Elliott Bay Auto Brokers

Reviews 3

AA

Aamir Khan

I called about a 2007 X5. More curious than anything because I had never driven one but was in love with the shape. Zack answered the phone and my first impressions were extremely skeptical; independent dealership, “we take good care of our cars”, “we do right by the customer” and more. A lot of big promises that I have heard from other dealers before and have always been unpleasantly surprised to find are untrue. Upon arriving at the dealership, there is a very large show room and a lot of inventory. Zack was with a customer and passed me onto James because they are not commissioned sales people. Not commissioned? - now that I like. James was very knowledgeable about all the packages, features and quirks about the X5. He was even able to give me a detailed break down of the differences between the X5, Q7 and ML. I was really impressed by his knowledge and pointing out things I hadn’t considered. When I wanted to test drive the car he took my info and just gave me the keys. I wasnt sure about the size of the trunk and had previously been thinking about a Q7. James not only gave me freedom to test drive the X5 but had a Q7 pulled up and ready when I returned for a side by side comparison. This was a lot of running around for him for me when I had clearly said I was just looking. When I compared the two cars side by side, he was right about all the quirks particular to my situation and the X5 was a clear winner. There was absolutely no pressure to buy anything but we sat down to look at some pricing anyway. I was blown away by how open both he and Zack were about everything. There are no managers (the worst types of human beings) or finance guys so all the decision-making was with these guys. They actually printed out a rate sheet from the bank and showed me the rates available to me without increasing them. When it came to my trade in they allowed me to remove my customized parts and gave me a very fair price. It was the tax advantage that James shared with me which ultimately sealed the deal. I had originally gone down there to just look but the excellent customer services, knowledge, honesty and great deal got me a new car ☺ My story and great experience would have ended there. HOWEVER, after buying the car as-is with no warranty, I drove it to Mt. Baker ski lodge for a family trip with my kids. Upon arriving at the lodge the X5 started leaking coolant violently and before I new it the car was ready to overheat. $!@$ was my reaction. I knew that the dealership would give me the standard “as-is” disclaimer. I was stuck on a mountaintop with a broken down car, kids, miles from home and no warranty. I thought I would call Elliott Bay just in case, even though I knew what to expect. To my surprise, these guys not only took care of the parts and labor to fix the coolant tank but covered the several hundred dollar tow from Mt baker back a 128 miles to Seattle. I was blown away. They even gave as another x5 as a loaner and sent the car back to have another inspection performed on it just incase anything else was wrong. My experience James, Zack, Spencer, Adam, Dan and Elliott Bay has been nothing short of spectacular and I would thoroughly recommend them!

AN

Anne Gutierrez

Disappointed to say the least! My husband and I drove from Spokane for a car at Elliott Bay Auto Brokers almost a month ago. We traded in our car and got an amazing deal on a beautiful car. The transaction was great, took a few hours, but went smoothly. Then the nightmare began, my husband who was out of town received phone calls from the finance manager saying that they had lost our check. Daniel in finance literally harassed my husband 3-4 times a day on his cell phone and at his work, regardless of the fact that it was Daniels fault that he lost the check. When my husband returned to town he checked with our banking manager who researched our account and put a stop payment on our check. After the bank had advised us that we were okay to send another check, we did so. Even a week after they had received the down payment check (again), they still didn’t issue the payoff to our lender for our trade in – almost a month after we traded the car in. Bobby, the manager, said he was sorry and took $300 off, but that really doesn’t compensate for having the harassing phone calls to my husband, the late fees or additional interest on the car, nor the fact that the car not being paid off is now negatively showing on my husband’s credit report. Bobby also told my husband that he would make sure the payoff was taken care of last week, which he obviously didnt do as the bank called us this week saying that they still havent received a payoff. So this week, my husband and I have made numerous phone calls to Elliot Bay, and have gotten a complete run around regarding the payoff; they even hung up on me three times today, or as they said, "it wasnt intentional," but it was completely unprofessional. Finally I transferred to Lucy who said she sent the payoff on Monday, which the bank would have already received, but still havent... so hopefully the bank receives the payoff this week or we will be pursuing legal avenues. As a side note, make sure you know what you’re trade in’s blue book value is, otherwise they will try to screw you out of a few thousand dollars. Do not let them charge you $400 for an extra key for the car, as that is ludicrous. Watch the interest rate, as they are not going to offer you the best rate. No matter what, do not agree to a warranty or gap insurance. When you have to wait for the couple hours to speak to a finance person go to the teriyaki place right next to it, it’s awesome. And above all else, cross your fingers that they don’t lose your down payment check. Overall, we love our new car, it was a great price, and hopefully they did issue our payoff on our trade in. I would like to think that it was just an unfortunate sequence of events, but the way they handled their mistake was VERY unprofessional. We had hoped to get another car from them, but will definitely have to rethink that now. Bummer though as we initially liked doing business with them.

TE

Terri Taylor Engelman

UPDATE 11-07-15: Since posting this review, Michael from EBA has contacted both my husband and I regarding the problems weve had. Michael explained that they had some problems with the people we had dealt with before and that these people were no longer with the company, We thought his phone calls were just more lip service., but yesterday we received a check for half of the cost of repairs weve had to make to our car. I have to say, after all weve been through, they have restored some of our faith in them and they do stand behind the cars they sell and their reputation. On August 16, 2015 wed read all these great reviews and thought wed chosen a superior, upstanding place to purchase our car. However, our experience seems to be the one exception. We started having problems with the car we purchased, an 2002 Audi TT, the day after we bought it. The blinkers stopped working, the check engine light came on indicating a new O2 sensor was needed and the pump for the windshield washers did not work - at all. As we live in Portland, we couldnt just go back to Elliott Bay, but thought surely our warranty would cover these items. Well some of the problems would have been covered, except Elliott Bay took more than 30 days to turn in the warranty paperwork to the provider. Eventually we got one of the problems covered, but the others werent. Our salesman Michael seemed honestly surprised we were having problems "so soon" and actually said hed contact the seller to see if theyd help with the repair costs. However, we never heard back from him and he stopped responding entirely, to email or phone calls. At least the finance manager, Chris, tried to help by getting our warranty paperwork submitted to the warranty company, but still we are left with nearly $1000 of repairs within 30 days of owning this car. Not to mention the problems of trying to get it licensed in Oregon. Now 60 days after purchase, two 21 day temp permits and working on a 60 day trip permit later - our car still isnt licensed. It took them nearly 45 days to send the paperwork to Oregon DMV and they left actually omitted one of our names from the documents. Plus no one at Elliott Bay seems to know what the process is for getting a car licensed in another State. Be sure that you know the process, in its entirety, before by from them if you are taking the car out of Washington, because they do not. Weve tried calling the manager Bob, who told us hed look into this entire transaction and of course hes never called back after the initial conversation or returned our subsequent phone calls. It seems once they get your money, they are done with you. Long story short - beware buying a car here as you too may be an exception, like we were.