Brad Deery Motors

I looked at a car online before driving to the dealership from out of town for a test drive. Based on the features listed on their website, Brad Deery was one of the only dealers advertising a price close to the Kelley Blue Book and Edmunds True Market Value. However, as we soon discovered, not all those features were listed on the Buyer’s Guide in the car’s window, and some of the features on the Buyer’s Guide ended up not even being on the car itself.
From the minute my wife and I arrived, Cathy was extremely pushy, following up every single comment with, «Are you going to buy it?» constantly during and after the test drive. I’m not exaggerating when I say she wouldn’t allow more than one second of silence before trying again to close the sale – it was driving me nuts! As a guy who’s usually pretty laid-​back when it comes to buying a car, I was on the verge of telling her to shut the he– up or I was going to complain to the manager and walk out. In hindsight, maybe I shouldn’t have held back.
When I started walking around the car looking for defects, she had the gall to say, «What is it you don’t like? I don’t understand why you don’t just buy the car if you like it.» I did find substantial damage to the rims and I’m pretty sure that’s why she didn’t want me looking around the car. As if there weren’t already enough red flags warning us that this was a horrible decision, Cathy’s impatience didn’t even stop once we were signing papers. I was taking time to read what I was signing, and she again interrupted me and started asking what was wrong. Seriously!!! I was about to write a check for almost half a year’s worth of my take-​home pay, and she had to keep interrupting me every 10 seconds while I was trying to skim over the paperwork? Had I not somehow managed to maintain Zen-​like patience with her nagging, I would have torn up the papers and thrown them at her in front of her manager and stormed out.
Getting back to the car itself, many of the features that were advertised on the car and which are standard on the model we bought had been deleted in the original build according to our local GM dealer, but Brad Deery listed those features anyway. The only reason we did end up buying the car was that the manufacturer’s warranty should have covered some of the flaws, but we soon regretted that decision because even some of the standard options such as Bluetooth and heated seats for that trim level that the dealer listed on the Buyer’s Guide did not turn out to be on the car. We were also concerned that the damage was even more extensive than what we were able to determine visually while Cathy was pressuring us.
After a few days of calls back and forth with Cathy, the manager had the rest of the cars of the same model checked and found that ours wasn’t the only one for which the Buyer’s Guide was wrong. I was impressed when Deery offered to send a driver to pick up the car and refund our money. It is because of this that I’m giving them 2 stars instead of 1. But considering the misrepresentation of the car, it was a no-​brainer, even if it was an honest mistake. Had they not screwed up on the Buyer’s Guide (which, as it was explained to us, is part of the purchase contract), I might have been out of luck.
There are no words to express how awful my sales experience was with Cathy, but I give the dealership credit for making things right, and I learned a few important car-​buying lessons. First off, if anyone ever tries to distract you or rush you when you’re doing your due diligence and inspecting the car or reading the paperwork, walk out of the dealership, because it’s a red flag that they’re hiding problems and trying to sneak something past you. Second, «standard» features such as XM radio, Bluetooth, etc., can be deleted from the original build, regardless of the supposed trim level shown by the VIN. Make sure you have the OEM dealership (in my case, a GM dealer) print off the full build sheet for your VIN. And third, the dealer might not even know what they’re selling you – so if you’re looking for something in particular, make sure you know everything there is to know about that car.