Stohlman Subaru of Sterling

I recently purchased a used vehicle from Stohlman and I couldn’t be more unhappy. Let me start off by saying that I called Cathy Stohlman, the president of Stohlman Automotive Group three times over the course of 10 days, leaving voice mails explaining I had a bad experience with one of her dealerships that I wanted to share with her as I was sure that she would be concerned about. Apparently she does not care and her inability to respond was consistent with the treatment I had already received. I saw a vehicle listed that I was interested in and after daily communication with the salesman; I came out for a test drive with my wife. I had done a ton of research on the dealership as well as this particular vehicle and I was interested. Knowing that the vehicle was priced below Blue Book, and had a Carfax, I made it clear to the salesman that as long as I got a decent price for my trade in, I was certainly interested in the car. Test drove the car and liked it. Next thing I knew, the Finance guy, Fernando Avila came out and said by signing a promissory note I could leave with the new vehicle. I never expected to leave with the car and I know that dealers are highly motivated to close the sale prior to the customer leaving and having second thoughts and not returning for the car. I get it; I’ve sold, managed teams of sales people and am not naive about sales tactics. I loved the idea of driving home in the new car and said yes. To be clear, this was a “lay down” sale. No bickering or negotiating as I knew this was a solid car and priced well. I chose not to get the car detailed as we had already been there for two hours, not expecting to leave with the car. I had to sit with Mr Avila as he attempted to sell me an extended warranty package for the car. I found it slightly comical that when I didn’t agree on the warranty extension, he then proceeded to cut the price three times in a matter of 90 seconds, lowering the price of the package by over 30%. Great way to create value. I left promising to stay in touch on the wire transfer coming in a couple of days. I called Mr. Avila a couple of days later to update the timing of the wire transfer. A day later I was looking for the Carfax as I wanted to see when the timing belt had been changed as the car had 95,000 miles on it and I haven’t bought a car for my wife or I without knowing the last time the timing belt had been changed. Carfax was no longer on the website as it was sold and reached out to the salesman. He responded later with the Carfax and I noticed that there was no mention of a timing belt replacement. All the work had been done on the car at Pohanka Acura so I called up their service department and sure enough, the belt had never been replaced. Roxanne at Pohanka was great and told me that Acura recommends changing the belt every 110,000 miles or 7 years. The car is 7 years old. I gave this some thought and called a friend, now retired from running Car Dealerships his entire career and explained my predicament. In his experience he said that this happens all the time, and the bottom line was he was always motivated to make the customer happy. He suggested I “appeal to their better angels” and ask to have Stohlman do the work, and split the cost to with them. Make no mistake, I was going to reach out and see what their response was previous, but my friends feedback made me feel comfortable asking if they would pitch in. I reached out to the salesman via email approximately 90 minutes after he sent me the Carfax and told him that I’d discovered that the Belt had never been changed and that was a concern of mine considering the cost involved. I sent a second email. My emails went 4 days w/o a reply so I texted the salesman. He responded and said he JUST FOUND THE EMAILS and what did I want them to do. I told him. At no time did I threaten to withdraw the sale, but I just thought they might help out. & hours later the salesman emails back and says his sales manager had left for the day and was off the following day and would call me on Thursday. That was over two weeks ago and I’ve never received a call. Mr Avila called 4 days later and asked what the status of the wire transfer was apparently unaware of what was going on. I brought him up to speed and he made a halfhearted attempt to explain that I had signed a note and agreed to purchase the car. I told him that this was not a negotiating tactic, that I fully intended to buy the car, but had not wired the money as I was unhappy that the sales manager had not called as promised. Four more days go by and without any contact from Stohlman, and I’m getting pissed. What should have been a very happy day and car buying experience, was summarily ruined by these [non-permissible content removed] lack of professionalism. I called Avila and told him I was upset, that I just wanted to be done with Stohlman , and I would wire the $$ the next day. He listened to me, said he would share the conversation with the sales manager. No one ever reached out to me. I called Avila the next day to make sure that the $$ came through and it went to voice mail. I assumed he was off that day and called back the next day and it also went to voice mail. Three weeks later and he has never called back to verify that he received my wire transfer. At this point I called Cathy three times over the course of 10 days only to be reminded exactly how much Stohlman appreciates my business. They couldn’t care less, they got their money.