Alex C.
St. Paul, Minnesota
Feb 01, 2013
"Never written a car dealership review but let's start with my goal. GOAL: Buy Subaru Outback with heated seats at the cheapest price. I figured we'd have to do some work for it but I thought the work would be negotiating with a pushy sales person. I was waaaaay off. The easiest part for me was working with Jake, Bobby, and Logan at St. Cloud Subaru. The hardest part was figuring out that St. Cloud Subaru (1.5 hours away from home!) would be the place to find my new car. We shopped around quite a bit at a few Subaru dealers within 2 hours of the cities and mostly worked on-line and electronically until we trimmed our list down to two. Things we were surprised by: 1. The amazing job that St. Cloud did. They came in with a competitive price and then worked with us to lower the price even more. I wasn't thrilled at driving an hour and a half each way to pick up the car but the negotiations were very friendly and went well. (They ended up a couple hundred over the Walser price but they were quite sure on what they were selling us....in included additional amenities over the Walser vehicle...how many additional amenities, I'll never know because I doubt Walser knows.) Logan and Jake very efficiently and thoroughly went through the paperwork and never came off pushy. Jake went above and beyond and showed us how to use some of the toys. (Like the bluetooth....twice.) We didn't get the cheapest price, we were close but the $200 gave us peace of mind that we knew exactly what we were driving to get. (And it did have more of the toys than what Walser was offering.) Goal accomplished! 2. Half of the dealers didn't get back to us...really, couldn't even shoot at email to say they were interested in selling us a car or otherwise send us someone to contact. 3. The second most expensive quote came from White Bear Subaru ("WBS") in our backyard. The surprise is that in the email response to our offer, WBS implied they were insulted by our initial offer which was actually a few hundred dollars less than the unnegotiated cheapest on-line price (Walser). White Bear Subaru went ballistic and stated the on-line price was not legitimate and that they wouldn't sell us a car for $1000 dollars more than our offer. They also very surprisingly told us to not come in again (we test drove here). For the record, our final price from St. Cloud, with additional amenities, still came in below the quote plus $1000. Not sure how WSB comes up with prices but they are far from competitive. 4. Walser, who had the cheapest price actually has no idea what they have on their lot. After working with two different people, we were told by both they didn't have our vehicle. We actually had to help them locate the vehicles on their own website...twice! We were then told once that the vehicle had everything we were looking for and once that the vehicle had only 1/2 of the all weather package. (Is it possible to buy 1/2 a package???!) Despite having the cheapest price, the lack on knowledge created a sense of shadiness which worried us that Walser wasn't actually going to get us what we were looking for."
Read more of our reviews on Yelp!
No comments:
Post a Comment