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Prices Paid: Buying & Leasing Experiences Kia Sedona Prices Paid and Buying Experience
544 messages, Last post on Oct 23, 2009 at 2:04 PM
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It would take hours and volumes to relate the whole horror story of the botched deal, incompetent, unethical office staff, "stalker" salesman and the lack of interest or respect from the Kia Store in Clarksville, IN. This is part of all of the "Kia Store" chain in the Louisville, KY area that are part of the Montgomery auto group. NEW 2005 Sedona LX new $18K and change. Clean deal, no trade. All incentives and rebates to dealer for the price. Includes $1000 "competitive vehicle" discount for the old ratty Aerostar we're keeping. There are no document fees around here. Dealer prep was $200 and it took them two tries and they STILL didn't get it all done. First try they left all of the plastic on the carpet - just dropped the mats over it. Left several pieces of the clear tape on door posts, etc. They had overnight and a whole next day to get it done. After the second try it is resolved now but took us job time and drive time to get there. BUT - when we went to get it - finally - Monday - after "owning it" for a week without actually HAVING it - they gave it to my wife with a "check engine" light on! Turns out to be a faulty fuel system pressure sensor and they still have the car because they didn't have the part. Now, how in H*LL can you give a customer as much trouble as this deal has been (over 10 trips to dealer to try to fix this crap with time lost from work and family!) and then futz up AGAIN by handing over a faulty vehicle?!!! Paper work was, and still is a nightmare. Yes - bought in Indiana and going to KY. BUT - this dealership is four miles from the KY line and less than 10 minutes drive in peak rush hour. They are over here every day to transfer vehicles. First try they made out IN title work, not KY. Second try they convinced my wife (it's her car, but KY demands both spouses on title) it's okay to forge MY signature on the docs. Didn't realize they couldn't charge us the IN excise tax on the heavy vehicle until we caught them and brought it out. There was also a dandy dealer-installed "bonus" that is mandatory at the Louisville area Kia stores on ALL Kias - a pass-card anti-theft device. This is an e-bay $25 piece of crap that is crudely installed and marginally effective and comes with a mandatory "stripe" set that is the Walmart $4.97 plastic tape crap! Price for this dealer profit rip-off? $1295 - NON NEGOTIABLE! For $30 worth of crap. No, it will NOT be covered by KIA warranty and had to be installed by cutting the ignition switch relay wire which may actually VOID the Kia warranty! The "security stripe package" is included in the $18K deal, so it isn't all THAT bad -but the additional $1200 profit for the dealer just REALLY tees me off since you can't get one without it, and you'd have to go a hundred miles or more in any direction to get away from this gorilla dealer complex. We have a call open with KIA USA customer relations - the poor girl who called us last night all bubbly and charming to "welcome" us to the "Kia Family" doesn't get paid anywhere NEAR enough to hear what she had to hear about the dealer and the problems. We did not abuse her mind you - she didn't do all this - the Montgomery Kia Store did this. She has opened a file with us with the Relations folks who are supposed to call us back today. This oughta get good! About the dealer rep: He actually "came on" to my wife, suggested they could meet some time, then actually visited her, unannounced, at her place of work - a SECURE installation! He had some imagined paper-work "emergency" he needed her to RIDE with him - alone - to fix! Well, a call to the dealer manager (who ducks our calls now - we have to deal with the Montgomery VP level) proved he had been told to call us and see when we could arrange to sign the paper at the dealer! He also one time before engaged her in conversation at the dealer for ten minutes or more, under the guise of the office working on some papers - only to at last admit to my exasperated wife that in reality he was just keeping her there to visit with her! We have discussed this with the Montgomery people as a sexual harassment complaint and the dealership manager blew it away as a joke! Then they told us he was being suspended for three days without pay. We now know one of those days is his normal day off anyway, and the other days are Tuesday and Wednesday - the slowest sales days they have! We are actually investigating criminal complaint against the rep under KY stalking statutes. We feel he is a time-bomb waiting to assault or compromise some other woman some other time and simply shouldn't BE in a customer-contact job, so even if the charges were to be dropped, he'd have a "file" and the protective order would stand for a while. Anyway - we really would like to say how much we like the Sedona, but since we've driven it less than forty miles in nine days - all between our home and the dealer - we really don't have much to say! I'll get back to the forum on that maybe later, unless we can succeed in breaking this deal and getting involved with a conscientious dealer of some other brand. Too bad - we really want a Sedona but we can't put up with this crap. I have to honestly warn anyone in the greater Lousiville area to avoid the Kia Store as the incompetent, unethical, and abusive plague it is and just buy something else somewhere else. (We have since found WELL over two dozen people in a week who have had similar problems with these dealers and they, too, tell people to run for their lives!)
