Yet another bad dealer experience that I need to vent about.

So I'm in the market for an 07 Xterra S 4x4 with Utility package. Last Thursday, I sent about 15 emails out to local dealers in PA & received a few quotes back via email, which range about $1500 (give or take) under invoice with the current incentives offered by Nissan. I got a call from Loughead Nissan in Swarthmore, PA who gave me the usual speech about being the #1 volume dealer & that he can beat any pricing. I asked him to provide his quote over the phone but he said he couldn't & told me to come in. I gave him a number instead (slightly lower than the lowest email quote I received from other dealers) & he said he'll talk to his sales manager. About an hour later, I received a callback saying it was a deal so I scheduled an appointment for Saturday. The dealer called back again later in the afternoon asking whether I had a trade in & I said yes & gave him the necessary info of my vehicle. Keep in mind that he had already agreed to the first deal without any mention of trade-in

Fast forward to Saturday at the dealership, the Xterra they had waiting for me actually had additional packages on it but was never mentioned over the phone (i.e. Protection package, cargo divider, retractable cargo cover, trailer hitch). Please note that I had specifically only asked for the Utility package & nothing else in my initial email. While waiting for them to assess my trade in value, the salesperson that I dealt with over the phone told me that it was a smart move to shop around by sending quotes out to all the local dealers. After about 20 min of sitting around with only one other customer there, the sales manager shows up & provides a quote for that vehicle that was higher than all the email quotes I had received & low-ball my trade in, so basically the price that they quoted over the phone still remained the same, they just factored the trade-in into the newly raised price. He further insulted me by saying, I don't need to sell you this car. So at this point, I just shook his hand & left. It was a waste of time & partially my fault for not confirming this in writing prior to showing up but I just bought a Honda Pilot 8 months ago & went through the same process & the dealer honored the price when I walked in. There was no written agreement faxed, it was strictly verbal. For this Nissan deal, I would assume that they would be smarter than to pull the bait & switch technique since they knew that I had been shopping on the internet but oh well.

So moral of the story is that if you're in the market for a Nissan vehicle, do yourself a favor & stay away from unprofessional, unethical, ignorant dealerships such as Loughead Nissan in Swarthmore, PA. Thanks for listening.