Lynchburg Mazda

I recently went looking for an upgrade to an SUV from my sedan since my husband and I are planning on having children sometime in the next year or so. I had a few vehicles in mind that I had seen on their w sedan since my husband and I are planning on having children sometime in the next year or so. I had a few vehicles in mind that I had seen on their website when I went. I described to the salesman the type of vehicle I wanted and he showed me the three I specifically asked to see (a Honda CR-V, a Toyota Highlander Hybrid, and a Toyota Rav4). The first issue I had with this dealership that when I mentioned the CR-V inside the dealership (with the salesman standing right next to me), the manager said it was priced at $12,500. Once we got outside, all of a sudden this salesman said it was $16,000. I reminded him of what the manager had just said inside (in front of him, mind you) and he hemmed and hawed about internet prices changing. Immediately, I began to get suspicious of this guy. After taking the CR-V for a spin, I began to notice how little this salesman actually knew about the car we were driving. When asked basic questions such as "Is this 4-wheel drive" or "Is this a V6," he actually had to look it up on his phone to find out for me. I already knew the answers to these questions (a good thing to do when checking cars out is ask questions you know the answers to just to see how much the salesman knows). I was shocked that the salesman had no clue. Isn't this something you should know before trying to sell me a vehicle? Despite this, I wasn't ready to give up on him yet. Since I wasn't happy with the CR-V, we decided to come back a couple days later to look at the Highlander Hybrid and Rav4 since they were unavailable at the time. When we came back two days later, we first tried the Highlander Hybrid. I was impressed with the vehicle itself, though not impressed by the mess in it. The general manager's wife had been driving this vehicle around for awhile and the third-row seat had spilled cereal everywhere. The dealership knew we were coming back because we had scheduled an appointment, and they also knew we wanted to see these two vehicles specifically. They might want to clean their vehicles a little better when they know someone is going to be testing them. Aside from the mess, the vehicle drove well but we had a few issues, such as the salesman having no idea what the battery life was and furthermore having no idea how to find out. He also couldn't answer many of the same basic questions. I was surprised since again, he knew we were going to look at this vehicle, and he knew what type of questions we asked previously with the CR-V. Instead he focused on all the bells and whistles, but didn't really focus on more important things like gas mileage. Another interesting thing was he didn't really know the price of the vehicle. He quoted some price that was about a thousand over what the internet said. I pointed out this fact and he said that the internet price must have just changed. I know that the internet price was this amount for a number of days. I understand he's a salesman and feels like a price inflation is justified, but does he think I'm stupid? I told him I found this vehicle on the internet, so he might not want to be so transparent about upping the price. Finally we tried out the Rav4. I found this to be the best of the three vehicles I tested, though still missing a couple features I would have liked. By far, the biggest issue was the mileage - 82,000 on a 2006 is pretty high. Again, the salesman didn't know answers to basic questions, but I was used to this by now. I did enough of my own research not to need the salesman, but it goes to show how Mazda certainly hadn't prepared this guy to be effective in selling a car. Despite this, the Rav4 was a zippy vehicle for an SUV, the right size, and I was willing to look into buying it that evening. My husband and I spoke for a bit afterwards and agreed that the price of $15,730 was something we should work on negotiating due to the high mileage and the fact that we saw another Rav4 online at Berglund Toyota that was a 2007 with 21,000 less miles on it, but for only $200 more. Granted, that Rav4 only had front wheel drive, but the mileage difference couldn't be ignored. The negotiation is where I had one of the worst experiences I've ever had with a car dealership. First, our salesman who had been dealing with us for two days goes and gets some manager who knew absolutely nothing about what we were looking for and knew nothing about things we had discussed in test drives. So we were skeptical that he really cared much about us when he hadn't ever spoken a word to us previously - he just knew we were interested and swooped in to talk about money. Kind of obvious what their strategy was: the manager wasn't too confident that our salesman would be able to close the sale, so he stepped in to make sure that happened. Then came the Kelly Blue Book debacle.... The manager, upon hearing our concerns about the mileage promptly showed us the Kelly Blue Book value of over $18,500 for a 2006 Rav4 Limited with 82,198 miles (look it up yourself). I knew right away that he somehow inflated that number because I had run the KBB value myself previously and didn't get above $17,950 (and that's in absolutely perfect condition, which this Rav4 was not). So my suspicions were immediately raised and I knew he was being misleading. The unfortunate