Megan H

Review of Sterling McCall Acura

Edit: As you can see, the GM asked me to email her...

Edit: As you can see, the GM asked me to email her again in response to this review. This will be my third attempt to email her, so I'm doubtful I'll hear back from anyone.

After being a customer of John Eagle's service department for the last 12 years, I decided to give Sterling McCall a try since I've bought my last two Acuras from there. Sadly, I'd put the experience pretty high on my list of worst decisions I've ever made.

Upon walking in on a Friday afternoon, we weren't greeted, there were no signs about what we should do, and we just stood there for several minutes before I finally had to ask someone what we should do. After waiting a good 15 minutes past my appointment time, Antonio showed up and that's where this whole experience made me absolutely certain I'd never be back.

I came in for my routine maintenance at 5,000 miles. The same thing I've done every 5,000 miles on all of my cars. While we went over a few other things, Antonio began pointing at a chart for the scheduled services. Right where it said that synthetic oil is required for everything 2019 and up, he insisted my 2018 ILX also required it. I questioned that since I had talked to the salesman about it just barely over a year ago. He kept insisting it was 2016 and up while pointing at this chart. I told him that my 2016 RDX took conventional oil as well, and he corrected me and told me it did not. I told him that must have meant John Eagle was giving me a huge discount on oil changes for three full years, and he agreed that must be the case. I told him their sales team told me the ILX was conventional and he said they were wrong. I continued trying to explain that I knew for a fact my RDX used conventional, and I was near certain my ILX was too, but each time he pressed harder that I was wrong and he was right. I eventually gave up even trying.

Upon leaving, I pulled up my owner's manual and lo and behold, it required conventional oil! Now I'm not positive that Antonio was trying to rip me off just because I'm a woman, so I must not know anything about cars, but seeing as how he was pointing at "2019 and newer" while telling me my cars had always required it, makes me think that was the case. Either that or their advisors are horribly trained and should absolutely never be in charge of guiding a customer's decision on maintenance.

I had hoped that quick email I sent that evening would get to someone by Saturday morning that could handle this, but that was clearly not the case as I'm pretty sure no one even read it. I soon received a canned response from their GM thanking me for my interest in a new car. By the time I got up Saturday morning the deed was done. Her email included her contact information, so I decided to send an email directly to her to let her know what had happened. It's been over a week since then and I have still not heard back from anyone.

So here I am with a car that's been converted to synthetic oil by force, out significantly more money than I'd planned for a simple oil change and tire rotation, and not one single person at Sterling McCall seems to care.

As most people know, you only take your car for service to the dealership because they take very good care of you and never act like crooked mechanics. Otherwise the increased cost is rather pointless and I could just go to Jiffy Lube. I experienced this level of service for many years at John Eagle so I can say with great confidence that this dealership service experience was nothing short of appalling.