Be very careful dealing with this place. Their basic business model is to buy used cars at auction for low prices and sell them at low prices. You might get lucky and get a good deal here, but you have to accept there's also a chance you'll get a bad surprise. A number of negative observations and feelings caused me to walk away despite the seductive prices. I will explain my experience to point out some things to watch out for.
I saw this dealer listed a car I was interested, a 2018 Subaru Impreza with low mileage, on both TrueCar and Craigslist. The contact info was different on each and the price was unsurprisingly lower on Craiglist. I could see the dealer info in the photos so I called them directly. Many fishy things happened that left me uneasy. First off, their Google listing is filled with obviously, blatantly fake 5 star reviews. Having spoken to them, based on their English it seemed likely they wrote these poorly-written fake reviews.
When I arrived at their lot, the salesman Angel claimed that someone else, some kind of broker who calls himself Faz on Craigslist, had posted this car on Craiglist at a lower price and would tack on fees to ultimately give the dealer their full asking price. Nonetheless they said they would sell it to me at that lower price. This all sounded very fishy to me.
The car looked to be in generally excellent condition. Before driving I looked under the hood and found a piece of foam dislodged, which I found strange but not too disconcerting - later I discovered why. I test drove the car and everything felt fine mechanically, however one turn signal was out and the miles to empty reading was clearly way off. To me these were perhaps signs of funky electrical issues, however bulbs do burn out and miles to empty gauges can be funky, especially when cars are not being driven and filled up normally. So a second level of bad sign, but nothing necessarily deal breaking on a car with years of factory warranty left.
Back at their lot, I checked under the hood after test driving and everything seemed fine, no signs of leaking fluids or bad smells. They have a lift at their garage, so I had them put it up for me to look underneath - DO NOT BUY A CAR FROM THEM WITHOUT DOING THIS! I found that the car had been in some kind of impact that had broken the connections on the plastic shield under the engine, slightly dented the exhaust and exhaust manifold, and scraped parts of the suspension. They actually seemed caught off guard and I genuinely think they had not seen this damage before - otherwise they probably wouldn't have put it up for me to inspect. None of this damage was terribly serious and could have occurred if the car just came off a truck badly or ran something over. However, this explained the dislodged foam in the engine compartment. Were the minor electrical issues related to this? If I brought the car into Subaru for a warranty repair, would they see that damage and claim that caused the issue and deny my warranty claim? Would the dealer themselves deny the 90 day dealer warranty required by NY state law?
I was serious about the car so I ran the Carfax myself before going there and found that it had a clean record, but it did tell me it was a fleet vehicle, probably a rental car. I pressed them for more information on where they got the car from, which is information legitimate dealers will provide, but they would not say. They would only admit that they got it at auction, probably some kind of fleet auction, and they said they actually don't have the ability to fully inspect the cars before bidding.
In sum, they claimed they themselves take their chances buying these cars, and so will you if you choose to buy from them. I won't say they're bad guys, fake reviews aside, but I chose not to buy from them despite the attractive price and I wouldn't recommend them to any friend of mine. read more