Frank Leta Honda

I bought 3 Hondas from Frank Leta Honda, going back to 1999 when they were still on St. Charles Rock Road in Bridgeton. It’s a long drive now from where we live, in Bridgeton, to O’Fallon. There are closer Honda dealers to us. Now this may seem silly, but one of the reasons I liked Frank Leta Honda were the «goodies» in the customer waiting area. They originally had a popcorn machine, a cooler with soda and bottled water, and best of all, fresh doughnuts for the customers, and coffee — all complimentary. Two weeks ago I was there and the fresh doughnuts have become packaged muffins and cookies. Today, not even those were offered. One of the reasons I continued to return to Frank Leta Honda was the nice customer waiting area and the freebies. I set up my laptop at one of the desks, get on to their guest wi-​fi, get myself a cup of coffee and… well today, it was nothing, and I had skipped eating at home anticipating having a small snack while I waited for my car. What a disappointment. Since I am 22 miles from Frank Leta, I guess from now on I’ll try another Honda dealer for service. I know, it sounds ridiculous to make a decision based on free doughnuts, but honestly that is what gave me the motivation to drive that far.

It is unbelievable that when I have an appointment for an oil change and I get there on time, they say it will be an hour and 15 minutes, it takes 2 ½ hours! The wifi connection doesn’t work for even one full minute so I couldn’t get anything done while I waited. No car wash either, I get in and my radio isn’t working and needs a code to turn it on. Simple customer service would be to tell me this or help with it. I have been going there for 3 years b/​c that’s where I bought my car but never again, it’s gotten worse over time. It seems like a joke the way the service dept. works.

Bought my car here and it’s great. The problem I have is the obnoxious wait time in getting your car serviced for anything. Even just a car wash takes forever and they do not do that great of a job. I asked them specifically if they could clean the inside of my front windshield for example. When they were done they said it had been done. It hadn’t. Furthermore they services my car and on my way home my tire pressure alert came on. All tires were okay on pressure but a bit low. They didn’t fill up any of them as they said they would do. Just overall lacking service.

Folks, watch out if you are thinking about financing a vehicle through this place via Honda Financial Services. Read over the lease agreement REAL well before putting down your John Hancock onto that agreement. Honda puts into their lease agreement that YOU are responsible for ALL SALES TAXES within the entire lease agreement. This includes PERSONAL PROPERTY TAXES for Missouri!!! (which is very costly and will come up as a surprise charge on your monthly lease payments since they don’t verbally tell you at signing). Yes, Honda is forcing YOU to pay property taxes on a vehicle THEY own and should be paying themselves. Here’s a tip… you do NOT have to use Honda Financial Services when leasing a car at a dealership. Shop around and find a Leasing Company that does not include personal property taxes into the lease agreements and you will save THOUSANDS.
My 2014 Accord Sport is alright, but nothing to hop & skip around town about (especially after this experience). I have had excellent experiences with Ford in the past and once this lease is up, I’m going back to Ford (no bullsh*t lease agreements in my past experiences).

