I don't know how to reply to that. Yes I was leaving at that point. I think you are saying that the only way I could have left the dealership w/o pissing someone off was to buy right then. Sorry I screwed that one up.
UGA, I think the issue is the way in which things went down. You probably should have just told him you needed to think it over rather than being truthful and telling him you were going to work another dealer against his best offer. Its just more tactful that way. Imagine if the dealer told you, I know I can sell this car to you for $500 under MSRP, but I think I'll wait for the next customer to come in and see if I can get him to buy it for sticker, then I'll call you...
Hey BD, ECUtek will be releasing their Custom ECU and EZ-ECU tuning soon, they say. You might want to do your homework a lil more before jumping on the AP bandwagon. http://forum.ecutek.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=610 Check out their delta dash software as well; http://www.ecutek.com/products/deltadash/
Already jumped Trey. I have the AP already. I also have been reading up on the Ecutek tuning software and it seems that they are kind of dragging ass on it. I am moving kind of fast on the mods, so not knowing whether or not I will have this alleged tuning software next week or 2 years from now is enough to make me stick with my AP for the time being. Plus, as there will most likely be a local ProTUNER very soon. Since Ecutek and AP are both just ECU reflashes, then there is nothing really that differentiates them other than the availability of a ProTUNER and the parameters that the end-user software allows you to control.
I saw it. I was making fun since you said the ECUtek Custom ECU could be out in 2 days or 2 years, same with any shop that will tune the Pro Tuner. It could happen in 2 days or 2 years. That's basically why I sold my AP. I didn't want to wait for a custom tune and get by with a generic tune that doesn't account for my mods. Mine has been sold since last summer, lil over a year now.
Well, to be fair Scott has said he can StreetTune your car, and unlike the ecutek customECU vaporware ProTuner and StreetTuner really do exist and are being actively used _today_.
Oh, I got what your saying. From the way Scott is talking though, the ProTUNER will be into play in a short time. He has supposedly lined up a dozen people who are willing to pay for at least three hours of tuning, so that more than justifies the cost of the software. As for EcuTek's software, there is nothing to be said about a release date. I know though that I would rather have end-user function over a custom tuned reflash that just sits there until I mod the car the next time.
I actually had a very nice experience with Ed Voyles Subaru. I had a very bad experience from Ed Voyles Honda, only in the Finance Dept. My salesperson was Sharon Cameron and she was pleasant,honest, and extremely professional. She helped me get a great deal on Ruby...That is what I name my SRR Rex, by the way...LOL. It is too bad that the dealership is no longer around for subies. Mark
Sog Sucks! I purchased my 2005 Sti at Subaru of Gwinnett a few months ago, and I will never buy another car from them again! I had the worst experience ever and of course it was after the sale! I'm sure the service department and the parts department is not the same way and I should not judge them by the experience I had with the sales department and sales management, but I just don't even want to pull in the dealership! So even though I live just a few minutes away fro SOG, I will be taking my car somewhere else for service or parts or anything else for that matter! I am not gonna go into details here! I am sure other people have had good experience buying from them, its just that I did not!
j69 - please give us a chance to work on your car. I apologize for the experience you had when you bought it. Most people that actually buy one liked their experience.... If you had problems when you bought it, did you tell the sales manager? If not he really would like to know. Just give him a call here (better not to post it here.) The service, parts, and performance are seperate from sales... SS
I spoke with a so called sales manager and he took my name and phone number, but never called me back! Like you said the sales and service department are seperate, but like I said I do not even want to pull in the dealership at all, it makes me mad just seeing the dealership, while driving by! Sorry! I am not taking it out on the service or parts department for what the sales department did. It's just that you guys are in the same building and I will never turn into that dealership again!
j9 so you are mad because they never called you back? That's kinda a weak reason. Ever think they were slammed and forgot? I know I forget stuff when I've got 10 things going on at any one time. Give Scott, Lisa and Neil a chance, they are really cool and go the extra mile.
J9, Since, as you see, there are people from SoG on this board, it really might help if you DO go into details. A review that simply says a dealerships sucks, basically because you say it sucks, may not help the next person out who reads this before trying to make a decision as to what dealership to buy from. Just my HO .02...
