Recently my wife and I bought a used car from Stellar Auto. I am completely skeptical about car salespeople and used car sale people especially! We had just had a horrible experience buying and then returning a used car from a dealership and I was still stinging from that when my husband found the "perfect" car at Stellar. We live two hours away, so it was a big deal for us to take the time to go see this car.
When we got there, even though we had made an appointment, the car was not there. Warning bells were going off for me. However, it turns out that the car had a leak in the rear oil seal and they were trying to get it fixed prior to our arrival. Very noble in my opinion. We went to breakfast, they got the car out of the shop, still unrepaired, so we could drive it. It was great, except for a small shake on idle. Stellar offered to get the original repair done, then drive the car to our own mechanic in Burbank to have him look at it, while we returned home. Then if our mechanic gave the green light, we could come back and pick it up. We agreed.
Since this was Memorial Day weekend it took a couple of days for this all to happen, but we went back down the following Thursday. Our mechanic said the car looked great. We still noticed a slight shake in the car and Vlad offered us a 30-day warranty on the transmission so we could drive the car home and get it checked by an actual transmission shop. We thought that was a good compromise and agreed. Turned out the shake was due to the motor mounts and now that the car is being driven regularly the shake has diminished greatly.
We purchased the car and gave Vlad a ride up to the CarMax dealership near our home because we were going right past it. I was driving the "new to us" car with Vlad and my wife was behind them. Suddenly car died and I needed to pull the car over to the emergency lane! Vlad was shocked. Even though they didn't have to do it, he agreed to let us tow the car back to our town and have our mechanics work on it, and he would pay to have it fixed. It turned out it was a bad fuel pump, which none of the other mechanics could have found, and since the car had such low mileage, it was a bit of an unusual repair. Vlad was true to his word and paid for the repair. I was very impressed with the care and attentiveness Vlad placed on us as customers and on the car, both before and just after the sale. Clearly you can't expect them to fix everything that happens to a car you buy after you take it home, but this was so odd that it just died. And, as I said, he didn't have to pay to fix it, but he did! I would not hesitate to highly recommend Stellar Auto to anyone! read more