Capitol Chevrolet of San Jose

My use case: I just wanted a test drive. If I then wanted to buy the car, I know what features I want and what price to expect, and it's a cash deal (no trade-in) so we can skip the haggling and upselling. Sales person: Jason Cardenas was very professional, listened to us and read our emails, and did his best to be responsive and helpful throughout (including making an extra trip to deliver the charger cord). He wasn't high pressure, generally knew the car pretty well (not quite all the engineering details, but that's a high bar in an EV!), and apologized for the credit check thing that didn't go quite right in the sales process. He was very patient as we asked to go back and check a few more things about the car. He was extremely helpful at helping us decide whether to buy the display car, or wait for one in a coming shipment. He volunteered early on that their dealer markup was $2K, a reasonably small number compared to the dealers I talked to. He was the reason we were able to decide to buy the car on the spot (so credit where it's due). General vibe of dealership: Organized, fairly professional, very male in the show room. What little bit of negotiating we did do was straightforward; I'm guessing at least some of the sales people would have been respectful of women buyers as well. Their stock of Bolt EVs was far higher than any other dealership. Administration: Here are the things I didn't like: (1) The quoted MSRP at the front desk was $900 higher than the MSRP on the sticker. This was explained as "HQ changes the MSRPs and we hadn't updated that sticker." <ahem> (2) When we want in to pay for and pick up the car, we were told that they hadn't been able to run the credit check so could I please release the credit freeze. Granted, my bad to have not thought of that. But their bad not to go through that step before I got in the door. (3) When we went in the second time to pick up the car, we were first ones in the door, there was still a 15 or 20 minute wait while finances were prepared. (What in that process couldn't have been done the day before?) And that doesn't include (4) To add someone to the registration, they wanted to do a credit check on her credit! To validate her identity, supposedly. It's pretty cynical. Finance: The finance person was very easy to work with, up to a point. The first issue was that one paper they wanted signed says (roughly) "California law says you must have a front license plate. But you have asked us not to install the front license plate. So now it is your responsibility." As I pointed out, 4 or 5 times, I never asked them not to install the front license plate, and anyway, they always install it. The answers to this complaint made no sense, unless you count the one "If you don't sign it, we can't sell you the car." I asked to speak to the finance manager and she said "I am the manager." I can't count the number of ways this is broken, people. Then, there is the upsell. There's the short-list upsell (3 items, about $3K I think?) and the long-list upsell (about 7 items). She did not, not, not like taking a simple 'no thank you' for an answer. So that took about 15 minutes—8 anyway—before she would drop her various attempts to get me to sign one or more of these amazing offers. If I knew a way to find a dealer that didn't do that kind of stuff, I would be there so fast. But the final number for the check matched the quoted number/arrangement from the day before, so we can count our blessing there. And the paperless signing was impressive. Logistics: Car was ready for test driving, and car was ready for pickup all charged up, they gave me the manual the night before (*very* helpful!!), car condition was 99.35% perfect (can live with smudges on hubcaps). The only thing was they forgot to put the charger and cord into the car. Oops! We got it later in the day thanks to Jason. Final note: Overall this was a tolerable experience—which made it good, as car buying goes. 4 hours total time, at least 2.5 of which were directly addressing our needs. Still, there are so many things the dealership could do to make it more frictionless. As much volume as Capitol Chevrolet does, there is a niche market there to be filled for buyers or test drivers who know what they want and would like to skip the games. Just sayin'.