My Review Of Royal Palm Toyota:
We had an excellent experience with Steve Gagne. We came up with a price prior to our arrival and he did not play any games. That is what buying a car should be like. He was very friendly and professional.
On the other hand, financing was the worst experience we have ever had. I did not get the financing man's name, but he was extremely rude and unprofessional. When we had a question, he came back with smart remarks and was not very helpful. At first he gave us an interest rate of 5%. With my husband and I's credit score being in the 800's I felt that was a little high and was almost offended. I questioned him and he said that was actually an excellent rate. My husband told him that Bank of America was offering 3.9% (which was still a little higher than what the banks were offering after we went home and checked). He then said thats wrong and he will look it up. He then recanted his statement and said he could give us a 4.03% interest rate, which we agreed on.
Due to us having a nine month old baby who was acting up after a three hour process, I believe he took advantage of us. He asked what we expected our payments to be and I told him $350. He told my husband to sign all of the paperwork first, because the baby was acting up and I was attending to him. My husband signed and I signed after, assuming my husband read everything. I actually just found out the other day when I was reviewing the paper work, that the financing man made the interest rate 4.32%, which made our payments just below $350 a month, which is what I told him.
Not only was he rude, but he tried to distract us by complaing about your dealership. He stated that your general manager was a scum bag (and that is the nice version of what he said). He also stated that he was looking forward to leaving the dealership in a month of so and going to Lipton Toyota in Oakland Park to get paid more. He mentioned several times that he wasn't trying to screw us, because he had nothing to lose, because he wouldn't be working for your dealership for long. We don't know if this was true or not, but we truely believe that this was a way to gain our trust and take advantage of us.
I understand that the the difference in the interest rate that he told us as opposed to the one we signed for was less than a quarter percent, but we feel we were misled. WE also feld that he pushed the percent up as far as he could, just to make our payments under what we wanted, then what we could have had (every dollar makes a difference). I feel terrible, because I signed for something and I don't think there is anything we can do about it now?
I want to reiterate that Steve Gage made everything an EXCELLENT experience on his part. He is an OUTSTANDING employee and deserves to be recognized for his excellent work performance.
If you have any questions, you can contact me at 954-610-5088 (Amanda Schaefer)
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