Herb Chambers Hyundai of Auburn

I originally spoke with Gabe DaSilva about my interest in a 2000 Ford Focus LX Sedan that my Husband found on Herb Chambers website. On Monday, Gabe and I set up a time for myself, my husband and my son to l a 2000 Ford Focus LX Sedan that my Husband found on Herb Chambers website. On Monday, Gabe and I set up a time for myself, my husband and my son to look at the car. We had an appointment for Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. that same week. On Tuesday I had to call back Gabe to ask him if it was an automatic or a standard but he did not return my messages that I left for him to call me. On Wednesday morning I knew I needed to find out from someone if this vehicle was standard or automatic because we were to be driving 1 1/2 hours from our home to the dealership. I remembered Gabe had told me during our original conversation that if he was busy I could talk to Rhett Butler so, I asked for him. When Mr. Butler came to the phone I asked him how much he knew about this vehicle and he told me that he didn't know anything about it. He then said "Why what do you want to know?" So I asked him if he knew if it was standard or automatic? He right away answered that it was an automatic. I said to him, "are you sure it's automatic?" He responded by saying that's what I said didn't I? Very rude!!! I said to him, "I thought you just said you didn't know anything about this vehicle, so how can you be sure it's an automatic? He said well, I know it is. I explained to him that we were driving a long way to look at this vehicle and I just need to make sure that it was definitely was an automatic. He said, "well it is." I said okay then we will see either you or Gabe at 6:30 tonight and he said okay and hung up. Upon arrival at the dealership, I asked to see Gabe DaSilva. I was asked my name and the man went off to get Gabe. The salesman returned and said that he was unavailable. He asked what we were there to see and we told him about the car. He went and got the keys so that we could see the car and test drive it. After about 25 minutes the salesman returned only to inform us that the car had already been sold the day before. No one ever informed me that the car was already sold when I spoke with Mr. Butler that very morning. Instead they let me drive for 1 1/2 hours to look at a car that was no longer available. My husband, myself and my son were very upset and left without even looking at anything else because we were very upset by their dishonesty and did not want to deal with them at all! In he future I will never purchase a vehicle from Herb Chambers Hyundi of Auburn. More

I brought my car in for front end work on Tues 7/16. The service writer (Justin) noticed that I was overdue for a timing belt and some other repairs. Since the engine had 148K miles (all highway, FWIW), I a service writer (Justin) noticed that I was overdue for a timing belt and some other repairs. Since the engine had 148K miles (all highway, FWIW), I agreed to replace the timing belt. The next day, I received a call from Justin to inform me that the technician had noticed spots of oil on the floor of his bay, and saw some rot on the oil pan once he got the car in the air. So, apologizing for missing it earlier, Justin also recommended replacing the oil pan, which I authorized. Fast forward 2 1/2 weeks (during which promised phone calls to update me on the status of the repairs routinely never materialized and estimates of their completion were invariably wrong), I received a call on Weds 7/31 that the repairs were complete, but the tech wouldn't have time before he left for the day to make the "extended test drive" that he wanted to do, so my car would be ready for pickup on Thurs 8/1. When driving home Thursday night, the car stalled twice on the 15-mile ride, begging the question of how "extended" that test drive was. After stalling two more times on the way to work the following morning, I promptly called the dealership to report the issues. I was given an appointment to bring the car back in the following Tues so they could diagnose the problem. Monday night, on my ride home from work, I noticed a noise coming from the engine that sounded like the noise the playing card made when you put in the spokes of your bike's wheels as a kid. Fun in a bike, not in an engine. I pulled off the highway and called a tow truck to have the car brought back to the dealership. I called the dealership Tues morning to tell them of my adventures the previous evening and let them know that the car was there early for its appointment. The service writer told me that I would get a call back in a few hours, once they knew what was going on. When I did get a call back, Justin informed me that the engine had a "rod knock," and that the motor would need to be replaced, at a cost of $2400 for a used engine with 40K miles. He told me that the service manager had authorized a discount of $150, because it was "the right thing to do." When I questioned whether this had anything to do with the $2500 in repairs so recently completed, I was told that the timing of this problem was completely coincidental and had nothing to with anything they had done just a few days before. At this point, I called my ex-husband -- an ASE-certified mechanic with 20 years experience -- to sanity-check the story I was being given. When he heard that the prior repairs included replacing the oil pan, he confirmed that I was being given a song-and-dance to cover up for their mistake. From what I described to him, he was pretty sure that a clogged pickup tube lead to oil starvation in the engine, resulting in the rod knock now apparent. Armed with this information, I called the dealership back to see what their response was. I spoke to the service manager (Jim Pope), who insisted that they were in no way responsible for the problem, saying things like "when you open up the engine on a car with this many miles, you're running a risk of something going wrong", and "if the oil pan was rotting on the outside, it was rotting on the inside, so who knows how long the tube was getting clogged." When I proposed a compromise where I pay for the engine and they absorb the cost of the labor, the service manager said that he couldn't do that, but offered to discount the price to $1900, and would include moving over the new timing belt from the now-junk engine to the new-to-me one at no charge. I need the car to get to work and had invested so much already, so I felt I had no other option than to tell him to order the engine and authorized the work. If the