Subaru of Calgary

Subaru of Calgary responded

Hi J. Chen, thank you for taking the time to leave us a review, when we can refine our process it helps us ensure that the general experience of our entire clientelle is improved. I will have to look into the specifics of your situation, and will contact you directly. Thanks.

Subaru of Calgary responded

Hello Christine, My name is Drew Bell and I am the Media and Marketing director here at Subaru Calgary. I spoke with Daryn and Ken the managers who were in charge of appraising your vehicle when I saw your review come up on Dealer Rater and I hope that I can communicate why they gave you the trade in value that they did. From your review it appears the largest issue was the value of your vehicle and so hopefully below I can try bring some clarity. It is possible for you to independently verify the pricing that a dealership is giving you by going to www.canadianblackbook.com and this is a great tool for anyone looking to verify their trade in values. This is an independent organization that compiles the wholesale values of vehicles sold and purchased across Canada and will give you a range of the value of the vehicle. This number is typically lower than what you would see on for example Kijiji or on a Dealerships website because that is the retail value. The difference between Retail and Wholesale being the profit of the dealership. The Range that comes up on Canadian Black book when I run your vehicle is between $2,513 and $4,327. That range is the value of the vehicle before the costs of reconditioning. I didn’t personally see your vehicle but from what you describe the scratches and dents to your vehicle would have to be repaired for us to show it on our lot as typically people don’t buy scratched or dented vehicles on dealer lots, even if the damage is minor peoples expectation is that we will repair this damage before sale. Between those repairs and a full detail required to get out any pet hair or salt stains on the interior of the vehicle typically we consider about $1000 reconditioning, more if the vehicle needs tires or has a cracked windshield. So that range of $2,513 and $4,327 that we get from blackbook, minus the cost of reconditioning ($1000) would put Black Books Evaluation of your vehicle between $1,513 and $3,327. With those numbers in mind I hope you can understand that we did put our best foot forward when it came to getting you a value for your vehicle! If you received a higher evaluation for your vehicle elsewhere be aware that some dealerships have a practice of taking value out of the wholesale to resale difference of the new vehicle in order to make trade values look more appealing. This is not our practice at Subaru Calgary, and can sometimes cause our evaluations to appear a little lower than other dealerships. But it means that our new car price will not change whether or not you decide to trade in. Hopefully this helps bring some clarity to the situation for you, and we would very much like the opportunity to have you back in to look at the Crosstrek. As the largest Subaru dealership in Canada we can offer very competitive pricing on the Crosstrek if you are willing to give us another shot.

chris responded

Since my review of March 6, a different manager at the same dealership, Ken, called me asking that I revisit the dealership so that he could correct the initial poor experience I had reported. I did return and after a discussion and test drive, I bought a 2016 Crosstrek. I am now waiting on its arrival in Calgary but thus far, I am impressed that Subaru was willing to correct its mistake. I enjoyed the interaction with Ken and if all goes well to the end of this transaction, I will be pleased to remove my poor review and replace it with an excellent one.

Subaru of Calgary responded

Hello TR, Hopefully I can help address some of your concerns and bring some light to the situation. First of all I apologize that your sales associate no longer works for us, it is not an easy way to make a living and turnover does happen, and you should have been contacted when that happened so we will be working on that process. 1. Deposits being non-refundable, this is our policy on all vehicles that are being ordered directly from the factory. The reason being that specific vehicle is being ordered to your tastes and requirements and so we need some measure of security to take this step on your behalf. 2. Subaru, unlike many of our competitors, only produces vehicles which are requested by the dealerships. Each Dealer is given an opportunity to order a certain amount of vehicles that they expect clients will want. If a client requests a vehicle outside of what has been ordered rather than having hundreds of vehicles sitting in port and aging or being damaged before delivery the vehicle is made to order. 3. Ken is correct, manual transmissions are becoming much more difficult to sell as a significant portion of the population is no longer able to drive this type of vehicle, and typically most people are interested in a mid-level vehicle for the benefits in features and resale-ability. This ties into why we request a non-refundable deposit for factory orders because a base model manual transmission would not typically be a vehicle that we would order. 4. I'm not sure how to address this. 5. I do apologize that you and Ken appear to have a conflict of personality, and I will speak with him regarding your perception of how you were treated to ensure that we do our best to relate well to all of our customers. So hopefully that sheds some light on the situation, if you did end up in a Subaru congratulations, they are certainly we believe the best vehicles on the road today!

Subaru of Calgary responded

Hello! Thank you for taking the time to leave us your review and letting us know where we can improve our process! Enjoy your Subaru, and welcome to the family!