Worst sales experience I've ever had. In my opinion, most obnoxious, arrogant and confrontational Finance Manager (i.e., Matt) I've ever dealt with. Last place I'll ever go to get a car, and first place I'm going to warn all my friends about.
The story: I accompanied my girlfriend to keep her company while she car shopped. We initially worked with Peter, who was a nice guy and enthusiastic. We made it clear we had a couple of months until our current car lease expired, so we were simply doing our "due diligence" at this stage, and were not ready to make a decision yet since we were still vetting different brands/models, etc. Peter started off with the usual "what can we do TONIGHT to earn your business", which my girlfriend and I simply took in stride and said "we really just want to test drive a couple of cars and see how we feel about them." So, we did the test drives and then ultimately wanted (silly us!) to know what the lease prices would be for the various cars...
This is where Matt entered the picture. And after 20+ years in business myself, I don't see how this guy still has a job. I read another yelp review before writing this where I see he made some poor girl cry. Seriously Muller? This is the guy you want representing you? In any case, he immediately reiterated the tired car salesman's refrain "what can we do TONIGHT to earn your business?" We said we don't even know which car we want yet, but we'd like an idea of the lease prices so we can compare your prices to those of the other brands we're looking at. Legitimate request, right? NOT if you're Matt, clearly. He seemed to turn immediately contentious, and argumentative, and told us "I know other dealerships may do things a little differently, but here we like to negotiate, and I still need to make a profit." Um, gee Matt, never realized you were a For-Profit business. We tried again to just get a sense of the cost of the cars: "we just want an idea of what ballpark we're in so we can start to fine-tune our preferences, decisions, etc." In other words, how can we decide if we like the car if we don't know if it's going to be in the $200/month or $500/month range? Doesn't that seem a fair request?
After debating for awhile, he finally threw out one number for a CRV that sits on the showroom floor that had been marked down to approximately $26,090. Peter had previously made a big show of it for us to show us how it had been "significantly marked down." Ok, great. So I asked how much the lease for that would be, and Matt threw out a number of $400/month? I told him I had literally, not 75 minutes earlier, looked at a car that was listed for $37,800 that would lease for around $500/month. How could a car that was listed at about $10,000 less only be around $100/month less? What kind of crap was he trying to float by us? He proceeded to argue about the brand/model of the car I had looked at, like it mattered. He also kept repeating the floor model CRV was a "$30,000 car", despite the big yellow sticker listing approx "$26,090". Why tell us it was a $30k car if they had lowered the price?? Which price is it? My gf realized the futility of dealing with someone so seemingly inept, and we simply left.
The irony was that after our initial time with Peter, we were actually very close to deciding on the CRV! We may not have done the deal that evening, but it was likely we'd be back the following weekend to follow up, and maybe even close the deal then. If they had earned our trust, we would've negotiated price LATER and given them the final right of refusal, since we actually liked Peter. But Matt came along, and convinced us to never set foot in there again, to tell all our friends what a cretin he seemed like, and how we STILL never got a price quote for either car we had looked at. Nice job Matt! You got us to leave, when you could've had a sale within, I don't know, maybe a week or so. And there are TWO of us who drive, and have our own cars. So you could've had two sales from us. Again, I think whoever allows this guy to interact with the general public should be more concerned that Matt is not driving out as much business as he's getting. I believe some people may be too scared to walk out on a "negotiation", but that doesn't mean they won't disseminate negative information about the dealership if they feel they've been forcibly handled.
Matt - in my humble opinion, based on my own success in business, I would rate you as "needs improvement.". I would recommend you stay behind your computer and let people with "softer skills" deal with the public. And, shame on you Muller Honda, for allowing him to seemingly treat customers in such a belligerent and confrontational manner. There must be a lot of qualified candidates for his position that you could replace him with in a heartbeat. If you ever do that, we might consider returning. In the meantime, your competitors thank you. At least for 2 new sales. read more