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Replying to: fortyfiver (Sep 14, 2005 6:07 am) I live in Louisville, Ky and bought my Mazda MPV at the Craig and Landreth Mazda which is in Clarksville, IN ...not to far from where you bought your Kia I believe. No problems with our paperwork. You may want to consider having the Kia Store in Louisville(on Preston hwy) service your Sedona....when you get the vehicle back. It sounds like the Kia Store in Clarksville is fairly incompetent all around. Good luck.
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Replying to: jipster (Sep 16, 2005 5:18 am) We spoke with and finally got some movement from a person fairly high up in the "Big M" corp who shelters himself down at the Preston Big M Chevy headquarters. He was very helpful and courteous. I do believe I caught him completely cold on the affair with no one below him ever communicating the issues to him. The people below him have all the manners and tactics of people between aluminum siding sales and child pornography. Anyway, we got the car back, finally, again, yesterday. They delivered it to my wife at work as agreed. It is in perfect presentation shape, full tank, 50 road-test miles and the service writer for Clarksville came with it to assure my wife that "service is an entirely different company and structure than sales" and that she need have no fear of doing service business with them. BS! Montgomery signs their checks just like they do sales people and the managers. One pocket, one management structure. I really think Chip Montgomery has lost focus of the old Big M over the years and there is no longer any interest in customer choice or customer satisfaction. Many loyal chevy buyers have left Big M for other dealerships, I know. I had gotten some help from someone at Preston Kia Store during this, to get to the "Big Kia Guy" and she assured me I can get service there, so we'll try it. They have offered us free service for a year to "make up for it" but I never got that in writing and I have no idea if that would include parts and labor or either. But for anything not requiring Kia - like mandatory service checks for warranty or actual warranty corrections - we're going to use a local garage we use for our other vehicles - a company who has never screwed us, always does fast, correct, clean work at a reasonable price, and are darned nice folks to boot. We have recommended them to many friends who are equally satisfied with their work. We'll see how this next chapter goes. At this point the wife drives it now, we have a long trip scheduled in November, and if anything uncomfortable comes up, it goes, regardless of our loss. We're sort of just waiting for some Chevy dealers to get a decent supply of HHRs we can look over. Craig & Landreth has a great reputation - well deserved over the years. We considered the MPV and for the life of me now I can't remember why we passed on it. We also considered the Honda Ody but it is price-prohibitive - or at least more than we wanted to spend on a vehicle for the use we intend. Chrysler products of any sort were out from the start as there are easily as many defects in them as any of the Kia line. We ran into some serious p*ss-poor sales tactics over at Swope Auto World too when we looked at Saturns and wanted to see some Hondas. Won't go into it but apparently with all the leftover 05 Vues in V6 FW-only there must be some hellacious bonus money for moving them, because that is ALL the salesman would even discuss with us. It ended up we really liked the Sedona despite what I know about problems in previous years. I've watched Kia and Hyundai carefully from the start because in my engineering career I worked with Korean engineers and businesses and they can be VERY good! Every car manufacturer has glitches and problems especially with components, and as someone said here - "KISS" is a good policy with cars these days. The serious troubles seem to be with expensive "features". Why we opted for the LX. Lesson: It all works out in the end. You may not really LIKE how it works out, but it all will work out. |
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OOPS! Had to rewrite this one after it was pulled because of the "marketing" reference! Sooo... ***** Well guys, we finally heard from Kia about our, um, "unhappy" response to their first "Welcome To The Kia Family" call. This concerns our new 2005 Kia Sedona which has been a freaking disaster from the start. (see #176, #177, #178) The California Kia folks called today while we were at work and asked that we call back, which we did. Of course, the "Al" used on that extension for today was not available. Second shift that extension is named "Sally" or "Rafeesh". I called back at 8:30 pm Eastern Time and got the typical robot phone service rotation crap designed to get rid of anyone but the mentally impaired contemplating suicide and the ones on so many drugs they forgot they didn't call their local pusher. I finally got something almost human who wanted the Sedona VIN number before we could proceed. There should be no need for that since the call made to me was for a specific complaint, returning a call from them, not for a new file. Anyway, I did manage to convince the first poor human minimum wage telemarketing insulator that he was, by virtue of answering the phone, incapable of handling the call. (Afterall, last week he worked for Microsoft and the week before for AOL.) The next dolt to answer the phone