Well, I wasted about 5 hours and a good bit of aggravation thanks to John Eagle Honda. I am in the process of moving and so my time this week is particularly valuable to me.
To save time I contacted 5 local Honda dealers via email and after some negotiations worked out a firm deal with this dealership for a particular vehicle. It was agreed that I would just drop by to pick out the color and pay. I went there, drove it with the salesman, and sat down to complete the paperwork. No financing, cash transaction, was supposed to be smooth & quick.
The salesman, Thomas Thorna (sp?) was nice enough at first. Then, as we were filling paperwork, he stepped outside and swapped out the vehicle with another one from the lot, same color/options/etc., but with 500 miles!
The deal we had made was for a vehicle with 20 miles on it, that I had just driven, but after he swapped out the vehicles without evening asking me, he came back and said that the one we had agreed on had some extra delivery fee in it, and that the manager said they couldn't do the deal on it. Needless to say, I was pretty annoyed.
Tom then brought me another "identical" vehicle with a dent in the middle of the hood. I was starting to get really annoyed at this point because they'd wasted so much of my time and were killing a deal that was already done before I had even driven over there. Tom didn't seem to care, and instead threw up his arms, shouted "I guess I can't sell you a vehicle" or some such, ignored my repeated requests for the name of whatever manager had instructed him to swap cars after we'd already agreed on one, turned his back on me and stormed back into the dealership, still shouting at me from the doorway.
Not to be deterred, I went inside, and after being told by a number of people that they "didn't know" who their regional manager was, finally received a visit from their fleet manager, a Mr. Murray (sp?). He was courteous enough, which cooled me down a bit, but still unwilling to fix things (this took another 30 min or so).
Even worse, when I mentioned how rude Tom had been, he actually defended Tom's behavior, saying "our salesmen work hard for these deals, and hate to see them fall apart," which gave me the feeling this is no unusual occurrence. I suppose if berating a customer counts as "work" then Tom actually did work pretty hard.
When I got home and told a friend about it, he mentioned to me that he's also had a bad experience with this dealership before (wish I had checked with him previously). Anyway, while car salesmen have a pretty well-deserved reputation overall... this place took it to a whole new level.
Dealerships like this one reflect poorly not only on their "profession" but also on the entire Honda brand.
My advice... go elsewhere.
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