Williams Subaru — Local services in Charlotte

The car purchasing process itself was wonderful, smooth, and enjoyable. However, my experience quickly soured once the paperwork stage began.

After I purchased the car in early July, my salesperson Brendan gradually stopped responding to my follow-up questions. I tried reaching the business manager, Kaetlyn, multiple times, but she didn’t respond my calls or voicemails either. Eventually, another manager, Aaron, stepped in and explained that Brendan had a family emergency and that Kaetlyn was simply very busy.

While I understand that personal emergencies happen and staff can be overwhelmed, communicating these issues to clients should be the basic customer service attitude. At the very least, I should have been informed about who to contact in the meantime. Before I paid for the car, the entire team was highly responsive. It’s frustrating to see that level of communication disappear immediately after the sale was finalized.

There also appeared to be significant internal miscommunication. Kaetlyn wrote the wrong model year on my temporary registration. Aaron mistakenly believed I bought a new car when it was in fact used, which affects the title processing: Fab and Aaron told me that my title was still being issued by the North Carolina DMV and therefore beyond their control. In reality, the title clerk had already mailed it out earlier, which is a fact that no one on the team seemed aware of until much later.

Additionally, Brendan had initially given me an inaccurate estimate of how long the paperwork would take. Based on that information, I made an unnecessary trip to my registration address, expecting the title to arrive, so I can register my car earlier. I even booked local accommodations for the trip. Unfortunately, the paperwork took much longer to process than Brendan had said. Once I realized this, I had specifically requested the title be sent to an alternate address, not the one on my registration, because no one would be available to receive it there until end of August. That request was ignored, leaving me worried the envelope could be lost.

This back-and-forth caused a great deal of confusion and anxiety. While I’m happy with the car itself and appreciate Aaron’s eventual assistance, the dealership seriously needs to improve its post-sale support and...

If I could give negative stars, I would. Let me first say that I did buy an Ascent from them because no one else in the driving radius had the one I wanted. I went in and showed my salesman the vehicle price on Car Gurus and he acknowledged. He went to speak to his manager Sean. He came back with the offer for me to sign that had an additional $1000.00 on it without explanation. I pointed out the discrepancy and he went back in to speak to Sean. Sean then came out to explain to me that they don’t deal with Car Gurus and that they should not have listed their vehicle at the price that I was looking at. So I proceeded to look at their actual Williams Subaru website and showed her that they were ALSO advertising the same vehicle for the same price as Car Gurus. Sean quickly offered an additional excuse stating that the “public” should not be able to see that price and that the link to the vehicle “when clicked” was taking the “public” to an internal website. She finally, reluctantly took the $1000 off. That is when the rude, out of line behavior began from Sean. My salesman corrected the offer but came back with an odd number of which I asked him to round it off which amounted to a deduction of $93 whole dollars. Sean came back out and said “your now asking for an additional discount!” “I already gave you $2000 off and your asking for another 93 dollars off?!” She was so aggravated with me that she leaned into me and got in my space to say that she had to take care of 7 salesmen and that I personally was taking food off of their table…which was very out of line. I pointed out that I did not ask for 2K off, but rather SHE was advertising 2K off of the Ascent on her website. I had asked only for 93 dollars off of their advertised price to round out the number on top of my 5000 down payment. She then said in her elegant way “so we are in a pissing contest over 93 dollars!” I refuted her assessment of the situation and asked for the same. She said that she was not going to do this and stormed away. Again, I bought the vehicle because it was the only one available in the area but do not go to Williams Subaru. I am also going to report this to Corporate Subaru. In conclusion, I looked at their website days later and on Car Gurus and guess what…other Ascents were STILL listed with a...

I'm not much of a review writer. I only write them when things are REALLY good or REALLY bad. Well, this time, I am writing about a REALLY, REALLY good experience. Easily the best I've ever had buying a car...

If you are in the market for a car, I HIGHLY recommend the folks at Williams Subaru of Charlotte, North Carolina.

Yes - I drove all the way to North Carolina from Mddle-Tennessee to buy a car.

The biggest reason why? They didn't play any of the nonsense car salesman games. (I am SO over car salesmen tactics!)

Daniel McLaughlin worked with me to get the best possible deal saving me quite literally thousands over what I could buy this exact same model for in Tennessee. Then he came in ON HIS DAY OFF 😱 to meet me when I drove over to pick up the car. He even went so far as to offer to pick me up at the rental car place.

There were no surprises. No bait and switch (which one of the Nashville dealerships had told me would happen once I got there when I tried to get them to match the deal so I could buy the car in Tennessee 😡 #lies).

Williams Subaru was above-board on the entire process. Everything was simple and painless.

After all the paperwork was done, they spent at least two hours with me in the car going over all the features of the car and helping me to get it set up to work best for me. (Going from a 2008 Ford Taurus who's best feature is an AM/FM radio 😂 to this car was technologically overwhelming, to say the least!). I was told to expect a facetime call one day this week to answer any further questions that come up after driving it for a few days.

Wow is all I can say.

The manager came and personally thanked me for coming so far to buy a car from them. It came up in the conversation that I had brought my dog, Prim with me. The manager disappeared and when she returned, she had a mini-Outback dog toy and a frisbee for Prim! The Outback is THE cutest thing!

Williams Subaru has exhibited truly top-notch customer service. I would not hesitate to make the drive back to North Carolina to buy another car from them. It's not often that I'm this impressed, and I have NEVER been this impressed with a car dealership. It makes me wish they were closer so I could take my car to them...