Kia dealers are horrible

Off-Ramp
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< re-posted for your reading pleasure and mine>

The contrasting technique to Low pressure auto sales can be found at any Chrysler dealership:

As you drive up to the lot you can see the auto sales guys standing around, eyeing their potential prey. You take one step onto the lot, (or even stay on the sidewalk). And you’ll get Salvadore - the test salesman with the “May I help you” tome’

You say something like - “I want a 79 Lincoln Mark V with a stereo 8-track”. You may (or may not) get a chance to actually sit and perhaps even drive the car before Dexter the lead sales guy is on you like a hungry buzzard with a fresh road kill. Dexter looks and sounds like a nice enough person, but there’s just something about him that makes you uneasy.

Soon you will be surrounded by Dexter, Salvadore and the other pack of salivating wolves where they talk up a good story about “THAT INCREDIBLE AMAZING NEON”. You’ll make a few feeble attempts at getting out of this situation. You might plead - “what about my 350 FICO score” or “I need this down payment money for Mom’s operation”. But alas you will be pushed and shoved by the pack into - “THE SALES OFFICE”…

In the sales office you will be introduced to Guido the closer. Or “Guido the Hutt” as he is referred to at the Chrysler dealership. You’ll plead - "please no, please no, Have mercy on me !- Not Guido the Hutt! Guido will thrash and contort your petty arguments until you agree to make - “THE OFFER” at which point the dreaded torture instrument - the four-square chart is produced. This instrument of torture has been used with devastating results on many a poor victim.

You think that just maybe you’ll get out of this by making a lowball offer. But no, silly mortal, your offer must then be, like a bad James Bond movie, approved by the mysterious and powerful sales manager behind the frosted glass. This is the man who has your fate in his hands. Your happiness or ultimate demise rests with this mysterious man. This mysterious sales manager has a panel of control buttons at his fingertips. Should one of the salesmen not meet their quota then the sales manager just presses a button on the control panel to electrocute or gas the underperforming staff member. A hole then opens in the floor into which the lifeless salesman’s body is then automatically dumped for disposal.

Because of the enormous enforcement power of the sales manager, the whole staff lives in absolute fear and will do anything to extract the maximum dollar amount from you - the helpless victim.

As you can see you are helpless in this situation. You have no choice but to purchase that wretched Neon at a cost that would make the national budget look small.

So that’s the opposite of Low pressure sales techniques that is practiced at Chrysler dealerships.

3 Likes
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We’re told to never say never…

Remembering my childhood inside some Hyundai Excels, I’ll NEVER step foot in a Hyundai or Kia dealership.

But they have 10 year warranties.

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I have no direct experience with Kia dealers, but this brings to mind the quality of customer service experienced at budget vs luxury dealers.

What I did experience firsthand was how dealers treat potential buyers of off brand trade ins. I shopped two nearly identical Mini Cooper trade in models at non-Mini dealers. Mercedes sales people overall were a pleasure to deal with even though I wasn’t interested in buying one of their branded cars. A salesperson at a nearby Toyota dealership met my attempts at negotiation with lies and hostility. I’m not totally sure if this behavior is widespread across dealerships – I’ve heard anecdotal evidence that it is, but I’m sure there are exceptions out there. I’m also not sure what the buying experience would be like buying new/on-brand – the Toyota salesman made it a point to express his exasperation to me over the fact that we were haggling over a used car. The whole experience was a classic eye opener to the idiom of “you get what you pay for.” Although in this case, each dealer was offering nearly the same car for nearly the same price, so it shone more light on the corporate values of their sales staff.

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Give Roger a try over at Murray Kia in PA. I’ve dealt w/ Roger in the past, he seems pretty straight forward and willing to deal via email / text. I never moved forward w/ anything, but since you’re in NJ. it’s not too far of a drive if you can strike up a deal. Good Luck! Please report back if you have a decent experience and get a car.

