Great until you get to the finance office. Look, I went in there with the understanding that the finance rep would try to sell me optional products. Whether or not there is value in the extended warranty or maintenance plan is up for debate. He gave me his sales pitch, and I caved and added the products to my loan. That's on me. However, purposely leading me on and leaving out information the way a "street carney" plays a shell game is not a great way to endear a customer who has purchased his last 3 vehicles there. (the 1st 2 were when the dealership was Bankston). Here is the subtle little game this man played with me. After I initially passed on the optional products, he told me I could have a certain payment if i purchased all three (warranty, maintenance, and gap). After I took the bait, he printed off a contract, laid it on the table, circled the places where we need to initial and sign and immediately said "go ahead and sign here". I replied telling him I wished to look over the contract. After looking it over, i noticed instead of the 72 payments we agreed on when I came into the room, the payments now read "75". I asked him why since we've been talking about 72. His response was, "well you wanted that payment and I just figured...etc etc..". Oh, you figured I wanted to pay an additional 1400.00+ in payments? So I told him, never mind, let's go back to the 72 months, the original payment, and forget all the optional products. Miraculously...he came up with another solution (see my sarcasm here?). He could move us from Honda Financing to a local credit union they do business with and I could have the payment in 72 mos not 75. So I agreed. He reprinted the contract. Interesting how my interest rate went from 4.5% to 3.24% after switching to this credit union. This CU must be their little ace in the hole for these situations. Anyway, the dealer got what he wanted by selling me 3 products of 100% profit. Can you say "bait and switch"? Another strange method to his selling technique is that he actually has to play down Honda's reputable reliability in order to sell this warranty. He actually would have you believe that even though this is a Honda for which he is an authorized dealer, that many things can go wrong with this vehicle. I mean, how else can you justify buying the extended warranty?? So again, no blame for anyone but myself for purchasing unneccessary products..just chalk it up to expensive peace of mind. My biggest complaint is the silly cliched games their finance guy plays to make a sale. Here's how it should have gone and maybe earned my future patronage: "Sir, if you buy these 3 products your payment will be X amount, but i do need to let you know that I have to add 3 months to your term in order to keep that payment. If that's not satisfactory, then we can use this credit union with a lower interest rate and keep the term at 72 and the payment the same" See how above board that paragraph is? But to try to sneak something in and hope I'm not smart enough to actually look at the contract shows an utter lack of integrity on your part. Update: to add on to my bad review above, the maintenance plan we purchased of course ran out at 36000 miles and confirmed a bold faced lie by the salesman and finance department. We were sold this product based on the lie that it would be equal to 11 oil changes. Of course, what they failed to mention is that if you follow the Honda plan per the alerts your vehicle gives you, it actually amounts to 6 oil changes. So basically you are paying the dealership price for 11 oil changes and getting 6. Never again will I be sucked in by the lies of finance managers. Since then, thanks to following Dave Ramsey's financial plan, we paid off this vehicle 3 years early and now vow to never finance a car again mainly because debt is dumb, but as an added bonus, never again to be victims of the fraudulent practices of this dealership and other dealerships.
Rob Wren
Jan 28, 2020