was some joke named "Wes". (Likely not any form of supervisor - just the guy in the next cubicle who was done with his other call.) Despite the fact that they inform you right up front that "your call may be monitored for quality control purposes" - meaning they ARE recording this call! - I informed ol' "Wes" that I was recording this call, which I was. (We are at the point any conversation is possible courtroom evidence.) Ol' "Wes" informed me in his best "I can't give it to you without onions" tone, that he was not allowed to give permission to record a call. I told ol "Wes" in my most tactful way I can instruct a rodent or a car dealer that KIA has been a really bad idea, this deal was that terrible and since he won't go on with a recording we have no further conversation possible. (No, it WASN'T that mild - but I don't think Edmunds will allow me to say even part of what was said!) So the Sedona goes at the earliest possible chance no matter what the loss. It is that disappointing - the car that already had a warranty repair, for something that should never have happened to a lawn mower, at less than 150 miles - we only drove about 40 of that and then only to and from the dealer trying to get the paper work right! Kinda sucks - in my opinion - that the "wonderful" Kia warranty goes to 60/60,000 for the next buyer - but that isn't a problem since the whole "10 years 100,000 miles" is a damned marketing fraud lie - in my non-lawyer opinion. Anyway, we'll sell it or trade it quick as we can, hopefully before the "we finally got it right on the third try" dealer-prep detailing wears off. The possible - in my opinion - stalker who sold us the car doesn't go with the deal but I can call him and arrange something for the new owner if his wife is bored. I'll be over at the Chevy HHR forums. NOTE: I CANNOT EVER recommend a Kia of any sort simply because - in my opinion - Kia stands only by their profit and questionable marketing ploys to get that profit. There is NO commitment to customer satisfaction. (Not a lot different than any other manufacturer but at least some of the others keep the crooked dealers in line.) The Kia Store dealerships in the Louisville area, being all under the single roof of the Montgomery corp., are best avoided at any cost - my opinion, my wife's opinion, and the opinion of now about four dozen other people with whom we've personally talked. If their incompetence wasn't enough, their lack of any sort of ethics is beyond belief. My opinion, based on experience, mind you...
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Replying to: fortyfiver (Sep 18, 2005 4:01 am) If you really just wanted to record the call instead of picking a fight with the phone rep, you should have recorded it without telling him. It sounds like you knew he was going to say what he said. Kia's customer service phone system is no better or worse than anybody else's. They are all like that, and the person on the other end of the line rarely, if ever, has any authority or knowledge to resolve customer problems.
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Replying to: fortyfiver (Sep 14, 2005 6:07 am) RE the security stripe...you can confirm with Kia, but if it is a mandatory dealer installed option, they back it with the 5 yr/60k bumper to bumper. That is what was on the bug gard info I was given. However, if it is just something aftermarket that the dealer sticks on to increase his profit margin, I'd guess you'd have to press Kia hard if it failed and the dealer won't make it right. From Kia website: "All Genuine Kia Parts and Accessories are designed and manufactured to provide a precise fit and years of trouble-free service. Kia stands behind this quality with a 5-year/60,000 mile warranty when the Parts or Accessory is installed prior to delivery of your new Kia vehicle. Parts or Accessories installed by a Kia dealer after vehicle delivery carry a 12-month unlimited mileage warranty or the remainder of the 5-year/60,000 mile warranty, whichever is longer. For the do-it-yourselfer, the warranty is 12-months, unlimited mileage. See your Kia dealer for further details." |
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Replying to: bluedevils (Sep 19, 2005 3:27 am) Remember the flap over Monica Lewinsky getting recorded? Some states have very strict wiretapping laws while with others it is just due regard. I don't think I'd record someone without knowing my state's rules...but I agree with the rest. Sounds like 45'er just needs to vent. Must admit that the more automated the world gets, the less personal it seems. I'm sure there are a few folks working for that dealership who actually DO care. The trick is finding one who is in power to do something about it. I'd try talking to my local newspaper reader advocate to see if they have any leverage. Bad press is almost always a way of getting action. |
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Since '05 models are still stuck at the dealer lots, what is the best price I should expect to get on either the LX or the EX? Some people here have said they got their EX models for really low prices. Is it really possible to get an EX with ABS for around $17,000? I was quoted $200 under invoice minus the $3500 rebate, which puts it around $19,000. I could understand getting the LX model for that much.
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Replying to: coffmlu (Oct 27, 2005 5:57 pm)
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