Jake Shirk Review of Fort Mill Ford - Sonic Automot...
I bought a used car less than 2 months ago. I took...
I bought a used car less than 2 months ago. I took the car for a test drive and could tell there was a slight delay starting. I asked about the delay and he ensured me it was because the car must have been sitting for a week and it was getting colder outside so I didn't think too much of it. I discussed the price I was looking for and they said their prices are set by their corporate office so I walked away. A week went by and I noticed online that it had already dropped below the price I had asked for and I had never received a call which you would think any good car salesman/woman would do if they knew they had an interested buyer. I went back a few days later with a loan pre-approval interested in buying the car. They wanted to run a separate loan request because they work with a ton of banks and came back with an offer for over 8% interest rate which was much higher than what I was pre-approved for and still had the audacity to encourage me to go with their lender with over 8% interest. Are you kidding me? I was trading a vehicle in and asked what sort of inspection they did on used cars before selling them because they hardly did anything to give me an estimate for my trade in. They ensured me they did a very thorough 100 some point inspection before putting any used cars for sale on their lot. The car I purchased was a 2010 with less than 60k miles with no recalls or bad reviews of the make and model so I figured I could trust an established Ford dealership to have the integrity to not put a car on their lot with issues. A warranty was over $1200 for 1 year, so I forewent the warranty trusting this wasn't like buying from craigslist or questionable used car dealership. While signing the paperwork I noticed the amount for the loan was several hundred higher than I anticipated so I looked at the break down and asked what the $550 closing fee was for. "Oh well the ladies in the back put all this paper work together and run your loan approval and they need to get paid somehow." Meanwhile on the website under every single used car posting it states "Price includes $550.44 closing fee and excludes tax, tags, etc..." $550 for paperwork that probably takes them 10 minutes and they claim to be included in their price online but not when it comes time to sign the paperwork. Less than a week with the car the hard starting was getting noticeably worse and when I would shut the car off you could smell some fuel. Fast forward 5 weeks into owning the car, it was taking almost 4-5 seconds of cranking the engine over to start and a few times didn't start. I drove the car to PA over Christmas and parked in a house garage. After 10 minutes of being parked the fuel smell was almost unbearable inside the garage. I decided to take the car to the Audi dealer to be on the safe side. In less than 5 minutes of looking under the hood, they could see a puddle of gas on top of the engine block underneath the supercharger and informed me it was an obvious gas leak that would have been found in any sort of inspection. The entire engine had the shiny appearance that a solvent had been on it which they explained would be from the gas leaking and covering everything. They also told me I was very lucky that the engine hadn't already caught on fire. My car has been in PA for over a week in the shop waiting to have the fuel rail replaced costing me $1900 less than 2 months after owning the car and as stated earlier, clearly should have been detected when they did their inspection at Fort Mill Ford. If you are looking for a car dealership with any form of integrity that stands by their vehicles, prices, so called thorough inspections, and your safety, Fort Mill Ford is probably the last place you should look. Zero quality assurance. Disgraceful and I will be contacting my attorney based on their form stating an inspection was done and no catastrophic damage was known. The dealership fixing my car told me there is no way this sort of leak wouldn't have been obvious during an overall engine inspection before selling the vehicle
Comments: