This year has felt a lot like running up hill backwards spinning in circles getting nowhere fast, but yesterday something went right. Let’s recap one of those stories from earlier in the year when I went to Audi to attempt to get my father’s completely dead e-tron working and sold. The Audi dealership was less than helpful. There solution to the problem was to hide from it. I have debated writing a review of the experience but do think I owe it to other people to do so.
The full recap starts when my father sold a property. I am unsure why he sold this property or who gave him the idea to do so, but in hindsight it was a terrible decision. To compound that decision my father used that money to buy out the lease of this Audi e-tron for $86K. Even typing this angers me to an uncommon degree.
Now let us fast forward to when the car was dead in my parents garage and my father is no longer around to drive it. The battery in the car went completely dead and Audi, in their infinite wisdom as the Nissan of Germany, decided that everything in the car should be electric. That meant there was no way to get to any of the parts that needed to be fixed.
We tried calling the dealership, speaking with people up the chain, but nothing helped and no one was useful. Eventually I tired of their antics and went to the dealership and made an appointment. The car arrived and the dealership stuck it in some deep dark corner and forgot about it. I kept up my pressure on them calling once a week trying to get information or some movement on getting the car fixed. No one at this dealership was even slightly on my side. I eventually complained to the states consumer protection department and even this did nothing. This dealership is run by people hiding from their failures.
I eventually resolved the issue by heading to the dealership once again and telling them I was done and to buy this car. Which they did for $50K. With all the problems of Audi e-trons we were lucky to get that much.
Now fast forward to yesterday where once again I am having issues with a car dealership. This isn’t Audi though it is Lexus. A brand known for its reliability and quality service. Lexus even promotes what they call the Lexus owner’s experience.
Now most of the trouble came from Honda Financial Services being a big pain because when you lease a car from Honda they make it difficult to get out of their pipeline. The dealership promised me they could deal with it and we simply bought our car without the trade and left with the promise of a check in a couple weeks. An entire month went by and I decided it was time to become a pain in the ass. This dealership didn’t hide from their failures. They admitted to them, addressed them, and resolved them.
There was an old saying when I was a child that when the going gets tough the tough get going, and that is what happened with Lexus. When the quality of the experience was in question they made it a quality experience.
David Huzzard Writes 