| rev:text
| - OK, this review is based on my first ever experience buying a car. I found Showcase Honda merely by the fact that they had one of the cheapest prices on a certified pre-owned 2012 Honda CRV. Upon reading the reviews I was wary of moving forward with negotiating a deal. However, the price was too good to not at least test the waters. Here are the notable experiences that I feel influenced my decision on 3 stars:
SALES EXPERIENCE (Brice Kwi): Very helpful throughout the whole process, never pushy when we told him we had another car to check out, tried pulling some questionable moves near the end of the deal. Called to follow-up while I was at the 2nd dealership that day (this may annoy some people but it really added to my advantage during the negotiation phase as I could play both dealers against each other). When we talked about price I told him my maximum OTD price was $23,000 (car was listed for $21,775). He called me to tell me that the best he could come up with was $24,250 OTD, but that his manager had agreed to $23,800. At this point we had decided that we really wanted the car from Showcase but were wary of the reviews we had read. We actually negotiated the rest of the deal over text message and landed on $23,500 OTD. This was great for me as I had a record of what we had agreed on should it become an issue once we got back to Showcase. Upon returning he presented me and my wife the offer sheet with the OTD price of $24,627! ADDED onto our original agreed upon price of $23,500 was $1100 for what he said was the CERTIFICATION FEE they charged to certify the car. Luckily we had brought the printout of the advertisement which clearly stated that included in the online price of $21,775 was the certification along with the applicable warranties. He said, oh let me show this to my boss, he disappeared for about 10 minutes and came back and said ok my boss said he would honor this (duh!). While I'm not sure if this $1100 add-on was his idea or something his boss instructed him to push on us I'm not sure, but it was annoying enough to downgrade the overall experience. Bottom line, come prepared with all the documents stating prices and what is included in the price, while this is obviously a good idea at all dealerships, I would say it is an absolute NECESSITY at this dealership based on other reviews and my experience.
FINANCING DEPARTMENT: I did bring my own pre-approved financing from Bank of America but they still insisted on running my credit so they could be in compliance with the Patriot Act (may or may not be legitimate I've since read arguments for and against this practice). They still agreed that I could use my BOA financing. A couple of days later I noticed that my credit has been pulled by 3 different banks! (none of which were BOA). Looking back though my paper work I did sign that I was OK with them "shopping around' for a lender, but I was led to believe my credit would not be pulled again and that BOA would be my lender. I ended up with Wells Fargo with the same rate so that's ok I guess, still very misleading and potentially damaging to my credit (it wasn't in the end)
FINANCING DEPARTMENT PART II: Although I considered us to be well researched, prepared and knowledgeable of the car-buying process I didn't do enough research on how to negotiate (or just flat turn down) the extended warranty. After a lot of negotiating I finally agreed (this was a terrible decision) to buy an extended warranty which included a bumper to bumper warranty for 100,000 miles as well as service (basically oil changes and tire rotations) for $2700 (what was I thinking!) The part of this process that really bothered me and I felt to be misleading was that the deductible was NEVER mentioned. Now, this may seem like an obvious thing to ask about but after being here for 5+ hours I simply forgot-(buyers fatigue!). I'm not downgrading them for my stupidity but for their incredibly misleading facts about the deductible. I noticed when I got home that I was given the $100 vanishing deductible, this meant that I wouldn't be charged a deductible as long as I brought the vehicle to be serviced AT SHOWCASE HONDA. This might not be a big deal if I lived in Phoenix, however, I live 3 hrs away and this was brought up time and time again during the negotiations of the warranty. I specifically asked if I could get the car worked on at a dealer closer to me. I was told of course, no problem, which was technically true, he just left out the fact that it would cost me an EXTRA $100 each time I had anything done on top of the already exuberant $2700 warranty fee. I've since decided to cancel the warranty which I can luckily do through the warranty company itself. Bottom line, I found this to be very deceptive and imagine other people have fallen into the same trap.
Ultimately I got a good deal and am happy, but BEWARE and be PREPARED!
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