Daniel Greenberg

Review of Camelback Hyundai Kia

Don't try to buy a car here. If you do, make sure ...

Don't try to buy a car here. If you do, make sure to bring a Kelly Blue Book print-out showing the range of prices on your car, a calculator and someone who knows how to use it, and a lawyer.

There are sort-of myths about "car dealers" involving super-hard bargaining and dishonesty and whatnot. I think car salesmen get an unfortunate reputation for simply trying to make a commission-based salary. However, Camelback Hyundai surpasses the worst of those myths to ensure that they can scam an extra 5-10 thousand dollars on every car sale from the low-income population surrounding the dealership. They apparently are convinced that no one will venture far enough away to any of the other Hyundai dealerships, all of which, from my experience, offer fair prices in stark contrast to Camelback.

In just about every step outside and inside the dealership, the low-level salespeople perhaps unwittingly shield the closer-type salesmen who have them send out a barrage of misinformation and plain lies to get people to get to the dealership and to accept ridiculous prices without exposing themselves to too much criminal liability from false advertising, etc. (although I wouldn't be surprised if the high-end salespeople and up generally had significant criminal histories).

Best dealership lie of the day: the closer found out it was my first car purchase so felt overtaken by some sort of pathological liar's carpe-diem and tried to convince me that when I brought in a fair offer on a year-old model to be "matched or beaten," he was actually beating that price by selling for around $5,000 more because all OTHER dealerships are the real dishonest ones and would have magically made the price rise by $8,000 right at closing. Right, as if all the other dealerships and prices available on the internet are some conspiracy that only Camelback knows about. I told them that I would try to take the offer I had from the other dealership and I would be back if the other dealership raised the price at all. At the other dealership, the price didn't go up. In fact, it went even further down.

Camelback told me that the car I wanted there had been there forever, and it seems that forever there it shall remain--until they take an extra $8,000 from a poor family and spread it out over 72 months at high interest to bankrupt them.