Toyota Universe

Long story short, the absolute worst experience I have ever had at a car dealership, avoid this place at all costs and I am making sure my friends and family also know to avoid this dealership. I was ready to buy a car from here but thankfully I learned not to before it was too late. My wife and I were looking to test drive a Grand Highlander Platinum. I called this dealership and was very specific that I wanted to test drive this vehicle and this trim level. I was told that they had the car and I scheduled a test drive for the following day. On the morning of the test drive, I called again to confirm that they still had the vehicle and it had not been sold yet. I was told that it just sold yesterday, but they had a fully loaded XLE available to test drive. This was an hour before my scheduled appointment, so I decided to try the XLE at that point. My wife and I arrived to Toyota Universe and after giving my name to the girl at the front desk, she didn't know that I had an appointment and asked if I had ever been here. I had received multiple automated text messages from this dealership the day before and that day reminding me of this appointment, so I found that odd that she didn't know. We were passed off to Jose for our appointment (I believe that was his name based on the voicemail I received from the desk manager Vlad after our visit). Jose made zero effort the entire visit to get to know us a bit or provide any customer service whatsoever, and had no idea why we were there and asked what vehicle we were looking for. I had already had this conversation twice already over the phone with the dealership so it was annoying that nobody seems to know anything here. Jose also did not know that we had an appointment that day. Jose had told us they might have a Platinum to test drive and he would check. We were left unsure by this, Jose left twice from the desk leaving my wife and I just sitting there for about 15 minutes. During none of this time did Jose communicate back to us where he was going, what he was doing, if they had the car or not, etc. We were already off to a terrible start here. Jose returns to take us outside for a test drive. I assumed he had located the Platinum for us to drive, but he said nothing. After walking through the lot, we arrive at a car and I asked if this was a Platinum. He responded that no, it was a regular Grand Highlander and he "thought that is what I wanted". I had been specific multiple times up to this point to what I wanted and I was shocked that none of this information seemed to make it to Jose or the dealership in general, or he just wasn't paying attention. We had driven pretty far to test drive a vehicle and to find out the salesperson they stuck us with didn't understand that was very frustrating from a customer service perspective. I had to test drive a car I didn't want at that point as we already drove far for this appointment, the whole time Jose said nothing to us. As soon as we arrived back to the lot we immediately left without going back inside. A few minutes later as we were driving home, I get a voicemail from Jose. Apparently he butt dialed me and I could overhear his conversation with someone else. This was extremely unprofessional. As of now I have since permanently blocked all calls from this dealership. I have almost a decade's worth of sales experience under my belt and can very confidently say that this was the worst sales experience of my life, for any product or any service. This experience was so bad I would not buy the car for free if they offered it to me here. Do not bring your business here, it will be a waste of your time.

I contacted this dealership several times about a specific car and made it very clear that I was coming from Virginia — over 5 hours and 40 minutes one way — and that I didn’t want to take any risks. I asked them repeatedly to confirm everything before I came. Each time, they told me: “Just come, everything is fine.” I finally drove all the way to New Jersey, only to be told upon arrival that they couldn’t do the deal directly with me, and that it had to go through a third-party company (a separate entity they work with). Nobody had mentioned this before. It was extremely disappointing to find out after such a long drive that nothing was ready or confirmed. This was completely unprofessional and a total waste of my time, effort, and money. I traveled nearly 12 hours round trip based on their word. I hope this review helps other customers avoid going through the same frustrating experience.

Armond was wonderful sales representative. He did a great job reading the situation and no pressing to hard, which made the decision easier to buy from him. He made certain everything was in order when we decided to move forward on the purchase; and was straight forward with figures.