I came to Frank Leta to look at 2015 Honda Pilots for my wife. They were on clearance, so it seemed like the opportune time to buy. I was helped by Chris Saxe, someone who tells you that he is «very ethical», «a Christian», and «doesn’t care if he sells a car or how much the car sells for, he just wants you to be happy.» As you can imagine, I didn’t get the same impression. Chris Saxe is one of the sleaziest, greasiest car salesman I’ve ever worked with.
Firstly, he wasn’t that helpful or knowledgable about the car. I would ask him simple questions about what the packages come with and he would always put on his reading glasses and read straight off of the spec sticker. When it came down to negotiate, he presented us the price on an EX level — a cool $ 38,000. It was pretty well known at this point that the Pilots were on clearance, so the price I was looking at was closer to $ 30,000. I told him right off the bat that this wasn’t a good price and he acted incredulous, as if I had said something ridiculous.
I told him I had a number in my head that, if he met it, he would get a deal right away. Otherwise, I would walk and find another dealer to go to. I told him that I’ve gotten other dealers to beat a Leta several times (which is true) so I’d be interested to see what his manager had to say. His manager actually turned around and offered a pretty reasonable price for my trade in and for the car itself. I worked him down a little more and got a price that I was comfortable at. That’s when Chris asked if we had ever considered leasing the car.
Now, I have never leased a car in my life, so I was pretty unfamiliar with the process. However, the monthly rate he presented was much better than the financed rate and my wife has a tendency to want a new car every 2 years or so, so the leasing option was pretty attractive. He made a point to mention that all oil changes, maintenance, dents, dings, etc. were taken care of by Frank Leta, which seemed pretty appealing. With that, I agreed to lease the vehicle and closed the deal with Asheed, the finance manager, another sleazeball who lied to me and gave me the runaround.
The sleaze factor came in when I went through the paperwork at home and noticed that I had purchased two service contracts which amounted to about $ 3,000. I had specifically asked about these contracts and were told that they came with the lease. However, at home I noticed there were separate line item charges for these contracts. I immediately emailed and complained and was talked to by the sales manager, Josh Williams, who insisted it was a big misunderstanding.
No, it wasn’t. I asked both Chris and Asheed about these additional contracts and they assured me on numerous occasions that they came with the lease. My fault for being too trusting and not reading the paperwork closer. At no point was I given the option to not buy these maintenance plans.
To his credit, Josh gave me the service plan for free to try and make things better, which amounted to about a $ 2,000 value. It’s too bad I was lied to from the get go, otherwise this review might be more positive. (I should mention that Josh was the one who put the deal together in the first place with the «all inclusive» price, so I believe him to be as much to blame as Asheed and Chris.)
Lesson learned — make sure you read your paperwork closely before you leave the dealership. Thanks to Frank Leta and their sleazy staff and dealerships, I will always look thrice before signing on that X.
(By the way, if you don’t think you’re getting a good deal, you can and should always go to another dealership. Also, if you think you can swing it, ask for the maintenance plan to be included with the sale, for $ 0. If I could get one for free for complaining, you can get one for free just by asking when negotiating the deal.)

We wanted to purchase a 2015 Odyssey and via email, found this place had the best offer. My husband went in after they agreed on a price and specifically said «When I sign and drive this out of the lot I don’t want to pay more than $xxx total. No extra add ons, etc. Just this price here.» The guy he was negotiating with said ok, you have a deal. As he’s signing paper work, he noticed and extra $ 800 tacked on. Asking what it was, the guy says oh that’s for our extra add ons like pin striping. No, we said we don’t want add ons. So the paper work is redone. Signing again, and notice it’s still not the agreed upon price. They tried slipping something else in so redo the paperwork for a third time. After three hours we finally get to drive the van home. A few days after we start receiving texts from the guy who sold it to us asking us to leave him a five star review on these specific web sites. 10 days after we purchased the van, we’ve received three different messages from this guy telling us he didn’t see that we had left a review yet, and was reminding us to do this. We ended up changing phone numbers so I don’t know how long this would have gone on. A few weeks later we receive our loan paper work and notice it’s an extra $ 5000 over. We call to talk to someone and they say that it’s their assistance package-​oil changes, tire rotation, etc. There is no way I’m spending $ 1000 a year when I can change the oil myself for $ 25. We ask them to remove it since we never signed for it and they say ok, well we’ll keep you enrolled for a month in case you need to use it and if you still don’t want it we’ll remove it. Again we say no, please remove us NOW. Sure enough next month’s paperwork comes and it’s still on there. Three phone calls to the financial area, two left messages, no one calls back. We have to drive down (it’s a 40 minute drive one way from our house) to talk to someone in person. They’re apologetic, promise to fix it, and give us more updated paperwork. Guess what? Next month this $ 5k is still on our loan. Our call goes ignored again, drive down there again and have to get them to fix it. If you do purchase from here, read every single line of everything you sign because chances are, they will slip something in with hopes you miss it and they can make more money.