Roger O’Kane - Internet Sales Manager
Murray Kia http://www.murraykia.com/
1402 W Ridge Pike, Conshohocken, PA 19428
(610) 279-3033
To text with me, please text “Yes” to (610) 756-8104

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The Chrysler,KIA dealerships prefer a buyer with sub-prime credit buyer, so they can sell their 20K car with their extended warranty and diamond windshield coating for 27K and the poor dude ends up with a 84 month car payments paying north of 40K on a 20k car.

1 Like
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That about sums up my experience with CDJR. The only thing you forgot to add was having to threaten to call the cops to get your trade back, that Angelo, the appraiser, is holding hostage.

Haven’t been back in 20 years as a result.

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Did anyone reach out to Roger and have any luck? Just looking for feedback if he is still pretty straight forward in his dealings, since I’ll be looking to lease something in March.

I see 5 people click the dealership link, just wanting to know how things went.

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I didn’t call him. Maybe someone else did?

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There are plenty of terrible luxury dealerships, personally I’ve never been to a JLR dealer I liked. One dealership sent me to enterprise even though I called ahead to reserve a loaner…when I’m driving your freaking flagship sedan.

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I disagree with you on this on so many levels…Kia/Hyundia has come a REALLY long way in terms of build quality and materials since their hayday in the 90’s.

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So true. It really falls down to the Ownership. I used to be a porter when i was in school and worked at various dealers. Corporate owned dealerships always had better staff and better overall feel whereas family owned dealers always had certain questionable characters. Again, didn’t matter if it was luxury or not.

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I sold KIA’s during my 10 month car sales career. The experience is exactly as you describe here. Money always was far more important than integrity, customers were lied to all the time, and poor credit was the dealership’s forte:

“Get that person with the 580 Beacon score off that Honda Civic! We need to sell them on this back-of-book rental fleet Taurus so we can extract $8000 over cost! What??, they don’t want a Taurus??!! Then get them on the Pontiac Aztec or that Seabring now, have their senile grandpa co-sign for it!!@“

Or

“Oh good, it’s a non-white person with bad credit! Excellent! How does 29% APR and an 84 month payment plan sound on a Kia Sorento which literally has a residual value of 25%!”

A lot of dealers are complete scum. I truly regret having worked for one like this, but I learned a valuable lesson about what I did not want to be like.

1 Like
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I am currently leasing an optima, at the time I though I negotiated pretty well but since coming to this site I realized I was taken for a ride… one thing I’ve always wondered and haven’t been able to track down is the money factor on Kia leases. I called the Kia finance company and the person I talked to and asked was either completely ignorant or trained in playing dumb and avoiding answering those questions. Since you worked in the dealership, would you be able to give me a ball park on what the money factor is that they would charge for someone with 730 credit score ?

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When I worked for Kia I never saw one car leased, we always pushed people to buy. This was in 2005, so the residual value must have been ridiculously low. Who wants to lease a $23000 car that is worth $7000 in 3 years?

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No 1 reason I’d never consider a Stinger no matter how good the value. I was really interested in a Niro back when they came out, and the Kia dealer over here ran my credit without telling me they were running my credit, now I have a nice dip in my credit score.

I rented a Hyundai Ioniq recently and while there were many great things about that car, I couldn’t help but feel like overall it was a cheaply made shitbox.

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Running your credit will reduce your score about 1-5 points. Your crappy credit is your fault

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Off Topic Landfill

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My optima is a 16 with a msrp of around 31k the residual is terrible it’s 17k … my payments are 365 for a 36/10k a month for an optima … needless to say I can’t wait till my lease is up, I’d really like to get into a nicer luxury brand while keeping my payment around 350-375 a month but I won’t be able to seriously look till next summer. My lease ends sept 2019

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You shouldn’t be giving you SS to anyone until you are ready to sign, right?

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Should’ve known better, but didn’t at the time. I’ve learned a lot here this year.