I’ve sat on a situation with Findlay Nissan in Post Falls for about five months, hoping that someone within the business would decide that it is better not to screw a customer over but that was just wishful thinking, thereby necessitating a scathing review of Findlay Nissan’s Finance Department. All of this woeful story comes from my son and employees and management from Findlay that really just don’t seem to care what their customers go through when dealing with their finance department.
Back in the spring, my son, a local businessman who is just starting out, had a car that he had leased coming off the lease. The lease agreement that he signed put the value of the car pretty much where the NADA value was but the excessive mileage that he put on the car put the value under the residual. He knew it was coming off lease and still wanted to buy it. The finance department tried to get a loan under his name (he got the lease but couldn’t get the loan) and found no takers locally. My son asked me to cosign the note. I haven’t had to cosign a note before for any of my children so I was new to the process. Back in April/May, Findlay called me ONCE for verbal approval to let them (in my mind, it meant Findlay or Nissan Acceptance, Nissan’s finance arm). I didn’t hear anything from either my son, Findlay or a lender so I thought things were going along OK. Come the start of July, a finance guy from Findlay called again for verbal approval to run a credit check. Again, I thought only one credit check would be ran and gave verbal approval. Again, I didn’t hear anything so I thought things were going along OK.
We are in the process of building a new home so I started looking at my credit. I could count at least ten different credit checks ran against my social security number, mostly by Post Falls credit unions and other lending institutions. With so many credit checks in such a short period of time, my credit worthiness went down approximately 40 points, from the best range to the second highest rating range. I immediately blocked any further credit checks by Findlay but they ended up financing the vehicle through Nissan Acceptance, the people who financed the initial lease.
Upon noticing the butchering of my credit worthiness, I sent off a “not so nice” email using Okie sayings that may have notified the reader that I wasn’t too happy with how I was kept out of the loop by their company and how the whole loan process went. I got an email back from the “Finance Director” that basically said that my son lied to me and that I should be having the “come to Jesus” discussion with him versus Findlay. Not a single “we’re sorry” or “we’ll see what we can do about it” or anything - they just were trying to place all of the blame on him and his credit rating without asking expressed permission to run all of those credit checks.
I sent a postal letter to the general manager when I contacted the finance department through email, hoping to give the finance department ample time to tell their boss that everything was worked out before he got his letter through the mail a few days later. I also sent an email to him after the finance manager emailed me back from my initial complaint, letting the GM know that a little consoling from the finance manager would have gone a long way but that the finance director’s letter did nothing to alleviate my displeasure with my dealings with the finance department. To this day, I have yet to receive anything from Findlay about my concerns.
This long-winded review on Google and Yelp will warn that Findlay only has one concern – themselves. Whether it is through financial relationships with the local lending institutions or Nissan Acceptance, whether they will work with the customer to work things out or whether they even give a schitt about you, it is apparent that Findlay Nissan doesn’t care for you, your credit, your opinion or concerns. They just care about themselves and nothing else.