Let me just say, my wife and I moved to Missouri from California, where she worked for American Honda. We were recommended to a particular sales person at Frank Leta. We expected great service, especially since the sales person knew we were sent by their corporate office. Everything this guy said was a lie. We were talked into a lease and told we wouldn’t be penalized for mileage overages if we traded the car in to Honda again — WRONG! It was a complete lie. The sales person left to work at another dealership then came back. So we go back into the dealership to figure out what we can do to salvage our finances after this lying piece of garbage misrepresented the terms of our lease. Turns out, we can either trade the car in now for a $ 500 payment (over $ 200 more a month for a new car), or we can pay the penalization fees at the end of the lease or buy it. This was never presented to us as a possibility — as a matter of fact, this was never even a discussion after explicitly asking our sales person about this. Needless to say, Frank Leta Honda is standing behind their lying sales person — this is the kind of business Frank Leta Honda runs. They run a business of lies and customer manipulation. The sales person, David Walsh, is awful to do business with and I would recommend running the other way if this guys tries to sell you a car — as a matter of fact, I would run the other way if you want to buy a Honda a are considering going to Frank Leta Honda. Their sales people are representative of the business they run.

«Horror Show».
This dealership seems to take pride in their total and complete disregard for the basic fundamentals of customer service.
Many people exaggerate bad customer service experiences to enhance the drama. I can honestly say without any hint of exaggeration that this was perhaps one of the most fundamentally awful customer experiences so i have had in my entire adult life. From start to finish this has been a complete horror show.
Where to start. After a lot of back-​and-​forth legwork over email we were absolutely assured that everything would be ready when we arrived to buy our new minivan. At the time we had a newborn and hours in a dealership were just not something in the cards for us. 10 hours. I kid you not we were in there for 10 long hours. I cannot begin to tell you how much of a horror show that was when you consider a newborn in tow.
That should’ve been our first sign but I suppose we are slow learners.
The sales person was absolutely incompetent and uninformed — we knew far more about the vehicle than she did. Yet another sign.
After purchasing the vehicle we were able to find a better loan and so needed to cancel the gap insurance. Here is the crux of the issue with these people. Be warned they are tremendously unresponsive. Weeks of unreturned phone calls and emails on and on and on.
Due to the nature of my job I have access to information including emails of executives — I literally had to email the company’s CEO before anyone would deign to return our calls. After multiple assurances still no action.
Finally weeks later it was done we were shellshocked, exhausted and ready to be quit of this terrible organization. I can’t tell you the weight that was lifted off of us when we were able to finally traded in our van for the exact same model but from a different dealership. That alone should tell you something. We like the Honda minivan but dealing with Leta is a fate I can’t wish on my worst enemy.
But the drama still continues… We are now trying to cancel the service contract since we traded in the vehicle.
Four weeks after we turned in the paperwork they requested and exactly about the time we expecting a refund they contacted us to say they needed additional paperwork. When we ask why we weren’t told this at the beginning we received the same «don’t give a damn» attitude that we had from the beginning.
If you ran a business with the sole intent of harming your customers you would still come out with a better customer service experience than one gets at Frank Leta.
No one writes a post this long unless their experience is absolutely catastrophically undeniably horrible. Do not be fooled by a few positive experience by others … avoid this place like the plague.

This a car buying experience. We went to Leta because it was the closest dealer, which would be quite convenient. Unfortunately, they add unnecessary accessories and paint to the car to jack up the prices. Their salesperson says one price on the phone, and a different one in the store. I left after the salesperson said «You guys are something else,» in spite of me being polite throughout.

I do not recommend this dealership. I honestly don’t know how they have been getting stellar reviews! Yes they try to be nice and stuff, but that does not make up for the huge incompetence in their operation. Mind you I was nice and cooperative the whole time. It’s not like I was one of those obnoxious customers.
So the story started with me going to Frank Leta because of its great reviews. I test drove some cars, decided on the car I wanted, and put down a deposit so that I can come back later to pick up the car. However, I had to go in to the dealership THREE more times before they finally figured out all of the paperwork I needed to qualify for the college grad program. So that was a lot of time and gas wasted.
We finally got the deal together and I went ahead to finalize the purchase. I drove my new car home and although the car had smudges and fingerprints in the interior (obviously not properly detailed as promised), I decided to just forget about it and be happy with it.
But NO, that was not the end of my horror story. The dealership ended up failing to mail the title to me after the «10 – 14 business days», even though I called the front desk, my sales person, the finance person, and the manager many times to remind them. To this date I have not received the title, it’s been almost a month since the purchase, and my temporary tag is expiring tomorrow. My suspicion is that the paperwork got forgotten somewhere in the dealership, and some major communication failures happened between different departments. Every time I called the dealership, it always ended up going to the voice mail after the receptionist transferred me over. You know what’s funny? In the end it was the receptionist who tracked down the package for me.
Overall, my experience indicates that this dealership is hugely incompetent. The sales and finance teams will try to be nice to you, but they clearly cannot care less about the customers once they walk out of the doors.
St. Louis people, don’t be fooled by the reviews. I’ve been to dealerships that are far better. Trust me. This place is not worth your time.

