Disclaimer: I have not bought a vehicle through UCP, my review is exclusively about my experience…read morein consigning my car through them. For all I know, their car sales are great and their auto shop does a great job. No personal experience there.
I was contacted over facebook about getting help selling my car; something that, by nature, I was pretty wary of. I went and met with an employee, we talked it over, I felt good about it, and shortly after brought my car to be sold by them (our consignment arrangement was that they had to sell the car above a price we agreed to [to pay off my remaining loan, etc.] and whatever north of that they were able to sell the car for they could keep; free car, no fees, easy money for them).
They had it sold within two weeks, and everything seemed to be panning out great...until the sale was funded by the buyer's bank and I wasn't paid for it. For a month.
I literally followed up 6 different times, drove back down to the dealership on three separate occasions, sat around an empty lobby waiting for the head of sales (?) Rob Mayo to come around and cut me a check, and was ducked, dodged and avoided the whole time. The money had been paid to the dealership by the buyer's bank, but the check to me for my car wasn't written for a month, despite my texts and calls and visits. According to Rob (the first time I went in and hounded them for a check), apparently the profit margins on what they sold my car for weren't great for them...and if my sales background tells me anything, that means that the whole situation with getting me compensated was thrust onto the coldest part of the backburner.
Imagine the frustration: All I knew is that for an entire month my car was missing, I had a dealership I just learned of saying they "sold" it, they weren't paying me for it but kept saying they're meaning to "get around to it", and I had an outstanding loan with my bank with payments due for a car I didn't have.
Not a good place to be in, but fortunately I was able to diligently follow up, hunt down, and badger the dealership management until I got results...but not before another car payment that I owed to my bank came up, putting me another several hundred dollars in the hole for a car I no longer owned. Seriously?
Look, I'd imagine that the people who do consignment deals do them because they don't have the time to list their car, deal with test drives, negotiate with buyers, etc. It's a convenience thing: You sell my car for me, we split the profits. And so having to hound Utah Car Pros several times a week for a month about getting paid the thousands and thousands of dollars they had for me but weren't paying was completely counterintuitive to why I consigned with them in the first place. It was frustrating, it felt extremely sketchy, and it was the furthest thing from a smooth process.
I was told that an employee left and it left them in a bad spot for a bit, but that's just business, you know? People leave, and having your whole organization grind to a halt and leaving people unpaid is not acceptable. Obviously I won't consign another vehicle through Utah Car Pros, but now it's got me questioning the legitimacy of everything else under their roof.
Learn from my experience, take it with a grain of salt if you must. Just keep track of your paperwork if you do decide to consign through them, keep your numbers straight, and don't think that everything's going to magically take care of itself.