OK, I go into SOG to buy a white Sti. Gary Sykes shows me what he has, no white STi. I do some research and find one at Classic, so I go back to SOG, because it is alot closer to my house, and asked him if he can transfer the car from Classic to SOG, he says sure, no problem. We come to a price and he says we have to do the transaction before he can bring the car from Classic, so before I can test drive or even examine the car I would have to purchase it. So I go ahead and purchase the car, trusting everything is alright. After I sign everything Gary tells me the car has over 400 miles on it. Too Late, at this time I already bought the car. Gary calls me the next day and tells me to come pick up my car. I go there and I pickup my Sti. A couple of days later, when washing my car I see that there are about 20 to 25 dings on the hood and roof, obviously hail damage and not just that, there was a 2 inch dent on the roof, right above the windsheild and the front lip had 3 pretty deep scratches, looks like someone test driving must have came out of a steep driveway and didn't slow down. So I take the car back to SOG and tell Gary about it he says no problem, we'll take care of it. We both go out side and me and Gary start to mark all the dings with little stickers. So I leave the car and in a few days, he says its all done come pick up yoor car. I go back to pick up my car, Gary shows me how they fixed the scratches on the lip and the dings and the big dent. First thing I inspect was the big dent, they pulled most of the dent out, but you can still see ripples. He tells me thats the best they can do, so alright I can live with that. Next thing that hits me is that the car is filthy, I droped it off clean and I guess they left it outside and the pollen and dust was all over my car, so it was hard to see if all of the hail damage was gone, at that time everything looked fine, besides the ripple, which I told Gary it was fine! So about two weeks later washing my car again, I still see the little dings from the hail damage. Most of the big ones were taken out, but few of the smaller ones were still there! So I call up Gary and tell him that all of the dings were not taken out. This is when he tells me that he can't do anything about that, because it has been too long and then goes on to tell me that every car on his lot has a few dings on them in a angry voice. He says he will tell his manager about it and he will call me in a few days. 2 weeks go by no phone call. So I go in to the dealership and ask to talk to the manager, a sales manager comes out (can't rember his name) and tells me the guy who fixed the dings on my car, wasn't the guy who usually does their work, and takes my name and phone number and says he will call me when he can reach the guy that does all of their ding removals. NO CALL!
I took my car to Dent Wizard and they took care of the rest of the dents! Thanks Dent Wizard! Thanks SOG for selling me a hail damaged car!
No offense but that's ridiculous. You think he should lie to a salesman to avoid hurting his feelings? Give me a break. As a consumer you have every right to shop around and get the best deal you can. He's a professional (if you can say that) salesperson and should grasp that concept. If he can't handle that he is obviously in the wrong profession. How much did dent wizard charge if you don't mind me asking? JC
My next car will definitely be from SoG....Very professional staff, plus they are knowledgeable and helpful... I just hope that they will have some Black STi's left in 2007...I wanna get one soooo badddd...I should keep mine longer than 1 year also... Mark
i got some dents taken out at dent wizard also... was a little expensive but it looks like there never were any dents... very good work
I have taken all of my cars to Dent Wizard! They usually charge about $60-$80 for a door ding, but will work with you if you have more then one dent! I actually had a few $20 off coupons, so that helped a little! But like Miloman said you can't even tell they were there at all. I had 2 huge dents, more like creases on the upper quater panel on my S2000 and they took it out, no problem, I could not believe it. It was like they were never there! Fix-a-dent is not bad either, went there once with my M3!
Sounds like alot of negative and positive things about SOG. but I still like Scott, he's a good tuner. I never bought a car from SOG anyway LOL
My dealings thus far with the parts and service departments have been very good. Last Friday (Friday before the Labor Day holiday even) afternoon I found a screw in the right front tire (650 miles on the tire... still trying to get the vomit smell out of my shoes) and SoG was able to get me taken care of in the waning hours prior to the weekend. Thanks Steve and Summer (and the unknown tech)!
Subaru of Gwinnett is the worst dealer I have ever had the displeasure of dealing with and here's why... Part I I brought my Legacy wagon there for A/C repairs (more on that later) and also informed the service department that my low beams would cut-off randomly and you needed to flash the high beams to get them back on. I told them I believed the problem was the headlight switch but I wanted them to look at it. My mom called to inquire about the car and get some run down of costs. Steve informed her that the headlight switch was indeed the problem and that it would be approx. $655 for parts and 2 hours of labor to install. Of course didn't let them fix it. He also told me when I called back that he was glad I wasn't fixing it because his mechanic didn't want to do it. However I was suspicious so I gave Exeter Subaru a call and asked for the price of a headlight combination switch. To my surprise (sort of) he said it was about a hundred bucks. I ended up ordering one from Jamie at subarugenuineparts.com for $72. Here's SOG's quote... Here's my reciept from Jamie...
