Acura Of Reno

Acura Of Reno responded

This is Tim Marttala in response on behalf of Acura of Reno. Although I am now in the marketing department here at Acura of Reno, at the time I was the primary salesperson involved, so I have first hand knowledge of the situation described in this review. I apologize in advance that my reply may be long due to the fact that the review covered several points which I feel deserve a response from my perspective, and I also apologize if any of my reply comes across as “making excuses,” which is something I do not intend because I believe that part of the point of customer feedback is for companies to “own up” to mistakes made. That all said: Naturally, we know that the best and most important advertising is word-of-mouth, and so we are very concerned with the experiences our customers have—-both those who have purchased from us and those who haven’t yet; our participation in this public review process attests to this, and our customer satisfaction awards testify to the outstanding level of service that nearly all of our customers feel we provide. As for this particular situation, if I recall correctly: the vehicle involved was a 2008 Honda CR-V EX-L with about 28,000 miles. The vehicle did have a collision in its history, which was fully disclosed to this customer; documentation showed that it had been properly repaired to pre-accident condition, so the accident in this vehicle’s history was not of any further concern. This customer visited about three times, each of which included test drives and other significant time and personal attention given. The retail value of the vehicle was about $27,000, and our selling price in this case was competitive at about $25,000. After our no-nonsense pricing and terms disclosure and discussion, the customer offered below $24,000. I presented the offer to our sales manager for review; since the sales manager was busy (hence the “significant wait” the customer experienced), and not wanting to make the customer wait any longer, our used car manager took over for me so this customer would get the direct immediate attention from a decision maker this particular situation called for. The manager discussed the offer with the customer and they agreed on a slight increase of $270, which brought the selling price to a mutually acceptable level up to our break-even point. The customer then stipulated that he would like his personal mechanic to inspect the vehicle, despite the fact that would not occur until three calendar days later. In order to fully disclose the rationale of our pricing and to possibly show how a third-party inspection (and its expense to the customer) may be unnecessary in this case due to the thorough 150-point inspection the vehicle had already received, as a special service to this customer, our used car manager actually went to retrieve the “Multi-Point Inspection (MPI) Report” that all of our vehicles receive in our award-winning service department prior to being offered for sale. Our used car manager showed that we had declined reconditioning a few minor items mentioned in the MPI Report due to the fact that this was a three year old, one-owner, below average mileage vehicle in excellent condition with significant factory warranty remaining, which made obvious to us that there was no need to have reconditioned every single item on the car—-it was, in effect, very much a like-new car that simply didn’t require every item to be taken care of. I should add that, during a previous visit, I had already described our typical reconditioning process, which includes anything safety related (for example, we had put brand new tires on this vehicle), but also may include other items to make the vehicle attractive and marketable (if a vehicle doesn’t meet our high-end dealership standards, we simply part with it and don’t offer it for sale on our lot); at no point did any party ever tell this customer that the vehicle had been “completely reconditioned.” Naturally, without a deposit for the sale of the vehicle, we would still offer the vehicle for sale to any other interested party over the weekend, and (no matter how long the car had been on our lot) the vehicle being sold to another party was a possibility that the customer should know about. At this point, the deal would proceed after the inspection on Monday morning, and so I drove the vehicle home from work Sunday evening, kept it at my house overnight, and then delivered it to the customer’s mechanic early Monday morning about 1.5 hours before the start of my shift, all provided as a service to this customer (requiring my wife to take the time and mileage of driving me to work for the start of my shift). Several hours later, all the while the vehicle was off of our lot (making it unavailable to any other interested party), the customer’s mechanic completed his inspection with really nothing more to report than what had already been discussed when the parties went over the MPI Report earlier. I then left work for about one hour (possibly missing other sale opportunities) to pick up the vehicle and return it to our dealership. The customer then called me and was quite firm with me in sharing his opinion that these minor items should absolutely have been taken care of already by us—-a statement which caught me by surprise and I was taken aback. At this point, the expectation the customer had that we should take care of a few minor items about which he had already been made aware had become, in our opinion, unreasonable, given the extent of service we had provided and the fact that we were at a break-even point regarding the already agreed-to sale price, and so we were willing to walk away from the deal. Quite frankly, but with all due respect, we honestly felt: “If we’ve done all that we have and the customer still isn’t satisfied, then he probably never will be,” and most businesses feel that this is not the type of customer that they want, for it requires too much work for too little gain, if any. A few days earlier in the entire process, the customer and I had meant it when we told each other “we can part on friendly terms” if we couldn’t agree on a mutually-acceptable sale; if, as the situation came to a close, any of us were not as cordial, we sincerely apologize and will strive to learn from this and not make the same mistakes again. In closing, given the time and effort two employees gave this customer over several days with nothing to show for it except for a bad review (for these reviews are as much about the employees as they are the dealership), I believe scores of “1 out of 5” for Customer Service and Quality of Work are unfair, and I believe the average reader will take this into account when considering the relevance of this customer's review. Thank you for your time and attention in considerng this review and reply fully.

Acura Of Reno responded

First off, I would like to personally apologize for your ill will towards our dealership and myself. This is Alex Cho, General Manager here at Acura of Reno. Unfortunatley, we have spoken about this issue many times now, and when you purchased this 1997 Mazda from us you specifically told us not to fix anything and that you were going to purchase the vehicle "As-Is". Your boyfriend even at the time told us that he would be able to fix everything himself. I was under the impression that we were both perfectly clear on this matter, and when the problem that was there originally came back to us we had to charge you for the fixes. It is very difficult when selling a vehicle that is over 10 years old and when we sell it for less than $3000 there lies the risk of the vehicle having a few problems. Our reputation is very important to us so regardless of what the situation is, you are obviously upset, and that is not our intention in any way! It is very unfortunate that you feel this way, and I understand your frustration.