Please don't do what we did and ignore the reviews of... - tracymueller7
Please don't do what we did and ignore the reviews of this place!! My husband and I purchased a 2020 Honda CR-V from them last night and this was easily our worst car buying experience EVER. Prior to arriving, we had a great experience with our saleswoman who had two models of the vehicle we were interested in pulled up to the front awaiting our arrival at our request. We quickly decided on which one we wanted and began the paperwork. This is where is started to go downhill. We repeatedly mentioned in text, email and person that we were not interested in financing as we already had it line up through our credit union. When we began, questions about what our rates, payments, etc would be, started. I again reminded our saleswoman we had financing line up and weren't interested in this and she stated these questions were just part of the paperwork and were required of her to ask. While chatting politely with us, she brought some paperwork for us to begin signing and told us both it was the standard papers to get the ball rolling. Our mistake was not paying more attention and instead trusting her. After waiting well over an hour, we were finally taken back to finance and after signing papers there and waiting for the finance representative to call to our credit union and verify the check, I decided to go through my email. Imagine my surprise to see an alert from Credit Karma telling me I had a new hard inquiry on my report. I opened my account and lo and behold, Pohanka Honda had run credit checks on both myself and my husband despite us stating no credit was needed. The on duty manager had come into the room at this point to assist the finance person with something so I asked why a credit check was performed without our consent and after a moment of appearing flustered, he began to rifle through our papers and pulls out the forms our sales person told us were just "standard papers". in tiny writing on the bottom in a very large paragraph, it states by signing, we are applying for credit and authorizing them to run credit checks. This didn't sit well with either of us. The manager began to stumble through an explanation stating it was the general managers policy to run credit checks on everyone who buys a car just incase their bank check doesn't clear. When further questioned, he then stated it was because of 9-11 and the federal law requires them to do it to prove we are who we say we are and that we aren't terrorists. What he was referring to is the Patriot Act. Anyone with a slight knowledge of the Patriot Act knows this doesn't require or allow car dealerships to run a credit check on customers. We argued rather heatedly with him over the topic and at one point he told the finance lady since we were "bending him over a barrel" to just cancel our sale. At this point, all papers had been signed, the check had been authorized and filled out with all of their information. I was more than thrilled to do this and to this very minute wish we would have, but my husband just wanted the whole thing to be over. We walked out of there with not only a godawful experience, but also with a car that in the grand scheme of things, wish we wouldn't have bought from them and we are now looking into our options with hiring an attorney for their unlawful practice of running credit checks on unsuspecting customers. Please, please, please, read all the reviews of this place and think twice before dealing with them.
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