Full review text opened.
DealerRater - Oct 21, 2021
I initially gave this dealership 5 stars on Yelp after what I thought was a great experience. I am on my third lease with Audi, which is a total of 9 years of loyalty, and I wasn’t sure I would renew the lease this time as I had a horrible experience on the previous one with a sales rep who has since been let go, presumably because I wasn’t the only one that had encountered difficulties with him.
I have now changed this to 1 star and would change to Zero if possible and this will be my last lease with Audi. When I first came in, I was given 4 quotes by Hessam for two vehicles, each with a 36 and a 42-month lease option. Both documents (which I was able to take photos of) clearly stipulated 10,000 miles and a Drive Off fee of $2,700. This was up from my last lease “Drive Off Fee” of $1,000 but I assumed that it was due to inflation and the fact that I was getting a slightly more expensive vehicle this time. At no time did Hessam give me any indication (or explain any other costs) that this was not going to be the final cost I would pay on trading in my old vehicle and the very name “Drive Off Fee” seems to imply that it would be my only outlay – coupled with the fact that I had paid only $1,000 for this same fee, three years ago. Possibly he thought Shafiq (finance rep) would explain all of that as seems like it should be a major component of his role but at no point did he explain any of the additional costs either. It wasn’t until I got home and had the time the next day to review all the costs that I realized something seemed off. My mistake was in handing over my credit card and signing for the fees which were not $2,700 as I had been quoted but closer to $4,000. I missed this as I was in the middle of my workday, trying to get this done and fielding work calls, plus I had already picked up one error when it appeared that Hessam had not communicated that the lease was to be for 36 months not 42 and Shafiq had to go get approval and redo the documents.
When I realized that I had been overcharged and compared the documents to my previous lease which had included rebates and no lease set-up fee, I both called and emailed Shafiq asking for him to contact me to explain the issue. I finally received an email from him saying he hadn’t been able to contact me as he was getting an error message (strange since 4 others from the dealership had my number and had no issues in calling or texting me that day or any other day). I sent two subsequent emails which he ignored and then I started texting Hessam, asking him if he could help get Shafiq to respond to me. He assured me it could all be sorted out and I even went into the dealership with some other issues around the new car, only to be told that Shafiq wasn’t in, but they would have him call me. Hessam again assured me that it could be easily sorted which I took to mean that there had been an error, but I now believe meant that he didn’t want to get involved and was avoiding discussing it with me. Three days and several texts later with no response but vague assurances from Hessam that he was here to help, Shafiq’s manager finally called me. She told me that the fee was correct and the reason it was so high was that things were different now and the previous rebates were no longer available, so I was paying more costs (to be clear, I fully understood that I would be paying the first month lease fee and DMV registration but again assumed that was included in the “Drive Off” fee because otherwise, it would surely have been mentioned??). If a customer only comes in every three years because that’s when their lease ends, and costs and rebates have changed and are no longer available, then shouldn’t that be mentioned and clearly outlined to the customer? If I had known that I could have made a more informed decision and I would have gone to BMW where I had a received a better offer (with all costs outlined). I chose to stick with Audi because Hessam seemed to really want to win my loyalty back after my previous bad experience. My mistake.
The Sales Manager apologized that no one had gone through the costs with me and offered me free unlimited car washes – something I thought I already had since that was included in the previous leases and again, not even mentioned. Make no mistake, this dealership is in a very prestigious part of Los Angeles, but it operates as nothing better than a used car dealership with questionable practices and people. Hugely disappointed in the experience and the company, I thought Audi was a quality high-end business with integrity, but they care nothing for customer loyalty or apparently, their reputation. And don’t even get me started on the app – Google it, hasn’t worked in months and they’re still trying to hawk it….
