Horne Kia — Local services in Gilbert

Original Review 6/2025

It was an extremely low pressure and positive experience overall. Every person I dealt with was extremely professional and knowledgable in their respective roles at the delaership, especially Lisa Brawner who went out of her way to ensure a very efficient yet pleasant experience. I have to admit I normally have a bit of disdain for car dealerships (understatement) but this experience was definitely an exception and I will be back!

Edit – 9/14/25

Unfortunately, just three months later, I have to completely reverse my opinion. What started as a good experience quickly revealed itself to be the exact opposite and others deserve to know.

I bought a BRAND NEW Kia Niro SX Touring Hybrid with 38 miles on it. This is a GREAT car and I have NO issue with Kia itself, just Horne Kia the sub-par dealership. Within days, I discovered the car was delivered half a quart low on oil and with all four tires 10 pounds underinflated. That’s not a “minor oversight”—that’s basic negligence on a new vehicle. Checking that stuff before delivery is MONKEY level quality control! When I told Lisa(sales rep) , she acted surprised, but there was no apology, no accountability, and no attempt to make it right somehow. Horne Kia shoves overpriced, sub-standard and non-cancellable extras like “Lifetime Tint” and “Smartshield” into your deal whether you want them or not because they are already installed on the car. Obviously, one would assume the item was QC'd to some extent before delivering to the customer, right? WRONG! (Why would they ? They didn't even check tires/oil!) My “lifetime tint” looked terrible from day one. After the first wash I noticed many bubbles and scratches on multiple windows. When I pointed this out, Lisa gave me the predictable “bring it in and we’ll fix it” response. That’s not acceptable on a $37K brand new car. I don't have time to be leaving my new car at the dealer for stupid things that should not be, I have bills to pay. That is why I bought a NEW car. Give me my $700 back, take the tint off and I'll go get BoBo the tint monkey to give me a $250 no-bubble tint job. I admit I didn't see the problems initially because my car was also delivered with etched hard-water stains on all the glass so I didn’t even notice the tint defects until after the first wash. Lisa was made aware of this as well.

But here’s the real scam: I canceled several service contracts and warranties directly with JM&A, the warranty administrator. JM&A refunded everything promptly to my lender except for one contract that was refunded to Horne Kia and was supposed to be credited to my lender account. The one and only refund Horne Kia is responsible for? Still missing as of 9/14/25 , more than two months later. JM&A confirmed multiple times that the refund credit was sent to Horne Kia and the issue has now been escalated to a higher level at JM&A. Alicia, the person responsible for refunds at Horne Kia, flat-out lied to me, saying they never received the credit. She promised to follow up with me but never has. Could this simply be yet ANOTHER example of Horne Kia's proven general imcompetence and indifference to customer issues after the sale? I think so. Meanwhile, I’m still paying interest to my lender on money Horne Kia is sitting on that does not belong to them.

In short, Horne Kia is a perfect example of what’s wrong with shady dealerships :

They don’t inspect new cars before delivery. Oil level and tire pressure checks are bare minimum, and they couldn’t even manage that. They force junk add-ons you may not want and can’t cancel, and then deliver them with defects right out of the box. They lie and dodge responsibility when it comes to refunds. Their smiles and “customer service” vanish the second you’ve signed the paperwork.

If you enjoy giving up your hard-earned money just to be robbed, lied to, scammed, and ignored Horne Kia will be happy to take your money and make your dreams come true. If not, do what I wish I had done: go to literally any other Kia dealership and STAY AWAY...

It's 1:13am as I write this, due to my brain dwelling on the interaction I had today (yesterday, technically) at Horne Kia, which is now leading me to be a K@ren on Google. I was incredibly offended, and never want to go back...

My husband, toddler, and I show up interested in a few 3-row models. We first meet Ron, and after chitchatting over options, lead to the Carnival being the best option. We tell him we're explicitly interested in the Hybrid model. He takes us out to look at some, but shows us non-hybrids. Nbd, slip of the mind. We go back inside, he goes off to look at his inventory, which I've given criteria of Black/White/Gray exterior, Hybrid, no brown interior.

While waiting, I guess we got passed off to the new kid, Rocky. So I reiterate my criteria to him. More waiting for him to search, then back outside. Alas! He shows us more non-hybrid options. I'm like okay, some people need to turn on their listening ears here... anyway we finally got to the hybrids.

We had met Rocky's sales manager (forgot his name, shorter, older, latino gentleman) who said we should find one we like then we'll talk numbers. The ol' "we'll see what we can do". I found 2 that I liked, and so we loaded up my toddler's carseat and went for a test drive. It went great! Honestly the Carnival was not on my radar, but I was pleased, and my husband was kinda smitten. We go back inside and they ask if I want to see the pricing. Yep! Sure do. So we go in an office, and that's when things went down hill.