Part II While my car was there I asked Steve if he could get it smogged for me, since I just moved to GA. He said I missed their smog guy but he would get it taken care of. I go to pick up the car the first time and it's not smogged. No big deal since the car isn't either. (more on that later too) He again tells me he will take care of it. So I come to pick up the car and ask if he had gotten it smogged. He told me he took it to two smog places but they were unable to smog the car because they didn't have an AWD dyno. I told him it surprised me that they need a dyno for AWD cars since an AWD dyno is so expensive. He just confirmed that they were expensive and said he thought there was a Shell in Swanee (sp?) that had one. Of course I don't believe anything he says at this point so I go look it up. I asked on IA (I figure there would be some DSMers) and sure enough AWD cars don't need a dyno. I found the passage on the GA state site, not that anyone would doubt me on this one. I also got my car smogged at a place down the street from my house with no trouble. http://www.cleanairforce.com/rules/391-3-20-04.htm
Part III So I end at the beginning of my troubles. I bought the car with broken A/C, it blew ok but not cold and only on level 4. I took it to my mechanic at home who patched it up and said it worked OK but there were leaks that needed to be fixed eventually (for free mind you). I got in the car only to find it still didn't work. However I needed to get on with moving to Atlanta so I sucked it up and drove the car out and figured I'd fix it out here. I drove out with my mom and my parent's Tundra so I knew I'd have a car to borrow while the Legacy was down. Which brings me to SOG. I have order parts for my car from them before and had heard good things, so I figured they were my best bet. That was the start of my troubles. So my mom brought the car to the dealer for me because she is awesome and I had to be at school for orientation. Mind you we do it this day with the expectation that we will get the car back sooner so that my mom can go home. So she drops the car off and decides to take the bus back instead of waiting for me. She calls the bus company and asks where the stop she needs to start at is. They tell her and she asks for a ride to the stop. Someone (Steve I believe) insists that the bus company gave her the wrong stop and drops her off where he says the right stop is. Of course he's wrong and it takes her over an hour just to get back to the correct bus stop. In retrospect this was a good indicator of the sheer incompetence of SOG. Through a series of phone calls he tells me the compressor is bad and the dryer needs to be replaced to the tune of a little over a g. Sucks for me but I tell them to go ahead and do it. Steve says the car will be done maybe friday if not then monday (it's weds I think). So no call friday and I figure bummer parts didn't get there oh well. No call monday afternoon so I call and ask. He said parts aren't in yet. I say ok and ask when they will be in. He says probably tomorrow but he won't know for sure until they show up. I figure that's some BS but whatever there is nothing I can do. We do this phone call several times again until they finally get the parts at the end of the week. He said they weren't able to get just a compressor and something about a rebuild. I figured he meant a rebuilt compressor and said whatever when can I get my car and he tells me to come get it saturday (as in a week after they said it would be done). So I show up on saturday. To my surprise the bill is not the quoted $1085 but over $1300. Turns out what he had meant was they couldn't get just the compressor but instead had to order a whole rebuilt kit which includes the lines. I was a little dumb founded that had intended to replace the compressor and not the lines in the first place to be honest. However Steve agrees to give me the work for the original price. I was happy with that. So Steve pulls the car around and then goes to get who I presume is a mechanic. I was a little worried at this point. So I go out there and ask what's wrong. Steve says the A/C doesn't blow cold whenever you move the car. As in the same problem it had when I bought the car in (save the $50 fan switch to make it work on all levels which they did fix). Obviously I'm not amused at having just had over a grand worth of work done to the car only to have virtually nothing fixed. Steve tells us it's the cycling switch but won't know how much it will cost or how long it will take to get until Monday when he will call us. So I leave pissed off but composed since I'm frankly a little shocked at the situation. So I decide to do some homework. First I place a call to my mechanic back home. I tell him what happened and asked if he had looked at the compressor or not (which I knew he had since he told me he had fixed some of the leaks on it). He of course said yes and that it seemed to be working fine but there were a lot of leaks in the lines and what not. Basically confirming what I had thought. At this point I figure I should check the price of the cycling switch since