42 years old and I have been buying/selling vehicles for a while now... You often read reviews of disgruntled buyers complaining about Dealer X not budging on price, "hiding" fees, running up rates, etc and I (personally) have never had a car buying experience that disappointed me to the level of having to write this review. While I 100% understand that selling cars is a business, I do not understand how an organization (a highly successful one) would "sell" their reputation for a few bucks.
Started about two weeks ago, I saw a used vehicle for sale at the Lifted Trucks (Hurst, TX) location. Reached out and spoke to a salesman and we did the typical back and forth, trying to negotiate a price that both sides were comfortable with and fair. Yesterday, I was able to engage with one of the Sales Managers and was ecstatic that we were able to come to a verbal agreement on the sale of the vehicle. I was so excited.
We had the verbal (over the phone) agreement, and I was promptly texted and e-mailed the invoice. We were in the middle of me getting them my credit card info, so I can place a deposit to hold the vehicle.
Not 10 minutes passed, and I got a text, "Someone just came in and put a deposit on the car, sorry. We will let you know if the deal falls through". I have been in the military for 24 years now and I have never seen such a blatant disregard for customer service. To tarnish your brand reputation, your credibility and customer base loyalty for a few extra bucks blows my mind. When I asked how such a thing could happen, I got "salesman don't talk to each other, so we didn't know someone else was interested/had a deposit"... I said, ok, I guess I can kind of see that, but the Sales Manager knew? At some point it would have had to raise to that level, to which why wasn't it stopped or flagged?
Acknowledge I am only 1 customer and I'm sure Lifted Trucks doesn't care, but I will absolutely NEVER do business with them in the future. Additionally, anyone who ever asks my opinion of the organization will get my story and my recommendation to NOT do business with them, PERIOD.
No phone call from anyone to explain or apologize, no conversation in how they can help me find a similar vehicle, NOTHING! No care, they made the sale and made money... Money can NOT always be the end all, be all...
As a leader and manager of a rather large organization myself, I understand that things happen... But the lack of internal communication (to this level) is something I hope the Lifted Trucks leadership team deep dives... Additionally I hope they can find areas of improvement in their processes, to hopefully not have something like this happen in the future. This was/is absolutely a failure, and I hope they can reinforce that making a few extra bucks on a sale, should NOT be a core vale of their business practices. Thanks for taking the time to all who read through this, I hope it helps with your car buying experience. read more