oil pan rot was so pervasive that this clog could have been building up for months, as the service manager said, why did the tech not take out his flashlight and look up the pickup tube to see if this was actually happening? No one ever advised me that the oil system should be flushed because of these repairs -- I gladly would have paid an additional cost to avoid these catastrophic results. I took my car to the dealership (and paid the resultant premium on labor) because they are supposed to have the training and skills to provide superior service, but this appears to be incompetence at best and negligence at worst. After calling Hyundai corporate customer service to complain, I was advised to call the General Manager at the dealership to see what could be done about this situation. The GM was unavailable when I called, but I spoke to Tim, the (assistant?) sales manager. He patiently listened to my saga without being defensive or insisting on their lack of culpability, took plenty of notes, and said that he would talk to the GM in the morning. I just received call back from the GM, who is backing service manager in denying any possible link between previous repairs and catastrophic motor failure 3 days later. He is staying firm on $1900 price. Herb Chambers has 50 dealerships in the greater Boston area, and yet $1900 is the best price they can give me on repairs to something I understand they could easily have been prevented? The one star in this review is purely attributable to Tim, who I spoke with yesterday (that and Yelp won't let me give them zero). Anyone who values integrity in the businesses they deal with should stay away from this dealership, as I intend to do in the future. ***Update 8/26/2013*** About 1/2 hour after I posted this review and sent a copy to Herb Chambers corporate offices (Thursday 8/8), I got a call from Jim Pope (service manager) who told me he was authorized to give me a further 10% discount, bringing the price down to roughly $1710, which he told me would include all taxes so that would be my final price. They had ordered the engine, and he said he would call me when it came in. I received a call on Tuesday 8/13 to let me know that the engine had arrived and that they would check it over and begin the installation, and he would let me know when it was completed. He also told me that the price had come in lower than previously quoted, and the total was looking to be a little under $1500. When I asked for a ballpark timeline, he said that it was possible that it would be done Friday (8/16), but he would call when it was complete. I just got a call from Jim to let me know that the work has been completed. He also said that they replaced the radiator at no charge, as they discovered it was leaking (ASE-certified master tech ex-husband says it's probably because they broke it during the engine replacement), and Jim also had them balance the tires (I had noticed a shake at highways speeds that hadn't been there prior to my initial service, during which they replaced a tie rod end, so I thought it was an alignment issue but Jim said it was more likely tire balancing). So, all in all, I'm not sure how to sum up this experience. Jim has been more helpful and solicitous these last few weeks -- outwardly very concerned with my satisfaction -- but I still feel like I had to fight too hard to get to a point where I felt I was being treated fairly. *** Update 8/30 *** When reviewing and signing the paperwork when I picked up my car on Monday (8/26), I noticed a comment about "an existing exhaust leak," which came as a surprise to me, since neither I nor my ex-husband (ASE-certified master technician), nor any of the techs who had driven my car during the 6 weeks it was in their shop being repaired had ever mentioned hearing a noise or noticing any leak. And sure enough, when I started up the car, I heard the characteristic buzz of an exhaust leak. Also, as I pulled out of the parking lot, the brakes (which I had brought up as a concern after the first repair but was a lesser priority than the engine issues) did not seem to be fixed. Then, on the ride home, the Check Engine light came on. Frustrated with the situation, I submitted some feedback to Herb Chambers corporate offices via their online form on Monday night, requesting a return call to discuss possible resolutions. To date, I have not had a response. Tuesday morning, I called Jim Pope and told him about the Check Engine light. He seemed largely unconcerned and scheduled an appointment for me to come in on Thursday (they earliest they were able to accommodate me) to have the code scanned to see what triggered it. Thursday (8/29), I brought the car to its schedule appointment. Jim brought me back to the shop, showed me that the code was something about a post-exhaust something-or-other, and pointed out where the "existing" exhaust leak is. The flex pipe that has the leak is covered by a metal mesh (admittedly beginning to fray at one end, but not near where they say the leak is), so I wonder how they knew it existed before it was brought in to the shop. Considering that the tech told me that the pipe can wear from the torque that the engine experiences, and given that virtually all of my driving is on the highway (little stopping and starting to torque the engine) plus the fact that it looks like someone was rushing this job enough to bust the radiator when removing the engine (why else would it have been replaced without me even paying for the part?), it's not a big stretch to think that they had a hand in creating this problem as well. But I was given a card for a local muffler repair shop and told that the cost of fix there would be about $150 or so, cheaper than what I would pay at the dealership. I was hoping to hear from someone at Herb Chambers corporate in response to my online form submission (apparently their definition of a "prompt response" is different from my own), but have yet to hear back. ASE-certified master tech ex-husband says that they're walking all over me, but I have a demanding job, long commute, house and child to juggle and frankly have little time or energy to deal with this string of issues. I am at my wit's end in trying to get this resolved and am unsure where to proceed from here. All in all, I would advise anyone -- or at least anyone who isn't up for a protracted struggle if things go wrong -- to find a different dealership, perhaps even a different chain of dealerships, to bring your car to. (Apologies for the length of the review, but it's been a lengthy series of events that led to this point) More