AutoNation Honda Columbus

To start off with, we knew exactly what car we wanted to purchase when we showed up, so we told our sales lady, and she brought out the exact car. We were ready to pull the trigger, she got all the paperwork for us, and upon going through finance, we decided the monthly payment was out of our price range. She immediately pulled up another car that was one step down, and that vehicle fit our budget. She was great. Then we get to the financing part… Takes forever and ever and ever, which we were expecting, you know, cause we were buying a car. We didn’t expect it to be fast. We get in the finance guy’s office to sign everything and have issues with the title of our trade-in: The car was in my wife’s father’s name, but he signed it over to us, making it legally OUR car (he’s a lawyer, so knows all the technicals of this stuff). Anyways, we had to bring paperwork home for him to sign, despite the trade in car being in our name. Upon agreeing to sign, even though it was no longer his vehicle, he noticed his name was spelt incorrectly on all of the paperwork. We contacted Honda and were told to bring him in the next day to fill out the paperwork in person and they would fix the typo. The other issue day of was that the finance guy had already disconnected his card machine for the night. I was kinda confused by that. So we had to wait until the next day to pay our down payment. Another very strange thing, I thought, that we could not pay anything for the car, but take it home. So anyways, when we went up there to have her dad sign the corrected paperwork, we paid the down payment. They called later that day and say they need the last 3 check stubs of my wife. It was the weekend and she did not have access to her check stubs outside of work, so they said she could bring email it to them on Monday when she got to work. So she did. Didn’t hear back from them for 9 days, when all of the sudden, it was IMPERATIVE that we call them ASAP or they are going to take the car back. So we call, and the paystubs did not have her year to date pay on it. Keep in mind, this day was the DEADLINE for the deal, and they just now saw that it didn’t have year to date pay. Long story short, my wife’s government job does not put year to date pay on their paystubs. So she had to request a year to date document from HR. They were great and got it to her in a matter of hours. We submitted that to the finance department, but that apparently wasn’t good enough. A SIGNED, OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT DOCUMENT wasn’t “sufficient”. They told us we had to come up there. So my wife brought her laptop, all paystubs, and the official document from HR. After sitting up there for 2 hours, he made her take a screenshot of some “quick glance” stuff regarding pay on the HR website. Then they couldn’t figure out how to print it. My wife ended up taking over the computer to email it to the employee, reboot the computer, troubleshoot the printer, and finally got it to print. No “thanks” or “sorry for the inconvenience” or anything from the finance guy. No nothing. After sitting up there almost 2 hours, our sweet sales lady was like “I don’t know why they’re having such issues with this. It doesn’t make sense. Y’all can go home and I’ll update y'all tomorrow.” Thankfully everything went through, but it was a LOT more difficult than it needed to be. I purchased my truck by myself from CarMax a few years ago and had ZERO issue, other than trying to talk with out of country customer service for my bank to let my card be charged the down payment. Took less than 3 hours and never heard from them again, cause they processed all the paperwork correctly. Unfortunately, my wife’s first time buying a car experience was not as good. She never wants to buy another car because of this experience. This is why I have mixed feelings. Our sales associate was fantastic and would get 5 stars. But because of the financing department, they are getting 2/5 stars. I will tell people to go visit our sales lady, but I’ll also warn them of the financing department.