DCH Subaru of Riverside

On Saturday 24th of February, my brother and I called DCH Subaru of Riverside in order to assure that a car listed on their website was still available, we were met with a friendly rep that advised us it was still available. Driving from San Clemente, we went to look at this specific car even though it was a bit of a drive. Upon arrival, we were met with a very friendly gentleman, who asked a few quick questions and went to get the keys to the car while we checked the exterior. After a brief exchange, I provided my drivers license in order to take a test drive. The young man accompanied me on the test drive, we chatted about life, his hobbies, school plans, that he just recently started working at the dealership and bitcoin. He was friendly and provided a good experience. When we got back to dealership, we moved inside to talk about the transaction. I explained that I had a trade in and that I would be financing the deal. We were met by another gentleman, (who later emailed me, (Kelly, -- I just wanted to thank you for allowing me the pleasure of helping you with your vehicle-buying decisions. -- If I can do anything else for you, please let me know. He advised that the car was recently traded in for an SUV (bigger car). Here is some additional information on the vehicle you inquired about. Which also included all the information and pictures of the car I was looking at.) in order to put together the application. Work info, address history, what I was going to put down, my payoff info etc., I did not allow him to pull credit as I wanted to be able to negotiate, just as I would with any other dealer. He went back, spoke to his superior in order to put together a deal. He came back with an offer, at the same time, he advised me that there was some competition for the car, that another buyer had showed up, but that it would be fine since I was there first. We went over the deal, I advised him that I didn’t want the warranty that they had offered (my brother, who was with me is a master tech, he is my warranty) and I felt the offer on the trade was a little light, so we made same changes and he went back to talk to his superior. Within about 5-10 minutes, the sales manager came over, advised us that the car had sold to the people that walked in, were sitting at the desk, while their salesperson was running around getting information from the car, (keys were on the desk we were sitting on) asking the customer for their insurance info; obviously very discreetly since we were sitting within 7 or 8 feet of them. The manager advised us that they had been in before a couple of times and that they had already completed everything and that is why they were selling it out from under us. Now, this is obviously the observation from one side of the story. I drove an hour and a half to get there, after calling, I went for a test drive, and even started the negotiations before they decided to tell us it was sold. I obviously can’t do much at this point, however, this is terrible customer service, and I couldn’t ever recommend them to anyone. I know car dealerships are never fun to deal with but this was quite blatant and pretty terrible. I would, at no point, consider going back to this dealership.