thing is since I didn't expect to actually be looking into buying the vehicle that evening, I didn't print the KBB value when I looked it up previously, so I couldn't refute what he said at the time with any sort of proof. The manager went one step further to show how the Rav4 at Berglund was actually overpriced above the KBB value - he printed the page for that Rav4 as well and it showed a value of $15,750 (2007 Toyota Rav4 Standard with 63,646 miles - again, look it up). This was also false because that KBB value for that Rav4 when I looked it up was $16,200 (and I put in every single specification exactly as the advertisement had it). While there may not have been a huge difference in what I found and what he found, it was enough for me to realize that this salesman was willing to mislead me about the values of vehicles, so who knew what else he was being deceitful about. THE BIGGEST TIP I CAN GIVE ABOUT GOING HERE IS LOOK UP AND PRINT THE KELLY BLUE BOOK VALUE BEFORE YOU GO BECAUSE THEY WILL MISLEAD YOU AND PRINT UP FALSE VALUES THAT OVERVALUE THE VEHICLES THEY SELL AND UNDERVALUE THE CARS ANYONE ELSE SELLS!! After seeing these KBB values, I got pretty frustrated at the blatant misleading this guy was doing. I told him I still wanted to talk price - mind you, we haven't even given him an offer yet. We reminded him about our concerns with the mileage amount, being that high in only 6 years (considering I currently drive a 15-year old car with less than double that amount). We said mileage was important to us and the manager literally scoffed and said "Well, general valuing of miles is only 15 cents per mile." According to my calculator, that's about a $3,150 between the two Rav4's, yet they're closer in valuation on KBB and very similar in sale price. I fully recognize one has 4WD and one has front-wheel drive, but the mileage and year difference seemed to have closed that gap somewhat (at least more than this guy was saying). The point of this discussion was that we were trying to give Mazda an opportunity to actually get our business, convince us why we would use them. We made it clear that interested in the Rav4 and were willing to make an offer. However, before we even made the offer, the manager told us he would only go down a couple hundred dollars because the internet price is about the lowest they'll go. I was still willing to press him further, but he became pretty stubborn, almost to the point of disrespectful. I was flabbergasted that a USED CAR SALESMAN didn't think a consumer would come in and try to bargain - hello? Have you ever sold a vehicle before? Of course I'm going to try to talk you down! I'm the one spending the money and it's my investment, I'm going to make sure I get an amount I'm comfortable spending. Now, I'm not being unrealistic thinking I'm going to get an amazing deal, I wasn't even planning on going down that much because I do think it was a fairly decent price they were offering (though the mileage was a definite issue). I was just going to try to bargain, so what I could get - which is what every consumer should do when they try to buy a used car. The manager further told us that the internet prices were for out-of-staters who traveled to Mazda and "didn't want the hassle of haggling." This was so ridiculous, I had to laugh. I assume he meant the Mazda salespeople didn't want the hassle of haggling... The manager pretty much put a stop to any negotiating before he even heard our offer. I found this to be a very poor sales tactic because all it did was tell me to just walk since they were completely uninterested in hearing what I had to say. The funny thing is, the manager stated a few times how he wanted our business, yet didn't once try to convince us why we should use them. Instead, he tried to insinuate my husband and I were idiots and knew nothing about sales. In fact, we know quite a bit about sales and negotiating (my husband spent several years as a successful salesman and I do negotiating for a living). This manager literally shut us down, told us he would not budge on price (again, without knowing what we were going to offer), and said he knew he would sell it eventually for the asking price - nevermind that he has an actual breathing person in his office showing interest. I ended up walking away. I wasn't desperate for the car, I didn't fall in love with it, and I certainly had no trust in the salesman who knew nothing about the vehicles he showed us and the manager who had mislead us from the get-go about the values of the vehicles. I was very disappointed with my experience at Mazda. I thought the manager was pompous and disrespectful, and I thought the salesman was extremely un-knowledgeable. My tips for Mazda are: 1) Don't put your lowest price on the internet; 2) Actually wait for an offer from your potential buyers before shutting them down; 3) Teach your salesmen to know the ins and outs of every vehicle they show, especially the ones they know ahead of time they'll be showing; 4) Don't lie about things I can easily look up myself; and 5) Never be disrespectful to potential buyers and try to make them feel stupid (sad that I actually to tell them to do this - you would think they knew). Many people have had great experiences at Mazda, mine just happened to be poor this time around. If I ever do look there in the future, I'll at least know to bring KBB Values myself and remember to look for the sleazy sales tactics that all car salesmen use. More