Flatirons Subaru

Early September 2007, and I was in the market to buy a 2008 Impreza WRX hatchback with automatic transmission and as few factory-installed options as possible (invoice $26,962; MSRP $28,595). These cars had just come out, and were rare across the state. I live in Boulder, so wanted to give my local dealer an advantage. I solicited bids from every dealer in the state, but only three cars in my configuration were in the state. Sean Faling from Flatirons Imports promised to get me one of these, and he submitted a crazy-low bid: $24,012 + taxes, $26,007.40 out the door (based on an erroneous 8.31% tax rate, which should have been 8.16%). This was the lowest bid I received by ~$1.5K, so I started trying to clarify. After much song and dance and about 20 emails later (Sean has the habit of not answering my questions until the second or third time I've asked), Sean suddenly discovers that he made a mistake and forgot to include the cost of the Premium Package that's required with automatic transmission. Okay, so either he's inept, or he low-balled me. Either way, I should have stopped dealing with this dealership right there. (It also should have raised my suspicions that he kept insisting that, by talking to other dealerships, I was making it hard for him to get the lowest price possible. Ha!) But no, I kept corresponding. His next, more realistic bid was $25,536 + taxes. This was just about the same as Heuberger Motors's bid in Colorado Springs (~100 miles away, but they offered to deliver the car to my door). So, idiot-me, I still wanted to keep my business local, so I kept negotiating with Sean at Flatirons. I wanted to get everything written via email before coming down to put down a deposit, but Sean is so maddeningly cagey and non-committal in writing. That should have been yet another warning sign, but I ignored it. After I sent him basically a terse ultimatum email on a Wednesday (because I was ready to go with Heuberger, which had been waiting patiently), he finally committed to the specifications and color of the car I would be putting a deposit on. Can you believe he wanted me to lay down $1,000 without even telling me what color the car is or what options are included?! So I went down on a Wednesday late afternoon and put down the deposit. At that time, he assured me multiple times that he would email me the very next day to tell me whether he could get the car. Thursday came and went. I emailed three times, no response. No response on his cell phone either. Finally I call the dealership at around 5pm, and the receptionist says "Sean is off today." Great. On Friday, Sean says he "caught a cold" yesterday and so didn't go in. Whatever. Anyway, Sean sends a couple more uninformative emails until ~2pm, when he finally admits that he isn't able to get the car he promised. Now, finally, I've come to my senses and decide to drop this guy. So I got my $1,000 deposit refunded and hope never to have to interact with this sales staff again. This was perhaps the most frustrating sales experience I've ever had in my life. Congratulations, Flatirons Imports! In stark contrast is the experience I had with Heuberger Motors in Colorado Springs. (I'll be writing a review on them shortly.) The folks at Heuberger were informative and straight-up in all their emails (with a few exceptions, most prominently where they made a ~$400 "mistake" in their favor when calculating my taxes, which I caught). After dropping Sean and Flatirons on late Friday afternoon, I called the folks at Heuberger and was able to get the deal closed ($27,311 invoice; $29,162 MSRP; $26,213 + tax sale price; $28,351.98 OTD) and have the car delivered to my door within four hours (~100 mile drive), arriving ~9pm on a Friday night. Now that's customer service! Now I'm the proud and happy owner of a new 08 WRX hatchback, but, perhaps most importantly, dishonest/inept Flatirons Imports didn't get any of my money.