I recently bought a car here, super awesome car. No complaints there. My sales guy Louis was very nice and helpful, as was Erik, the F&I guy who I finally closed the deal with. I've since been back to pick up some accessories and the parts guy and the service people I interacted with were all very nice. The free wash scratched up the piano black plastic trim on the b pillar, which sucks on a week old car. But whatever, that's not a huge deal; I'll find a way to fix it and it's not even factored into my rating. The dealership is well appointed enough given its age and location. I'm not huge on the notion that a car dealership has to be decked out like a spa or a country club, a la Lexus, so if that's you, probably go to Lexus.
The reason I'm giving this franchise two stars, and the reason I probably won't bring the car there for service; most any Ford dealership can handle Lincoln products without issue, is because of an unfortunate experience I had during the F&I process and how it was handled or rather not handled by top management/ownership.
I completed a credit application through Lincoln Automotive Financial Services ( aka Ford Motor Credit) website prior to coming in to close my deal. My sales guy and I were texting back and forth in the days leading up to delivery, and I told him that I had completed the application. He told me that they couldn't find it in their system and I let him know that it was out there, that the LAFS website gave instructions to provide the approval ID number to any dealership to allow them to pull it up. I sent him that ID.
When I arrived at the dealership, he told me they still could not find it. I forwarded him the approval email, watched him print it out and hand it to the F&I guy. After a few minutes, they came back with a clipboard and told me that I needed to verify all of the info in the original application and collect a signature to finalize it. I told them that in no uncertain terms did I went them opening a new duplicate application on me. I don't really know how much of an impact one more inquiry would have on my credit, but why take any hit at all for no reason? Also I knew what I put in the original application and I trusted my own input over someone re-entering my data from a paper form. Honestly, it doesn't even matter what my reasons were. I made it clear that I didn't want a new application and they assured me multiple times that what I was signing was for the original one.
Anyway, the deal didn't close that night for other reasons, we failed to agree to terms. But when I got home the credit thing was still bothering me. I reached out to Ford Motor Credit and much to my chagrin, they had two applications in their system from me. I was furious. You do not take someone's authorization under false pretenses. You just don't. I expect a bit of shady business at car dealerships, hazards of the industry. But what they did is fraud; legally, ethically, however you want to look at it. It's fraud. And it's way over the line as far as I'm concerned. I called and emailed to the President of the dealership shortly thereafter and received no response. I eventually got a call back from the sales manager who issued a cursory apology on his way to asking me what it would take to get me to buy the car. He explained that they couldn't figure out how to get my application from Lincoln because I had neglected to tag the dealership and that it would have taken a phone call to retrieve it.
Okay, but if your F&I guy doesn't know how the manufacturer's financing website works, and he should know that if you're letting him do that job, then they should have come back to me, explained the situation, and given me the choice as to whether I wanted them to open a new application. Or more likely I could have called the finance company myself right then and it would have been settled on the spot.
Regardless of the sale, I have every expectation that if that sort of behavior is brought to the attention of top management that they would and should care about it. I ended up buying the car, mostly because I really like it and I was tired of shopping around. But I never heard so much as a peep from the President/owner in terms of an I'm sorry and I actually am not good with this type of stuff going down. Not cool at all. This was a bad situation that could have been made at least somewhat better by earnest remorse separated from any concern as to whether the car was sold.
Caveat emptor. If you go here, make sure you read everything, double check everything, and don't trust anything, because nobody has your back in the head office. So if the employees decide they want some commission more than they want to do the right thing, nobody is going to stop them. I still like my sales guy, but I wouldn't go in again at an informational disadvantage and have to rely on the integrity of the business, such as for repairs. I'd have to be crazy after what happened. read more