In July I made the big mistake of going to Champion Dodge in Barrington, IL. I had been looking for a used certified Jeep Grand Cherokee or Jeep Liberty. After shopping around on the Internet and asking questions of the on-line sales people I settled on Champion for one of three possible vehicles.
Now, I'm not a novice to buying cars, but lucky for me all my experiences with previous dealers, Dodge World in Des Plaines, IL (now gone) and Hoskins Chevrolet in Rolling Meadows, were fantastic.in fact I and my friends bought multiple SUVs and pickups from Hoskins. But I wanted something a bit closer to home as I had moved, and boy did I pay for it.
First off the salesmen were okay. They knew what they were selling and they actually admitted when they didn't know something and had to look it up. That was refreshing. I was trading in an '03 Suburban in excellent condition but that still had $10K due on it. I finally decided after a few days on an '05 Jeep Liberty at $17,000 and as it was an Internet Special was going to work from there down.
Talking with the salesman he ran back and forth with the finance guy, Eddie. Fast Eddie agreed to not only the Internet Special price but $1,500 off that and $12,500 on my trade-in. Effectively that would give me the Jeep at $13,000 which is the area and range I wanted.
So all the haggling was finally done right at their closing and I was going to pick up the Jeep the next day and sign all the papers.
I get there and to the Business Manager, Mr. Modesto. He hands me all the finance papers and lo and behold I find out he's actually a Lienance Manager!
The papers had my trade-in at $12,000 (lost $500), the Jeep price at $17,000 (forgot all about the $1,500). I was pissed. I said this isn't even close to what was agreed to. So Modesto calls in Fast Eddie and Eddie says "oh, I'm sorry, i really don't remember talking about any of this, I'd be slitting my throat at those prices you're talking about." I said "Well, this is utter bullshit, we made an agreement and I want the prices we talked about or I want to see the owner." I raised my voice considerably as Modesto's office was off the sales floor. Fast Eddie said "Well, okay, I don't want an upset customer, I'll to talk to [Modesto] and we'll work this out."
So Modesto comes back in and says "I have the new information, sorry, I just do what they tell me." (Never mind this guy is the Business Manager!). So he starts typing up the new papers on his computer.in the middle of this his phone rings, he says "okay" over it and hangs up. He then tears out the paper he just did, tears it up and throws it out. Types a few times, puts in a new sheet, prints it and hands it to me.
I read the paper and now it has the Jeep price with the $1,500 off but they then took $1,000 more off the trade-in! Right in front of my face, with me sitting there, they pulled this stunt over the phone!
I was LIVID! This time I said, loudly, that I didn't appreciate being ripped off and cheated like this so blatantly, that there was no way in hell I would stand for it and I wanted to see the owner immediately! Modesto said that it was okay, to calm down, that he'd fix it all. He then typed up and gave me the papers with all the correct information on them including the interest rates, etc. That we agreed to the previous day.
I had forgotten my paycheck stub though so had to drop it off the following night, but did drive away with the Jeep. Then I get a call that they lost my pay stub so I had to drop off another copy.
And then I blew it. They called me a week later to say they got me a lower interest rate as an "apology" for what happened. I came in and read over the papers and it was lower and so agreed to it. But what I didn't realize is that it was for a 12 month longer loan. So they got me.
They pulled every damn trick in the book. I encourage people to NEVER go to Champion Dodge, they are ripoffs of the highest order. I did file a complaint with Dodge's main office about this and decided to do it at usacomplaints.com when someone reminded me about the site.
Mike
Fox River Grove, Illinois
U.S.A.
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