I was negotiating offers for the 2020 Honda Accord Hybrid EX online between various dealerships. I was excited coming into the dealership and signing until I noticed the OTD prices I received over email and in-person were different. When I looked closely at the in-dealer quote, I saw that the new OTD price was ~$137 dollars higher than what was agreed to over email. The sales manager explained that the difference was due to a miscalculation of the sales tax and not the price of the vehicle. To be fair, he was correct -- the price difference was indeed attributed to the sales tax, as the ZIP code they initially used had a lower sales tax than mine. But why were the ZIP codes different? When I ask for an explanation, they explained to me another sales manager inputted the incorrect ZIP code as a honest mistake. I was baffled, for a few reasons: (1) I provided the dealership with my ZIP code from day 1, approximately a month before my purchase when I began inquiring about vehicles and OTD quotes; (2) the ZIP the dealership mistakenly used was two digits off. They used a city with two ZIP codes, XXX66 and XXX88. Mine was XXX79. This could have been an honest mistake if they were one digit off (i.e. the 6 is pretty close to the 7, the 8 close to 7 and 9), but two digits? This would mean he would have mistakenly mistyped two digits, something I would not expect from a professional, presumably experienced car salesman; (3) Further corroborating my suspicion was that my ZIP code was stated on the original OTD quote with the lower amount. Why would the sales tax reflect a different ZIP code other than the one on the quote? I reached two potential conclusions: (1) either they used the incorrect ZIP code to offer a lower quote to lure me in the dealership as a bait-and-switch, which suggests they lack integrity or (2) a professional sales manager with substantial experience (how did he become manager if he didn't have the many years of experience?) is incompetent. The dealership called me a few days after I purchased the vehicle and explained that the incorrect ZIP code wasn't due to human error, but a "glitch in the computer system". Frankly, I find little credence to that claim; it seems like a cop-out answer. To remedy the price differential of $137 and my evidently furious state, the dealership offered me a free oil change. I walked over to the service section of the dealership and asked for the price of the oil change: it was about ~$90 (a lot for an oil change), ~$47 dollars short of what I felt they owed me. Nonetheless, I signed because I wanted the car and felt bad for the sales consultant who took the brunt of my wrath. The sales consultant, Max Hu, had been patient and kind to me since I began the car-search process, and I did not want to punish him for his supervisor's incompetence. Not sure if this was the good-cop-bad-cop routine, but Max seemed genuine. A few weeks after the sale, I received an email confirming a service appointment I supposedly scheduled. I did not schedule a service appointment. I thought to myself, "Is this for the free oil change?". It didn't make sense to me, as the service appointment was scheduled 3 months after my purchase (how soon does a brand new car need an oil change? It's currently mid-late July, and my car says oil is still at 100%). If it wasn't for the free oil change, what was it for? Would they have charged me for service/maintenance that I did not schedule? I called AutoNation Fremont's service department about the appointment and they told me they did not know why the appointment was scheduled and proceeded to cancel it. Everything else equal, the appointment being scheduled when I did not schedule it could've plausibly been an honest mistake. Nonetheless, after my experience with the last-minute OTD price switch, I could not give them the benefit of the doubt. Granted, it was only $137, but I was more angry about feeling like I had been lied to. Not sure about you, but integrity is important to me.
Andy Chen
Jul 14, 2020
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