Prima Mazda - The Runaround

[Fish]

In Jan 2010 my girlfriend (Jen) purchased a '10 Mazda 3 Sport from Prima Mazda. At the time, she was offered her choice of incentives. Either a $1000 coupon to a furniture store (Direct Home Furnishings) or a television. Since she already had a television, she opted for the coupon.

Fast forward to March 2011. She and I are moving in together and we decided that it's time to use the coupon and purchase some furnishings. The coupon had an expiration date in 2012, so there was plenty of time to use it. Unfortunately, the phone number for the company had been disconnected and it seemed that the company has gone out of business.

Jen called Prima Mazda on April 7th to find out what happened and to see what could now be done. Both the sales-persona and manager have moved on, so she spoke with the manager on duty at the time and was told that the issue would be investigated.

This morning (April 15th) Jen received a call at her WORK number from Andrea at Prima Mazda to find out if anything had been done about the coupon. Jen said that she was still waiting for a reply and Andrea asked her what kind of compensation she was looking for. Jen said that she hadn't really thought about it, and suggested that she meet with the people at Prima to discuss the matter. Andrea said that she'd take it to the manager and get back to Jen.

Approximately 90 minutes later, a message was left for Jen at her HOME number to say that the matter needed to be taken up with the manager who was working at Prima Mazda at the time of purchase. The manager is now at Maple Mazda and Jen should call him to find out what can be done.

Does anyone else find this odd? Why should another dealership need to deal with an issue that is happening at Prima Mazda? If an employee moves away from the company, the company is still responsible for any deals that were signed while the employee was active.

Is it just me, or is Jen getting the runaround from Prima?

[Jeff-TheBiz]

I don't think the Manager is going to have anything to do with it.

The dealer that wrote the deal should be the one to help out.

Best of luck.

[McGuyver_3]

I had 1 horrible experience with Prima and got screwed over royally. They also made me call another dealership to get ahold of the manager. i beleive if memory serves me correct it was maple mazda as the 2 dealerships are owned by the same owner

[Fish]

I had 1 horrible experience with Prima and got screwed over royally. They also made me call another dealership to get ahold of the manager. i beleive if memory serves me correct it was maple mazda as the 2 dealerships are owned by the same owner

Oh. I didn't know they were owned by the same person. Yes, we are being told to call Maple Mazda. Well, since it's the same owner, maybe we'll get some help. Thanks for that bit of info!

[Noisy Crow]

Unfortunately, this isn't a whole lot different than holding a store gift card when the store goes under.

The problem you are going to run into here is that Prima probably had some sort of deal with furniture store. Something along the lines of giving the furniture store $500 with the store covering the other $500. (Furniture markups are huge, and they probably counted on doing some upselling as well).