Somerset Sales and Leasing — Local services in Somerset

• Smoke and mirrors: This place is so highly rated because the salesman bribes you to give them 5 stars on Google review and they'll send you a gas card *

I bought a 2003 Nissan Sentra with 93k miles that was sold as-is from these guys. No option of buying a warranty. My salesman Bob wanted to put me in the most reliable vehicle for my price range so he picked this one.

Student loans are messing up my credit so it's either here or Carhop, obviously I chose here. I was excited and very relieved because my previous car had broken down and this was the replacement. When I test drove it and saw how nice it was and how there was "absolutely nothing wrong with it based on the inspection" I obviously jumped on it and signed my life away.

Halfway home, about 45 mins into the return trip, I started hearing a rattle. I thought it was something minor like a heat shield so I figured I could wait to get it looked at until the following paycheck. Day by day the rattling grew louder and very suddenly one day it turned into a knock and not even 10 minutes later the car died at a stop light. 10 minutes later it died on the highway while I was with my 7 year old daughter. It was completely unexpected and absolutely terrifying trying to jump across 5 lanes of traffic going 65mph in order to pull over on the side of the road when your steering wheel and brakes are momentarily locked. At this point I was checking under the hood and realized the engine was bone dry. No oil. A car this mint wouldn't leak that fast. Not to mention the car was on e when I bought it (which they said they don't fill up.)

When I called Somerset to report the issue with my brand new used car they were very understanding and apologetic and they wanted to help pay to get it fixed. They were confused how such a nice car would have such major issues so soon. Their inspection obviously can't tell you about any mechanical issues but the service manager test drove it and it was just fine. It didnt make sense. For a few days I would call and check on the status of their "help" and each time someone different would answer and give a different version of where things were at. It took the sales manager Scott 4 days to get me a repair quote. Mind you I only drove the car for a total of 4 days (I had to get something installed so it sat around for a few days after I bought it). When I finally got a hold of Scott he gave me the quote for an estimate, to which I appropriately asked why I needed to know the cost. He told me that he no longer was helping pay for the fix as he would not be making any money. The best he could do was give me their repair cost, which is still $2000+. Scott had started to become very rude and short with me when I was asking for other solutions. He even flipped things around and said that the car is 12 years old with 93k miles on it. It was no longer a "great car that ran like a watch". It was old and had high miles. When I asked to speak with the owner, Scott told me no and said that he wouldn't want to talk to me and would say the same thing. Scott eventually hung up on me.

It doesn't matter of they're legally responsible to pay for anything, good business means keeping your customers happy.

No matter the context of my side of the story, the fact is that I drove the car with no oil for a total of 100 miles over 4 days, it doesn't work and I have to pay for an engine replacement myself. They might try to do the right thing, but they didn't do the right thing here. Read a few comments down. There's a guy who bought a Ford Escape and brought it back in because it had some issue and Somerset didn't charge him a dime to fix it. I'm kind of angry about that.

Long story short, don't chance it here. It's just...

"Guaranteed financing" is extremely misleading. I understand that my current credit rating is terrible but I'm 43 and up until recently (divorce) I had outstanding credit. I've owned 8 brand new 3/4 and 1 ton Rams. Just sold my 2015 Ram 2500 diesel. Had it for 2 years at over $900 a month. Only sold it to reduce overhead and to release my cosigner as I don't like asking for help and want to start repairing my credit. Problem is that on my trade in I get offered wholesale of $3k for my other Ram 2500 Hemi 2003, and then asked for an additional $4500-$15,000 down depending on the truck I buy. Works out to be like 75-90% of the vehicle cost. Example: $21,990 truck was my trade plus $15,000 for a total of $18,000 down on a $22k truck. Well heck if I had $15k laying around, I wouldn't have credit issues. Furthermore I wouldn't finance the balance. Even the high mileage pos for $13,900 was trade plus $4500. It's ridiculous to advertise guaranteed financing for bad credit and then ask for ridiculous down payments. If I had that cash I'd also go to a better dealership and buy a vehicle from a more straight forward honest place. In the end if I'd taken the $13,900 truck I'd have simply replaced my high mileage 2003 with a 2009 that has identical mileage but mines a loaded Laramie power wagon and the '09 is a SLT plain Jane. Total waste of time and it would have really sucked to see my trade listed for three times what I was offered. I decided to reuse my co signer and bought a 2010 Ram 2500 with the Cummings and only 114k miles for the same price they wanted on a theirs with a gas engine. If you're desperate and have nobody willing to cosign, then ask for Ron. He's a straight shooter. But if you have ANY OPTIONS, stay away. Management is the issue and the one guy even tried to shove a Ford F-250 6.4 on me, even after I repeatedly said no Fords. Proof he cares about the money and the...

I had looked at their website at a vehicle and clicked for the Auto Report on it. I had to fill out a form and they would contact me about it. Bob e-mailed, called, and texted me. I had replied to him and told him we would be coming to test drive that car. He informed me it was gone. I replied that we were interested in one other one that they had, so we would still drive down to look at that one then instead. When we got there, Bob came out, I said I was on the website this morning and had talked with someone about a vehicle. He said "That wasn't this morning, I talked to you an hour ago." Which, to me, was a weird comment and not friendly for someone who would like us to buy a car. Anyway, after I said we were looking at their Ford Fusion, he said the price is wrong online. It was listed for $6900 and was actually $8000 because they had just put a new transmission in it. Well not only were we not interested in it after hearing it had that work done, but also disappointed he hadn't mentioned that when he had talked to me before we drove all the way to Somerset. He asked what our price range was, after I told him he said he only had two cars in that range. He showed us a Pontiac Bonneville. The inside was in horrible shape and it had over 200,000 miles on it. I said that was a little more miles than we were looking for. He said that in our price range we wouldn't find something with much lower miles. I told him that we had just test drove a car with 123,000 miles in much better shape and it was still cheaper. So, we test drove this Bonneville anyway and it didn't drive very smoothly, obviously needed an alignment and such. When we returned, he seemed much nicer and willing to negotiate price, however, to me his comments and how he treated us in the beginning were enough to make me not want to buy a car there. Test driving it just enforced...