I had already gone to Bommarito to look at a a Ford Focus and their Honda Civic. I also went to Seeger to look at the Corolla, however I wasn’t sold until I talked to Jason at Frank Leta. Not only did he take the time to explain everything thoroughly to me, but I never at all felt pressured to buy. I came in to look and I left the next day with a brand new, beautiful Civic. I can t recommend Jason enough to everybody. He s a great salesman and he makes the entire experience very easy. Go talk to Jason!!!

Our most recent Honda purchase was made here and we are extremely pleased with our experience. Our salesman was Randy Borth, but unfortunately he has since moved on to a different dealership. Frank Leta offered us the most vehicles to choose from as well as a reasonable price and trade in value. Thus far we have taken our vehicle back here for service including purchasing new tires. Prices have been standard and whenever there is a coupon they will offer it to us even if I haven’t brought one in. The waiting area is wonderful. Very bright with a spacious and SEPARATE kids play area. They have a great coffee and espresso machine along with free popcorn and soda!
In Summary:
Fast and friendly service. Nice little play area with toys and tv for the kids.

There are three reasons why you should ever visit a car dealership:
1. You are there to test drive a vehicle
2. You are there to pick up a vehicle you bought off of their website
3. You are there for warranty work
Any other reason and you are paying too much money for whatever your purpose is for being there.
I came up with this after my experience here and will try and give the Cliff Note version as to why I say what I just said above.
My car was on it’s last legs so I was in the market for a new car. I swung by here to test drive a new car and I had no intention of buying a car that day unless I was given an offer I couldn’t refuse. So, I listened to the usual dog and pony show that car salesmen trot out when you go to sit down.
After about 30 minutes of this, I knew I wasn’t going to get the best offer, so I left. I told him I would think about his final offer and let him know. I then went home, having the knowledge of the test drive and deciding I would like that vehicle. Since buying a brand new Honda at this dealership would be like buying a new one at any other dealership in the area, it didn’t matter where I bought the car, as long as I got the best deal.
I then went home and through the websites of all of the area Honda dealerships, solicited quotes for cars. Received quotes back from every single dealership except this one. They said since I had ‘established a working relationship with a salesperson,’ that I should work through him. So having my quotes (all of which were lower than the price he was offering me), I figured to give him one last shot.
I walked in to meet with the salesperson and perhaps he thought I was there to strike a deal. I told him that I didn’t want the dog and pony show and if I was going to make a deal with him, I wanted him to meet and beat the best offer I had. After a bit of stalling on his part, I finally show him the deal, printed out. He seemed flabbergasted that I was giving him a legit deal and mocked what I showed him and insisted I would never get that deal.
I proceeded to tell him that if a dealership would not honor a written deal that was valid, I was sure the Attorney General would love to hear from me. He still didn’t buy it and I told him I was going to the other dealership to pick up the car. And I then proceeded to walk out.
Sure enough, I did get that car at the price that was given me (Sticker: $ 30,000, paid: $ 24,000). But that is not quite the end of the story.
A few days later, I received a call from the salesman, wondering if I wanted to come in and buy the car from him. I proceeded to tell him that I went and did exactly what I told him I was going to do, and was now the owner of a new Honda. His exact response: «Oh, OK,» and he hung up. I have never received any follow up from Leta, don’t plan on it in the future, and never plan on spending any of my money at a Leta dealership again.
The lesson for salespersons: Don’t try and call a potential customer on what you think is a bluff. It will only anger them and drive the business elsewhere.

I recently got my car repaired at this dealership. They were very friendly and got my car in and out in no time. In addition to servicing my vehicle, they washed it and loaned me a vehicle for the day.
Great service, very clean facility, made my life easier.