St. Charles Hyundai, Review Update

I have a review of St. Charles Hyundai that I published after I picked up a car from them. This post is a little atypical of what I usually publish, but I wanted to share a little bit about them because of the work they have put in, and give credit where credit is due.

For those who aren't aware, very often, there are monetary incentives that comes with getting good reviews (usually 5 stars) for auto companies. In this time, it's also extremely competitive, and at the time I was hunting around, I was scouring all over the Midwest looking for a dealer that could get me a decent deal on the car we were looking for.

With the help of some contacts, I was pointed towards St. Charles Hyundai in MO. They had the vehicle I wanted without charging any Market Adjustment Prices. Unfortunately, the thing that kind of made the experience less than perfect for me was the way they discussed their policy of only financing through HMFUSA. They didn't lie and they were honest about things, but the way they presented it also made it seem more "due to the pandemic" than what I discovered later, which was that they were always fairly high pressure in terms of pushing this sort of financing, but they decided to make it mandatory in order to stay profitable in a time of extreme stock shortage. Understandable, but not really explained well enough for my tastes.

Additionally, when I was working with them, I didn't find that I was especially pleased with the way that we went through the paperwork and the way a few things were done, but overall, it was a fairly painless process and went well. I've just gone through some other dealers for other purchases, so I can compare and know that it wasn't as good as it could have been.

So, I gave them a 4-star rating instead of a 5-star rating. Well, obviously, they are highly incentivized to get that 5-star rating, and two different sales follow-ups occurred in which they tried to understand why they got that 4-star rating and if there was anything that could be done to "rescore" the rating to a higher one. Initially, there didn't seem like much could be done, as I really didn't have any true issue with their business dealings – I just would have liked a little better sales process.

However, after two different people worked really hard to try to understand what they could do and let me express to them what could be improved, I felt like they had really done quite a lot of work on the whole to try to work with me on "improving" on even that small reduction in the experience. They finally figured out something that they could do to compensate me for a change in review. I decided more to change my review based on the amount of their follow up than anything else, but I greatly appreciate the work they were doing to try to improve their image by actually offering something up. Some people might not appreciate that, but I feel it's at least a decent way of handling things and pretty good business.

What clinched the deal, though, is that it turns out I can't change my rating because of the time limits, which means they essentially missed out (or would have to find some other way of messing with the system). Still, they followed up with what they offered to me, and I have to say, they probably didn't have to do that. However, showing good faith and honoring that commitment, I feel that they deserve some public acknowledgment for doing that, and so I'm writing this post to give them props on honest dealings and real effort to improve my overall experience. I couldn't change my rating, but I hope that this will at least acknowledge that I now consider their dealings with me 5-star.