After finding out about the UBS program at work I figured that the Civic Hybrid would be a perfect situation to us it on since they are so popular in my area and no one is even willing to deal a tiny bit on them. So I went through the whole process and was contacted by USB who gave me a ticket number and a Honda dealership in the area that supposedly works with them. Only one in the area. This turned out to be Brown’s Honda in Arlington. Then I contacted them and made an appointment to come in. The first appointment went fairly well and we talked with Sharif Amen who told us that they are allowed to sell 2 out of every 10 hybris at UBS price (total BS). But that he had 3 in stock and we could have one of them for UBS. Well the colors they had in stock weren’t that great and we really wanted white exterior with tan interior and navigation. The closest they had was white with tan but no navigation. We asked if we could order the one we wanted and he gave us a huge run around story saying that its not possible to order if doing UBS and we’d have to wait for one to come in on its own before we could buy it for UBS and that could take 4-6 months (basically he just wanted us to take one of the cars on the lot). We were pretty dismayed and said we wanted to check around at other dealers to see if we could get exactly what we wanted. So we left and I spent a week and a half trying to find another dealer in the area with the car we wanted and then trying to get them to sell it to us for UBS price. During that time my wife took her old car (a 97 Toyota Corolla) to Brown’s to see what they would give us for a trade in value and they looked at the car and said $500. $500!!!! We were pretty pissed at that point having taken it to Carmax who quoted us $1700. Eventually I figured out that I wasn’t going to get another dealer to give us UBS price so we decided white with tan and no nav was good enough and we would but it from Brown’s but sell our old car to Carmax. So I went back to the Brown’s, with all my papers and everything all ready to buy. I sit down at the desk with Sharif and said “Ok, we’ll take the car without nav” and he says “ok, give my one minute” and then goes back to the little manager’s office. He returns and says “oh, sorry we can no longer offer UBS price for that car because it is in so high demand right now.” WTF!#$#*!??? So I got straight up, walked out and will never set foot on that dealership again.
After this experience I would start bad mouthing UBS too for allowing such a thing, but you can see my other post about Pohanka Honda of Fredericksburg that proves that everything Brown’s Arlington Honda did was pure bullshit and was only their shady practices.
Long story short Browns Honda in Arlington Fu*&ing Sucks and Pohanka Honda of Fredericksburg is Awesome.