Auto Nations What A Joke ..former employee tells it like it is ..their business practices are shady to their employee & consumers.. wrong VIN numbers, banks financing wrong cars * UPDATE

Being a former employee of an Auto Nations dealership I can tell that this company is a real joke. Auto Nations owns approximately 400 dealerships nation wide.

They buy existing dealerships with good track records. They send in a couple of corporate people to address the current employee's and do a dog and pony show. Their show consists of telling everyone that they are not going to change anything and that they only purchase dealerships that are highly successful.

They also everyone that things are going to be better and that employee benefits are going to be better because of the size of their net work.

Well for the 2 years I was employed buy them the medical insurance cost went up 40% and the 401K was a joke. Their match in the 401K consisted of their stock which started at $ 16.00 a share and is now or recently was down around $6.75 a share. Along with all this they extended service hours and installed programs that eliminate personel and create a tremendous amount of paper work that has to be forwarded to their corporate office. They also restructured most of the pay plans and reduced the income of most mid level management along with working longer hours. Now bare in mind we were for the most part already working 55 to 60 hours a week.

In a business where quality people are hard to find they have managed to run a lot quality people to seek employment elsewhere. Today people are leaving to go to the private sector or leaving the industry all together. The bad part is the there are not enough new people coming into the business to off set the loss of the quality people leaving. The problem with this is it takes a minimum of 3-5 years for a new technician to become somewhat skilled at what they are doing. This is after they generally have spent 18-24 months in some kind of technical school.

I want to Thank Auto-Nations for all the constant lies and grief that they have put everyone through. What goes around comes around-------

THE CONSUMER RIP-OFF...................
My biggest complaint with Auto-Nations is the deception and lies that they presented to the employee's of dealerships that they purchased. They are trying to make the business into a mass merchandising company like K-Mart. Some of their business practices are shady and here is a couple of examples
that come to mind.

I know they have sold vehicles (new vehicles) to customers that did not reflect the correct vehicle identification number. What I mean is the paper work had the wrong V.I.N. vs. what the car had on it. This means when the customers vehicle was registered and licensed by the state the wrong numbers were used and not the numbers from the actual vehicle that they had possession of. This also means that the bank had financed the wrong car. I know this has happened more than once. It could be an honest mistake but who really knows. I know that they would also report vehicles sold to the manufacturers that were not sold so they could collect incentive money and additional discounts from the manufacturers on the purchase of new units for inventory.

As far as them selling wrecked cars. I can tell you that they have sold new units that were damaged in transportation from the manufacturers and never disclosed it to the customer. I know of one vehicle that was damaged to the tune of almost 3k that was repaired and sold as new. This vehicle had the roof, Left rear 1/4 panel and the windshild replaced along with 50% of it
being repainted.

They are required by law to disclose repaired damage if
over a certain amount which I think is $750.00 or at least use to be--it could be a percentage of the M.S.R.P. now.
Well thats about it for now----
Take care

Bob Garcia