Joe Cooper Hyundai

This is an honest and free endorsement of a local car dealer.

Over the years of my life, I’ve never had enough money to buy a new car. Thus, I ended up buying from a lot of individuals and from several car dealers. Among the individuals, only one can I recall being fully honest with me — a college professor selling his old car to me right before I graduated. Among dealers, only one has been honest so far: Bob Howard Nissan, part of the “Bob Howard Automall” with multiple brands. One of the other dealers in that group was not so honest with the last used car we bought, a Ford Fusion Hybrid. We really did like the car, but there were some flaws they had hidden from us, none of which were covered by the expensive warranties that padded our payments.

A couple of months ago that car broke down. My instinct was to take it to a shop close to our residence, which turned out to be Joe Cooper Hyundai. We were aware that the dealership had just recently switched from Ford to Hyundai, but they still had a Ford branch in the OKC Metro. We took it to them and they had it diagnosed the next day. It took a week to get the parts and another day to install and attempt to sync the electronics. The sync didn’t happen, so they sent it up to their Ford branch on the north side of town.

That dragged on for several more weeks, as they chased parts and the thing kept refusing to sync. Finally, the one specialist who knew how to work with that particular problem had a medical emergency, so it was put on hold yet again. The local service manager at the Hyundai place — Bobby — did his best and honestly kept us informed of what he could find out. In frustration, my wife called the Ford shop directly, and they were pretty evasive. It was going to cost way too much for a flaw Ford knew about but would not fix under warranty or recall. By then we had been without our car for two months. We gave up.

Now, the Hyundai shop finally got free a loaner car and we used it for awhile, but we weren’t too impressed. Still, throughout this whole ordeal, this local dealer’s staff was honest and quite willing to go the extra mile. So, when they made an offer to accept the broken-down Ford as a trade-in on a new car, we took them up on it. My wife spent plenty of time perusing the inventory online and felt moved to pick one.

As you probably know, buying from a dealer is a big rigmarole, taking hours — buying a new car even more so. Our salesman was Kevin Rodriguez and he did his best to keep us comfortable and provide an honest apprisal of what was happening and roughly how long it would take. I noticed one very big difference: In all my past experience with dealers, they often didn’t take me at my word, trying to second-guess what they wanted to believe. I didn’t face that this time. When I affirmed our ability to pay so much per month, they didn’t question that; it was what we had been paying all along on the Ford. They came up with a package that put us right on target for keeping up the same payments for the new car.

I learned later that they actually ate some costs that they hadn’t expected in regards to the trade-in. In the end, we broke even on what it cost to pay off the old loan on it. That was better than we expected. Now, my wife and I are praying that they can come up with a way to suffer no loss on that Ford. This is our first new car in our entire lives, and probably the last, if it holds up as well as we hope, against the coming tribulation and economic chaos.

Notice what I’m saying here: I didn’t buy based on the brand of car. I bought based on the honesty and care we got from the staff at the dealership. It’s not just a commercial transaction, but a moral one.