Bharath Pattabiraman

Review of Autobarn Mazda - Evanston,IL

Summary: Sales people are very professional and pr...

Summary: Sales people are very professional and provide great service. Beware of the finance people who sit upstairs.

I was here to buy a new 2014 Mazda 3. I had done extensive research, so it didnt take more than 30 mins to reach an agreement about the final price (which I realized later, was a great deal compared to others who had got the exact same car and trim for at least $1000 more). The sales people who helped me are Ross and Anthony. Both were very helpful. Ross especially was really friendly, honest and extremely helpful. The managers Mike and Jonathan are also professional.

However, be aware of the finance people, I had a very poor experience with them. I wanted financing for my Mazda 3, and all my paperwork was done by this woman Diza, whom I would recommend stay away from. She never explained things properly, rushed through the whole process. At one point she mentioned the registration and license plates cost 700$ which sounded ridiculous to me as I know for a fact that those cannot be more than 300$ total. Only after I pointed out in the paperwork to her did she admit it wasn't that much. But turned out that the remaining 300$ difference (apart from the 166$ doc fees) was for something called Auto Guard (some sort of paint protection). She said it was something that gets done to all cars, she explained it to me as if it was a mandatory thing I had to pay for. Later I found out that this was an optional package, which really is infuriating because it looked like I was never given then choice. Also the package includes 8 reapplications of the autoguard, and it's something that can be done only at Autobarn. This was really useless to me as I was planning to take the car out of state after purchasing it.

They had to get the car from another location, but still delivery was made very promptly, they took only 1-2 days to get the car to me. However, after the delivery, I noticed that the rear bumper of my car had scratches! I took it up with the manager Mike who first only promised to repaint it, but after expressing my dissatisfaction, was very reasonable and made sure I got the bumper changed. I also argued about the autoguard, and he promised to refund the money. This is why I am giving 5 stars, because they made sure they did everything to fix these problems and value their customers. Overall, I would say 5 stars for the sales dept, and 3 for finance, but the interaction with the sales people is most important while buying a car, so will give 5 stars total.