Deceptive Car Salesman
This has been one of the most deliberately deceptive experiences I've ever had with a dealership.
My sister's friend needed a car to visit her sick mother in New York. She's going through a divorce, she's stretched thin emotionally, and the last thing she needed was to be misled. I reached out to Jonah at AutoSavvy specifically to shield her from that, to vet the deal myself before she ever walked through the door.
I told Jonah all of this upfront. I was transparent about her situation, why I was handling the process, and my concerns about being blindsided on price or terms. He reassured me there was nothing left undisclosed and that all of his customers are happy with their purchases.
Based on that assurance, she drove 1.5 hours with her child to buy the car.
The first thing Jonah said when she arrived: "I'm not sure if you know how our business works, but we only sell branded title vehicles."
That's it. That's the whole review. That one sentence, delivered at the door after hours of conversation, tells you everything you need to know about how this dealership operates. As you can see in my photos, I messaged him at 10am, he had all the way till 4:30pm to mention this to me.
Jonah's response when confronted? He said he was sorry I hadn't done my research and pointed to the website. I looked. The top menu bar lists "Branded Titles" as a tab. The car listing doesn't mention it. There's a buried phrase in the description referencing "the largest branded title dealership," but nothing that plainly states the vehicle is salvage titled. He also mentioned a video. A video titled "Why Are We So Cheap?" That title doesn't tell a buyer anything about salvage titles. Call it what it is.
I've seen dealerships that sell both branded and clean title vehicles, I had no reason to assume otherwise here. But that's exactly what deception relies on: reasonable assumptions left deliberately uncorrected.
Jonah, you had every opportunity to say four words: "We sell salvage titles." You didn't. Instead, a single mother who is managing more than you can imagine drove 90 minutes with her kid to be told at the door what you could have said in the first five minutes of our conversation.
I genuinely liked your personality. That made this worse not better. So I asked myself, am I being unreasonable with this review? I gave all the information to Claude and it is sad when AI also agrees with me. Read what Claude says in my photo on Google Reviews. I am a fair and honest person, I just needed transparency.
I know there is a market for branded cars, you just have to disclose it directly. I am sure you have had great customer experiences and do a good job, but in this case, it just looked like you were greedy for money and taking advantage of lady's terrible situation. Jonah, my advice to you is to be clear and state the obvious, this could have been a 2 minute interaction and I wouldn't have to expose your methods of selling. I wish I would have gotten another salesman instead.