Stevens Creek Toyota, a bad experience
So Andrea and I are in the market to get a SUV after we get our house. I’ve been convincing Andrea that the “best” SUV would be a BMW X5 for it’s styling, ruggedness, and overall sport luxury. Andrea, on the other hand, is a bit hesitant because of the potential cost of a repair on a BMW and had an opportunity to drive a Toyota 4Runner for a few days and very much liked it. Plus, she feels that Toyota’s break down less and would cost less to repair.
We were in San Jose for our friend’s engagement party and decided to stop by Stevens Creek to the BMW and Toyota dealerships to see which SUV we would like better. I know everyone is probably thinking: “Are you guys crazy?! Why would you want a gas-guzzling SUV right now?!” Well answer is simple, we don’t want right now now, but it would also be the best time to buy one; kinda like buying an umbrella before rainy season. For this post, I won’t go too much into the driving experience because this post isn’t about that. It’s more about customer service.
The first dealership we went to was Stevens Creek BMW at 4343 Stevens Creek Blvd in Santa Clara. We pulled up and asked for a salesman and got Reza Mirzadeh. BTW, we were in our friend’s BMW 540i, just figured I’ll throw it out there. Told Reza we were looking to test drive a used BMW X5 4.4i. Worked out well because they had silver BMW X5 4.4i (with sport package and cold weather package) with only 25,000 miles asking $35,000 with warranty (sweet!). No problem, Reza took our driver’s licenses and was back in a few minutes ready to go. He told us all the cool features of the BMW X5 such as the front tinted windows (the glass is actually tinted rather than film) because of the cold weather package, the front washers for the headlights, the multi-adjusting driver and front passenger seat (uber comfy), the pano sun roof (which was quite cool!), and so forth. Then we were off, taking Highway 280 North bound. He let us go for about 5 miles and then we turned around and went 280 South bound and made the Saratoga exit (we could have taken the Stevens Creek exit, but Reza let us continue on). The whole time, he spent answering questions rather than trying to sell us the car. We were allowed to test the acceleration from a stop light, the cornering ability on a highway on-ramp, and so forth. When we got back, he told us if we had any questions, please let him know and left us to ourselves. Excellent customer service, no pressure sale tactics, very friendly, and patient. Service like that would definitely make us drive to Stevens Creek BMW to buy a BMW, which we may. I know people always hear horror stories about how arrogant BMW and Mercedes dealerships are, but we had a great experience.
So then afterward, we stopped by Stevens Creek Toyota across the street to try out a brand new 4Runner. Once you walk in, you can already tell the difference: BMW has a more relaxed atmosphere where Toyota is just trying to sell you cars/trucks. When we finally got a salesman, he struck us as “pushy”. I wished I remember his name. We told him we were interested in test driving a Toyota 4Runner V8 model, notice how we didn’t say anything about interesting in buying or leasing. So he took us around the lot in back and he finally found a V8 4Runner. We got in and sat in it as he just stood there assuming we were going to buy it just by sitting in it. We had asked him how much horsepower the V8 and he said he would have to check, didn’t seem like he was all too interested. Asked him what options this 4Runner had, he said everything. Thank you for your in-depth description [How hot is it out there? Hot.]. We had to ask him again, kindly, that we wanted to test drive it, so he said OK, went and got the keys and we were off. Told us to make a right on Kiely and right on Stevens Creek and go on highway 280 North, which we did. So we’re barely on the 280 and he tells us to take the next exit, Stevens Creek (!!!!). We were like OK… After our 2 minute test drive ended. So he takes us back into the dealership and asks us to sit down. When he came back, he had a contract and a “negotiation” paper. Proceed to tell us how we would like pay for this, finance this…etc. etc. He didn’t show us any specs or even bothered to try. We had to ask him about the horsepower again and he got up, clearly agitated, and said, I’ll go check. We used the opportunity to sneak out. Fortunately my friend was driving us around and his BMW had dark tinted windows because we saw him come outside looking for us. What an asshole.
Customer service, especially in this day and age, to us is the single most important thing and usually a deal breaker in whether or not we buy from there, leave a tip, etc. I realize that if they don’t sell cars, they starve, but doesn’t mean you have to be so aggressive or pushy. I can also understand that sometimes people come to dealerships to just test drive cars and not buy, but that doesn’t mean that someone else won’t. Needless to say: we, our friends, or families are never buying a Toyota from Stevens Creek Toyota.
So which SUV do we want? The BMW X5.
