Alex Alves | Page 25

Colonial Honda of Dartmouth responded

Hello Mr. Kaplan, Thank you for taking the time to text Alex and explain your concerns. You are 100 % correct in your statement regarding the privacy and the ability to remain unidentified in your review on the Dealer Rater website. I am grateful that you have allowed me to respond and try to address your concerns and provide you with direct answers. Here at Colonial Honda we pride ourselves in customer satisfaction. I do not want you to solely take our word for it but the word of the independent third parties that led to us being named the 2021 Honda Dealership of the Year by Dealer Rater. Let me first state that I understand you and your partner were solely interested in just sitting down and testing out a CR-V as you had not done so before. It was within your and every customer's right to be able to see and drive a vehicle with no pressure of anything else. Alex is a prime example of that and if you see many of his 180 reviews, many of his past clients rave about how he did not pressure them into a sale. I will address our entire staff and remind them of the fact we are here first and foremost to provide assistance and information to all who work through our doors. I also understand you are concerned with the pricing policy through our website and will like to address those with you. Colonial Honda uses a variety of sources and databases to derive at the price you see on our website. We analyze the market every single day on each and every one of our vehicles. We aim to advertise our best price online not only to beat our customer's pricing but to make it simple and easy on the client. Time is one of the most valuable assets and as you know you can not get time back, thus we put our best price online so customer's do not have to spend any additional time shopping the market or negotiating back and forth once they are here. In order for us to provide the best price we can, we do ask customers to take advantage of our financing options here at the dealership. It not only simplifies the registration process for the customer but allows us to provide a lower price due to the fact we are able to claim certain incentives and/or rebates that can be applied by financing with one of our lenders. We understand every deal can be unique and different but this is a standard practice employed by every dealership across all brands and manufactures and we believe it is ultimately for the customers benefit. I also would like to address your concern on the fees associated with buying a vehicle. Again the fees you would pay are standard across the board at every dealership and many are either directly from the state of Massachusetts or regulated by the state. The first fee I would like to address is the registration fee. The dealership solely collects this fee on your behalf of the state. When we register your vehicle for you, we pay the money directly to the registry which includes but is not limited to the registration, plates, title and inspection sticker required by Massachusetts. The next fee is your sales tax which again is collected and paid on your behalf at the registry. Sales tax is calculated here in MA by accounting the price of the purchased unit minus trade allowance and adding the documentation fee. That figure is then assessed a sales tax of 6.25%. This leads me to your concern on the documentation fee. The documentation fee is acknowledged and taxed by the state of MA. Our dealership charges $459 on every single vehicle purchase regardless if the vehicle is new or used and regardless of the payment method. Our $459 is in align with our market and in many instances less than our competitors. The documentation fee is charged for a variety of reasons which includes but is not limited to the cost involved in preparing legal paperwork and state-imposed storage of all final documentation as part of your purchase. Our own employees and management have paid the documentation fee in regards to the purchase of their own personal vehicles. Mr. Kaplan, I also understand and empathize with your feelings about the negotiation of the vehicle. We again provide our best price online to avoid having to go back and forth. It is frankly not in your or our best interest to spend hours negotiating. With that being said, every customer wants to make sure they are getting the best deal and everyone loves to receive a discount no matter what it is they are buying. When Alex asked you if you would purchase the car at a lower than advertised price it was solely to provide you the best customer service he could. I do not feel it is fair that you have accused us of taking advantage of those in hard financial times. I can not speak for every single member of our staff but I will tell you many of our employees and managers grew up in those same hard times. We have several staff members who left lives in other countries in an attempt to provide for their families and loved ones. We whole-heartedly empathize with everyone regardless of their racial, sexual, financial or any other backgrounds because we here at Colonial Honda are made up of a diverse background. Your feelings and concerns are absolutely valid. I will take your words as a learning lesson and will make sure to instill again in my staff that we are here to listen to and provide assistance to every single client that emails, calls or visits us. I will also revisit our pricing and payment policies with our corporate headquarters and make sure they are created with the customer's best interest in mind. I sincerely apologize we fell short in our promise to ourselves and our community in our interactions with you and Nicki. I believe this situation can better open our eyes and allow us to implement positive change. Please contact me with any other concerns and I would once again like to apologize on the behalf of the entire Colonial Honda sales team. Sincerely, Miguel Garcia

dsk744 responded

The dealership contacted me directly within a short time of having written the review. That surprised me because DealerRater at least implied that I would not be identified. Perhaps that was due to cute language, not sure. In any case, I responded to the dealer in detail about my concerns in a string of texts. They raised several specific issues. One of them was that review questions are purportedly about the dealer, but the specific questions are about individuals who work there. I am sure that they don't set the offensive policies that underlie my negative review. Nonetheless, the sales guys are the agents of the dealer and they carry out the policies. Their personal reviews are the appropriate venue for complaints, and the only avenue provided. I am willing to talk with Miguel Garcia about these issues, but only on the condition that he first responds in writing to my concerns. I laid out my position clearly. I will talk only after Mr. Garcia explains the dealership's position on those specific issues. That's only fair and the concerns raised in texts are largely about fairness. I look forward to your prompt reply.