JUMP DOWN TO THE ********* IF YOU WANT…
JUMP DOWN TO THE ********* IF YOU WANT TO GET TO THE MOST IMPORTANT PART
For 12 optimistic hours we thought our experience here was going to be a positive one, until the tides turned and the stereotypical car selling shysters showed their true colors. We understand sales is a hard business. All we ever require is honesty. We expect a certain amount of sales pressure and antics between the sales rep and the floor managers, and all of that was actually quite tolerable as we know to just take it with a grain of salt. It was our first trip to that dealership, first time seeing this particular vehicle (there or anywhere), and are looking to buy when we found the right car, not just browsing. For a variety of reasons (exhaustion, hunger, credit is frozen, no checkbook, etc. etc.) we were not ready to close a deal on a vehicle at 10:00pm (after hours). We had no idea we were even going to go look at cars – it was a last minute drive-by decision. And while we were perfectly upfront about that when we arrived there late in the evening they of course tried with all their might to close us. Again, we get it. There was no price displayed on the van, so our sales rep Tim told us to bring up their website to look it up, and he showed me where and how to find it on my phone, and noted that all prices are online. That vehicle’s price was $22,500. Forward to the first visit from the floor manager and he started his offer at $27,500 (maybe $26,500k? Something in that much higher area – I didn’t realize at the time that was a detail that was worth remembering) to which we looked puzzled as the listed price was $22,500 and showed him on the website. He went “in back” and returned to note that yes the price had been reduced and hadn’t yet updated on his end so we were back to the $22,500 price. We finally broke free and left and let them know that we would be back the next day (today) to continue. So what happened overnight? Hmmmmmm. *************HERE’S THE PHENOMENON WE WANT TO SHARE: The Internet price of that same car is now listed today at $26,500 – changed from the $22,500 it was last night. The dealership called us twice today, once to ask if we were going to be stopping by (yes, we are) and the second time to let us know that there was a mistake in the pricing last night and that vehicle has now been corrected up to $26,500 and they just wanted us to know they had made a mistake. Oh really? In fact, really ironic, the internet price of EVERY Pacifica that we looked at last night has been increased literally by several thousands of dollars. I guess then that every single one of them had a mistake. Lucky for them they didn’t sell one to us last night, right?! Funny though, if you take a look at their own listed pricing history of the car we were going to purchase: April 7 - $24,700, April 9 - $24,000, May 16 - $22,500 (the price on the day we were there). And now today, May 17 - $26.500. I bet you won’t be surprised if I say you can find essentially the same history on the other vehicles we were looking at that suddenly had price increases overnight. Wow. They’ve been making “mistakes” on their published prices for almost 2 months. Needless to say we are not purchasing from them and will be sure to tell all of our friends and family about their “pricing challenges”.
May 17, 2020
Unprompted review