I wish I could say that my experience buying a car here was all good, but that is not the case. My wife and I recently purchased from this dealership a 2006 Escalade with 115,000 miles on it. During the test drive, I noticed a slight delay in one upshift of the transmission. I mentioned it to the salesman, but he promptly reassured me that the vehicle had gone through their 50 point inspection and was in top-notch shape. So we proceeded with the buying process. As we were heading in to do the paperwork, my wife asked our salesman if the headphones and the remote for the Escalade's dvd player were with the vehicle. He said they were, and we believed him. We negotiated a bit, made a deal, and my wife took the wheel and drove it home. The next day, the transmission started slipping horribly; so we called Stirling Honda, and they told us to bring it back in. The next day, the service department called and told me that the transmission fluid was low, even though this was an item on their 50 point inspection that should have been checked. The service department agreed to flush all the old fluid from the transmission at my request. When we returned to pick up the vehicle, my wife discovered that the headphones and remote for the dvd player were not in the car. Josh, one of the managers, said to take up our case with our salesperson Tim Mcgraw. My wife called him the next day to confront him with the fact that the headphones and remote that he promised were not there. He then told her to find the price for the items, and he would reimburse her. In the meantime, the transmission started slipping again and went out completely in a matter of days. When my wife called the dealership and told them of this, they said that they could not do anything but install a wrecking yard transmission and charge a discounted labor rate, a solution that would be a band aid at best. After a week of my wife going around in circles with managers trying to get something done about it, I finally called the owner of the dealership personally and appealed to him to help with the cost of the repair since the vehicle left the lot with low transmission fluid levels under the watch of his service department. He agreed to pay a portion of what the new transmission would cost. For this I was grateful, and felt that is was fair considering there was no warranty on the vehicle. Now we return to the headphone and remote issue. The salesman told my wife multiple times that the check was in the mail, and she would receive it in a couple days. Finally, after two weeks of waiting, she called him to get to the bottom of the issue. He began to make excuses and tell her that he did not think it was fair to expect him to pay for them since it had to come out of his commission. He said that after he heard we had received partial compensation for the transmission issue, he now felt that we no longer needed compensation for the other items. My wife tried contacting a manager to resolve the issue, but he was unwilling to follow through.
So, the lessons to be learned are do not buy a used vehicle from this company with no warranty, do not count on the 50 point inspection actually being done, and do not count on salesman Tim Mcgraw to keep his word after the sale. read more
