should file complaints.
She explained that due to the string of errors that were taking place, late payments and other glitches were not being reported at all, but GM had once again (conveniently) began reporting credit issues that week that I was having the issue. She told me to repeatedly check my credit score to see if GM submitted paperwork that would negatively impact my credit for the next 2 months before filing a dispute claim.
It was extremely frustrating that Chevy blamed GM for their negligence with the account and GM blamed Chevy for not providing them with a completed list of contact IDs to reach me through. Neither side took ownership of this problem and left me to waste days upon days trying to sort it out.
By writing this review, I don't mean to hurt any specific employee's reputations, but I feel that it is important to warn others of this experience. Chevy might be running a nice sale that looks appealing, but it's just not worth it. Do yourself the favor and look elsewhere. read more