Arizona Experience Gone Bad
This is the chronicle of my personal experience with Desert Kia in Arizona located on Arizona Ave in Gilbert. Not to be confused with my great experience at Tempe Kia.
Background: My mother is 73 years old, with a heart condition. She needed a small inexpensive car just to get around town and run her errands mostly picking up the medicine for her heart condition. She had a set amount of money to spend after refinancing her house with my sister.
I have a 1996 Kia that we purchased from a Kia dealer in Scottsdale and it still runs great. After we got all the bugs out of it under the warranty, the car has ran very well for us. So, I recommended a Kia to my mother knowing that for the most part they are inexpensive cars.
Desert Kia ran an ad in the paper for a Kia Spectra. My mother called and explained what she had for a trade and what amount of money she had to work with. ( I won't use names) The sales person on the phone said no problem come on down. So we did!
Once there, after walking all over the lot, they could not find the car that was the one in the ad. They said they would find it and get it there and we can come back. ( I should of known!).
Well the car was found and we go back only to be passed on to a different sales person. We gave them our keys (Big Mistake!) to go out and look at the trade which was a 91 Subaru Legacy valued for trade in at 1250 according to KBB. In the last 6 months, over 3K has been put into that car and it ran fine as well as the AC was ice cold.
Well, after we played the price game of back and forth, we decided we were not going to get the car and asked for our keys so we could leave. The sales person said hold on and went back into talk to the manager. They only wanted to give my mom 400 for her trade and said the air didn't work which was total bullshit! They just didn't' know how to turn it on.
They would not give us our keys and kept tying to negotiate price. At one point, the manager even told me "You want your mother driving around in that car" referring to the Legacy. Finally, after asking for our keys several times, I had to get rather irate and vocal about getting the keys so we could leave. The whole time my poor mother was almost in tears and just wanted to get out of there.
Had the sales staff treated us with respect, we probably would of bought the car from them. But instead, in all my years of buying cars I have never seen such distasteful sales tactics and been treated with such disrespect at a car dealership. I would never recommend Desert Kia to anyone under any circumstances but I would highly recommend Tempe Kia.
On the way home we stopped at Earnhardt right down the street. After explaining to them what we just went through, they treated us extremely well and even though they did not have a car in her price range, they told us they were getting more in a few days and they would call us. Well, the cars came in, my mom ended up with a brand new 05 Hyundai Accent (PAID CASH) at the price she wanted and they gave her 1500 for her trade. They even let us watch American Idol while were were waiting on the paper work. I will use their names here because they treated my Mom extremely well. Enrique Arevalo and his Manager Tom know how to treat a customer.
Oh ya! And at no time did Earnhardt's ever ask us for our key!!!!
NOTE: This review is based on my own personal experience and is my opinion which is protected under the 1st amendment.