We tell Rocky that we were interested in out-the-door price rather than monthly amounts for financing, and that we had wiggle room for down payment (like, a lot). We already had financing pre-approval, but if there were incentives to go through them for financing, that we would. Nothing was off the table. We were very blunt about this. He was filling out a sheet to take back to his manager, and asked my husband for some number, I don't know how he worded it, but basically our like most ideal pricing figure. (The vehicle I test drove is 50k msrp, internet price 48k.) My husband just off top, said 43k out the door and we'd sign. Rocky made him sign some hand-written agreement to this on the paper. We all knew this was a low number, but at no point did we say this was our walk away figure. Obviously you start low then work high..

Anyway, he goes back to the manager, comes back, and we basically get the "thanks for coming in". He told us they couldn't do the 43. Okay, no problem, however, we requested THEIR pricing in the first place. We were told the manager would not even give us an offer/pricing because of the number given by my husband. I was confused, so I tell Rocky I expected his manager to come back with something for us, some sort of counter offer. We were aware of the sticker price, if I was not comfortable with it, I wouldn't have bothered going through the hoops of unloading and loading a freaking car seat! But obviously we want to get the best deal we can.

Rocky goes back a second time. Second time comes back empty handed. He used verbiage that they weren't going to "bleed money" for our deal, that it doesn't matter how much we put down, because they want people to finance. He said we were 15-20k off - this kid's math was not adding up, and every time I spoke about numbers he kept interrupting me; talking about fees, as if we weren't already aware, and then he'd argue there's more. Taxes and title went from like 5k to 8k in this conversation. Maybe if he had gotten me the number print out, like we went into that room to do in the first place, we'd all have been square with what amount was required for purchase.

Many times I told him that he was not understanding what were saying, and the game of telephone to the manager was rude and annoying. I was pretty hangry at this point, and my saint of a toddler really needed her nuggies, so we left. They lost a sale, and I felt super judged and disregarded after all that. Really unfortunate waste...

Update: I got to enjoy my car for 5 days. Took it into the service department at a scheduled appointment time. Was given a Kia Niro as a rental (I transport dogs 3 days a week). We were called at the end of the day and notified that parts had to be ordered from Kia. There is no idea when I will get my car back.

I'm writing because I feel like you should know that there is an issue with certain promises being made on behalf of Kia. First off, I want to say Ron Hernandez, our sales guy, has been the nicest person ever. He has heard all our complaints and done the best to help us. I will go into more detail. We had our first interaction with Kia on 2/7. We test drove a EV9 and loved everything about it. Ron educated us on everything as it was the first EV we had ever looked into. We came back on 2/11 ready to make a purchase. Your add on the website was $5k down and payments of just under $500 a month on a lease. We were unaware that was on the Wind model only. We were very interested in the Land for the 360 cameras. The negotiator (one up from Ron) told us we would need to do $10k down and $950 per month. We showed him the add and he was unaware of that special. That was when we noticed the fine print about the Wind and not the Land. So we settled and decided on the Wind but they still would not honor the online add and required $10k down. $900 payments were so out of our budget. So we left. As we were walking around the Toyota dealership, we got a call from another man that said he would honor the online add. So we headed back to start the paperwork. We were told that we would have 2 years free charging and concierge service that would come out to our house to show us how to program things. As we were leaving, we found out that the 2 years of free charging did not cover the 2025 vehicles. And while we were signing paperwork, they were only able to charge the car to 20%. We live a half hour away from the dealership. We barely made it home and decided to charge the car. Overnight the charge barely got us above 20% (again). I contacted Ron and, after a lot of back and forth, he was able to get me a code for 1000kw. He was also going to send some all weather mats to our house, which was very kind of him. We went that night to find a compatible charger which was a similar distance from our house to the dealership. The code worked great and it only took 20 minutes to charge. On our way home, we were stopped for a tail light. Unbeknownst to us, one of our tail lights didn’t work. Also, the driver side handle did not slide in to be flush with the door when I locked the car. We contacted Ron again and he gave us the number for the service department. I am now on day 3 of Kia Ownership and my car needs service. None the less, I thought at least I could get someone out to my home to help me program my car. I sent an email to the Kia Concierge service about setting up a time (this was from the paperwork I was given at signing with directions). Within minutes of sending that email, I received an email that the service had been concluded as of 1/13. We have always purchased Toyota because the expirence was so easy. This is my first Kia. I absolutely regret it now. On top of everything else, Kia claims to offer a in home charging unit and installation but Ron is unfamiliar with this. We are having to pay another $1000 for that. Car buying is not the best experience in general. But once I left the lot, I was really looking forward to having this car. This whole experience has been awful. This dealership needs to communicate better with Kia and understand what is current and what is not. Maybe read their own website. The only brightside to all of this has been Ron’s willingness to help in anyway he can. I have never had a salesperson...