Complaint Review: Harrold Ford - Sacramento california

This place is the most unbelievably dishonest car dealership I have ever experienced in my entire life. I was tricked into driving 85 miles to Sacramento from the East Bay, not once, but TWICE.

I called and spoke to salesperson Johnny Walker who confirmed all of the details of the advertisement. The car was a 2017 Ford Focus SE, certified, priced at $17,688 and had 2319 miles on it. I told him I would drive up that night to see it.

I drove all the way to Sacramento in a rental car to see the car and when I got there 2 hours later he had gone home. Salesperson Sidney Jones helped me instead.

I test drove the car and expressed interest. Throughout the test drive Sidney and I talked at length about how great it was to not only have the 2 year remainder of the original manufacturers warranty but the additional certification for 6 more years. I told her I was interested but would want the dealership to add leather. I made a couple of offers, however the sales manager Tom Cline wouldn't accept either one. I went home disappointed. 

This morning I was called by another sales manager Ryan Horn who accepted my offer of $17,000 and agreed to install leather trim. I agreed to come back to Sacramento that day. I returned my rental car after making that commitment to purchase this car. I arranged a ride to Sacramento, only to find I had been LIED to by both the sales person, Sidney and the Sales Manager, Ryan.

The car I test drove the night before was NOT the car they brought out for me to purchase. They SWITCHED the cars! The car they had waiting for me had 3000 MORE miles than the one I agreed to purchase. There were also stickers on the windshield that were not there the night before. It was clearly a totally DIFFERENT car with MANY more miles on it.

I aksed Sidney about the higher mileage and she claimed it was the same car. When I asked Ryan about these discrepancies he denied that they were different cars and said the car always had 5,000 miles on it.  

Fortunately I took a screen shot on my phone of this advertisement the night before reflecting the advertised mileage and sale price and showed it to him to prove that they were two different cars. He continued to deny it even with proof and showed me the internet advertisement, which had now been EDITED to reflect the car with 5,000 miles and a different price. ( I saved additional screen shots on my laptop but I it was at home.)

I referred back to the screen shot on my phone. Upon realizing I had caught him in several lies Ryan told me the deal was over and I should just leave the dealership. I never raised my voice so I found this odd. I told him I was interested in this other car because they were identical except for the mileage.. even though it had 3,000 more miles on it.

I asked if he could explain how the car got all these miles. He then told me that they loaned it to someone who used it for Uber! It was at that point that I mentioned that at least it had the certification. He then said there was NO certification on this car! I reminded him of the advertised certification and reminded Sidney of our long conversation about the certification. She looked me straight in the eye and LIED... She said she only mentioned the manufacturers warranty.

The car I originally called in on, came in to drive and committed to purchase was advertised as CERTIFIED and only had 2319 miles on it. The car they TRIED to switch on me was NOT certified and had 5600 UBER miles on it! They TRIED and failed to SNEAK this TOTALLY DIFFERENT car on me! They TRICKED me into driving a total of 300 miles to buy the car THEY advertised and committed to sell me and then SWITCHED IT!!  This is FLAT OUT DECEPTION.

Luckily I have a video within the ad where they state that the car is certifed and I took pictures BEFORE they edited the ad... proving that the car I was promised was a different car! 

I am utterly disgusted that these people brag about being the oldest Ford dealership in California and then DECEIVE, TRICK and LIE to customers. This is the most unethical, dishonest dealership I have ever encountered…sinking far below the infamous reputation of the typical car dealership. 

I cannot believe this happened to me and am fuming. I will spend the rest of the night writing bad reviews on ripoffreport.com, Yelp, Auto Trader, Google, Facebook, Consumer Reports, and every other consumer watchdog reviewing site I can find. I hope to inform as many people as humanly possible that this dealership is horribly dishonest. They will LITERALLY switch cars on you! WOW!!! I guess their reputation means NOTHING to them….Counterintuitive is an UNDERSTATEMENT.

General Manager Tom Cline

Salesperson Sidney Jones

Sales Manager Ryan Horn