things are getting fishy. So my next call is to Brian of subaruwrxparts.com aka Exeter Subaru since I trust him the most to be honest. After looking in the parts catalog he can't find it and goes to ask who I presume is a mechanic. It turns out the car doesn't have a cycling switch, wonderful. So come Monday of course no one calls. So my mom calls the dealer and asks for Steve (she's a salesperson and is capable of not expression the massive amount of anger I would have at this point). Turns out he does work on Monday, I'm shocked (not really). So she talks to Neil. He tells her what is wrong with the car (some expansion valve or something). She tells him the situation and about Steve telling us it was a cycling switch and that she was tired of them haphazardly replacing stuff trying to fix the car. He tells her she should talk to Steve and he will be in tomorrow. So come the next day and she gets a hold of Steve. I was not there for this conversation (I was in class). Eventually they come to the agreement that the car will be fixed and we will be charged the original quote. Steve insists the compressor was bad and offers that we have it taken somewhere else to have it tested (I'm sure it would become broken by the time I got it) and complains that they aren't making any money of the repair. I'm crying for you buddy. So I go get the car a few days later (finally working, they only had to replace everything!) and finally say goodbye to SOG. Now mind you my mom has had to stay an extra week for this. She has a company to run and had to drive to Canada a day after she ended up getting home. Cliff notes: SOG took over a week longer than they said they would to fix the A/C on my car because they replaced the wrong parts and failed to test the car before they tried to deliever it to me.
There is a japanese repair shop by my house that does Subarus. I think I'll mill in there sometime, maybe have them do the headlight switch and see how they do. I can fix most things myself if I have to.
sorry to hear about all ur troubles man... ive always had good experiences with the service and performance departments but im upset thats not shared by all
SoG I can definately see this happening at any dealership and I would be XXXXXX - pissed even after it was made right. However, do you think you were just venting when you suggested Steve or SoG would break a part to be sure the diagnosis was the same if you got a second opinion? The guys definately can overlook an issue, quote too high a price, comment on something they are not sure about and even screw-up but I don't see them as criminals breaking parts.
That makes one of us. Would they break it so that they could fix it? I highly doubt it. However would they "make sure" it was broken to save their asses? I wouldn't put it past them. However I never said they did any such thing, just that I'm not going to waste my time getting the blower tested.
Like I have say before. Fix it yourself using the service manual. Never trust another mechanic LOL. The mechanic did not even know that the car does not have a cycling switch. Thats pitiful. I can do that, replace everything at a cheaper price
I live in Georgia and went to Subaru of Gwinnett to look at the 2006 STI. It is a beautiful car, but the salesman seemed to not want to sell the car. I am 18 and was looking at the car with my dad. At one point, the salesman said, "at least you will make friends with the government" and he later explained his reasoning was that I would have a lot of tickets and be constantly pulled over by the cops. We asked for a test drive and were denied. He said, "hundreds of people come in for test drives each day, if we let people test drive them then there would be thousands of miles by the end of the day." We walked out shortly after. I geuss this post was to vent, and ask if anyone was able to test drive a 2006 STI or know how Atlanta Classic Subaru's customer service is.
Thats true, when I bought my 04 STI, I was not allow to test drive until all the paper work was done to actually by the car. And I am an old man LOL.
SOG wouldn't let me test drive one either. If they had i wouldn't have bought my 04 wrx. Don't count on classic letting you test drive either. I bought my 05 STi there and they asked if i wanted to test drive after i had them look at my trade in and signed all my paperwork. By that time it was friday night at like 9:30 pm. If you come to an event people will be more than happy to give you a ride in an STi.
I don't think it's common to get a test drive in an STi. I got a test drive in the the 06 I bought, but I drove all the way to Charlotte to get it, so they knew I was serious and we had already decided on price and everything via PM's on NASIOC.com, although we had not started any paperwork.
I know a few dealers that kept demo cars around. None of them were around here but it's worth a shot to call around.
If we have used cars we ALWAYS allow rides. Almost everybody that BUYS and STi knows they can get them with 8 to 10 miles on them. If everybody got to drive new ones they would all have 10 times that, and they would all be cold hard miles SS