Friday, June 27, 2014

One Salesman Can Change Your Perspective of a Company

In a previous post I mentioned we had trouble with my Aveo's tires. We had called the dealership and talked to the salesman who sold us our car. He was obnoxious telling us he never sold the car to us and hung up on us. I was so infuriated I wrote a bad review on the dealership's Facebook page. Things started rolling with the manager attempting to contact us. Phone tag between Hubby and the manager Taras Hughes began.

When they finally connected, Hubby told him the whole story and exactly how we felt. 

Taras promised if we came by, he would make us a good deal. He gave us the name of the person to contact when we dropped by if he wasn't around. He apologized profusely. He also said he would reimburse us for the tires we had to buy.

Remember. In my last post I vowed never to give them another chance. 

Hubby and I pondered and talked endlessly. It was the topic of most of our conversations for a few days.

In the meantime we visited other dealerships, because we really wanted get rid of the Aveo. We were no longer confident about this car and could see things going majorly wrong in the near future. We had already little nuisances such as the sun roof cover rattling. You can tell it was not secured right.

None of the other dealerships could help us without having to put money down as our situation was considered an Upside-down deal.

I always saw it on TV ads but didn't really understand it. I do now!  An upside down deal is when you owe more than what the car is worth.  So in order to get a new car we had to either wait longer until we had paid off most of it or put money down. We didn't have the money to put down. After all, we just paid for my funeral

Honestly, we were curious to see what kind of deal the dealership (JPT) would give us. We made our way to JPT on a Friday afternoon. 

We were greeted by a polite rugged handsome salesman, Rowdy. He asked us what we were looking for. We told him we wanted to get rid of the Aveo for a better car and interest rate. We described what kind of car we were looking at. 

He did an extraordinary thing we had trouble with other salesmen. He LISTENED.

We went look at some Honda Civics we had seen on the lot and online. When we went into the office we were greeted by everyone. Taras Hughes was on vacation. 

After we talked with Rowdy about the Civics Rowdy took our information then he disappeared. We assumed he and the substitute manager was crunching the numbers.

Just for a tad of information, during our conversation he received another telephone call and we overheard another customer was arriving around 4:30 p.m. This was around 3:50 p.m.

After a few minutes, Rowdy quickly entered the office, grabbed some keys hurriedly and said, "I will be right back!"

We immediately assumed he was going get a car for another customer. I thought, "Are you kidding me?" But we waited…

And waited….20 minutes later I was getting very impatient and angry. The assistant manager offered us a drink but said nothing more. Hubby and I were getting upset thinking Rowdy left us waiting while he was getting ready for the other customer. I thought it was rude and I felt like this was a waste of time. After 30 minutes Hubby and walked out and went to the car ready to leave.

Hubby and I were flabbergasted and furious that Rowdy would just leave us for that long for another customer. But we talked it out. We decided to go back in and wait for him. If nothing else, I wanted to give him an earful.

We walked back inside and the lady said Rowdy would be back in another 10 minutes. Hubby said, "We're giving him another 5!" 

Rowdy finally rushed in and said, "Come see your car!" As we walked out wee let him know we nearly left. He said he had to go to their other dealership a few miles away.

Let me just say I NEVER ever described a car as BEAUTIFUL. This car was absolutely BEAUTIFUL. It was a 2013 Toyota Corolla.

Later, Hubby and I talked about what we were thinking.

As I sat in the car, I was thinking OMG this is such a beautiful car!  I wanted it! I was checking out the features inside thinking we would never be able to afford this, it was beyond our price range.  It was sporty and had a nice sound system, moon roof, automatic and small enough but spacious.

Hubby knows cars and prices and all he was thinking was it was beyond our reach in price. 

Rowdy asked  if we liked it. We said yes but it all depended on the deal. We went back in and he crunched the numbers and brought us back the sheet of paper with the price and interest rate with no money down and trading in my Aveo. Everything we wanted they were giving us, although the price was double what we were thinking. In addition they gave us some savings! 

Rowdy explained this was the BEST and only car to help us get out of the Aveo. We told Rowdy we loved the car but we needed to sleep on it.

Last time we bought the Aveo, it was so rushed our heads were spinning and since we realized it was a bad deal too late, we didn't want to make the same mistake this time.

We came home and talked about it at length Yes, it was double the amount we were looking for, the note was a bit more but we believed Rowdy. We decide to get a better car, you have to fork out more money but it should be worth it in the long run. It also should be my last car of my life :). We could afford it and Hubby really wanted to give me a nice car. 

We realized we didn't even test drive it. Hubby always said Toyotas and Hondas are FUN to drive. I always considered a car to get from Point A to Point B. Yea, two different views about purpose of a car eh?

The next day we went back to JPT and told Rowdy we were ready to sign. They had detailed and cleaned the car and had it ready for us. I test drove it. WOW! It was so different. Smooth and you don't hear the engine. We did all the paperwork and they gave us the keys. We left and went to my Mom's to show off our new car.

Cora Diamond Landreaux

On the way back home, Hubby was driving since I drove to Mom's. He put the visor up and we noticed a crack in the windshield. We can't honestly say if it was there or not before. We never heard anything hit the car. So Hubby emailed Rowdy about it. Rowdy responded with no fanfare stating that he ordered an entire windshield and would let us know when it came in.

He called me the next day and the following day they fixed the windshield with no problem.

This experience was a total different experience than our previous one and I now can definitely say our experience was awesome.

I did go back to their website and gave them an excellent review. Taras and Rowdy changed our perspective about the company. We sincerely thank them from the bottom of our hearts.

Hubby was right! I LOVE driving my car. All I need is a stretch of windy road where I can push it to the metal at 80-100 mph. No worries, I won't be speeding, intentionally!

Stay tuned about how I got the name of my car. :)