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Herb Chambers Gets a Failing Grade

This past month, I had an opportunity to interact and be part of a sale of a used car.  My mother, almost 75, was having too many electrical issues with her car (from 1998) and wanted something newer.  She had in mind a budget of $10k and wanted an exterior keypad and power windows, and a few other minor things.  And it had to be red.

I walked in wanting all of the above PLUS the idea that my mother would be taken care of.  Not too much to ask, just a little extra hand-holding.  A VERY nice plus was the salesman inviting over a manager who spoke PORTUGUESE.  It is my mother's native language and helped immensely in the moment of making the sale.  He also worked out a deal which helped too.

We found what was essentially the perfect car and purchased it from Herb Chambers, a large used car dealership, which offered a full checkup on the car.  She had 5 days to return it outright and a 30 day offer to switch cars to another of equal value.

The salesman was nice, if not fully attentive.  Even the Portuguese manager seemed to ignore my mother's questions after the fact.  Not much time on their part, but HUGE for us.  And this is where the issues came up.

She had not noticed some dents in the first few days and was VERY upset to have discovered body damage to the car.  Had they told her ahead of time, it would not have been a big deal.  The windshield wiper pump was broken, and again, not a big deal-they didn't even need to fix it ($40), but issuing a report of a full evaluation of the state of the car would've made me/us more comfortable.  It's always a matter of not knowing what else they made be hiding that bothers me.

The worst and most egregious bit was the final invoice. The full invoice imcluded a few crucial items, which had been eliminated. MItems which were $500, $595 and another questionable fee.  I had to call to follow up with the "numbers guy", because our salesman had nothing to do with that (and has already taken his commission and was pretty much done with us).

It should NOT be my job to track down every expense on the final bill, and if I hadn't gone over it with a fine toothed comb, the car would've cost an additional $1000 plus. 

As far as I am concerned, that is a HUGE FAIL.

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