ellen kanner

At Dartmouth College yesterday, I was a contributor to the ArtWorks festival (my listing). A great event where folks with different talents came together to share. I had my jewelry on display and received many compliments, especially on the quirky “window” display I had arranged. An enjoyable musical, comedic, and artistic festival, all from Dartmouth employees. An article in The Dartmouth provides a good perspective.

If I were to chose a new career path, it would be that of a Consumer Protection Attorney. And it’s experiences like the following that make me consider it even more so.

We’re in the process of buying a used Saab 9-3 from Saab Nashua North in Merrimack, NH. And we’ve been thrown right into the slimey world of car sales. I should have checked the NH Better Business Bureau and realized that 6 complaints against any company, whether resolved or not, is bad news. It all began two weeks ago when the dealership replied to a phone call I had made re: finding a particular model used Saab. They would purchase the car if I gave them a $1000 deposit, which I did. The sales manager said, “We really want to earn your business.” Okay.
We drove down last weekend with my father to check out the car, which was supposed to be ready for us to pick up. When we got there, it apparently was not. The real slime factor comes in when dealing with one of their sales people who says one thing to close the sale, and then doesn’t follow through.
We’ve repeatedly been told “The car will be ready for you” on several instances and it hasn’t been. We were told by the salesperson that after test driving the car last weekend the dealership would do the 60,000 mile service, since the car has 59,600 miles on it. And that they’d clean it inside and out. Okay, sounds good. They also had told us that it would be Saab Certified, which means an extension of the manufacturer’s warranty to 6 years/100,000 miles, and there are several things they need to do to make it so. Sounds good again.
So after another delay on Wednesday, we drove the 1.5 hours to the dealership on Friday to sign the papers. Only thing is it wasn’t ready. Sign the papers was all we did.
The interior had not been cleaned at all (still dog-haired and schmutzy). They gave us some excuse of a language barrier with the detailer speaking Portuguese and the salesman’s eye sight not being very good.
Okay, do we look stupid? The sales manager tried to make amends and we were told the car would be cleaned and delivered to us on Monday. The sales manager gave us $30 for gas money.

Upon reading the 60,000 mile suggested service in the owner’s manual and reading the list of things they did to the car, they still had not done the full 60,000 mile service, the largest part of which is changing 3 filters – fuel, engine air and cabin air. Calling the Service department Saturday morning after finding this and talking with the service personnel, confirmed that they had NOT done the 60,000 mile service, which our salesperson, had said it would be done when we got the car.
So we’ve purhcased a car that is still at the dealership. It looked great and was running well. They did do a good amount of work to it since buying it at auction to bring it up to Certified snuff, which we greatly appreciate. Our issue is with the continuely missed dates set for us to pick up the car and not receiving the services that were told would be done to close the sale.

The dealer is supposed to deliver it to us Monday or Tuesday of this week. We’ll see. I don’t trust them as far as I can throw them now – learned through repeated experience. Hmm.