Mercedes Hemel Hempstead misprice

Charliezoo

I made an went to test drive a car today and 15 minutes into the appointment I got told that the car was incorrectly priced and was actually £4k more than listed. The final nail in the coffin was the attitude of the business manager because he quite clearly didn't give a damn. I'll take my £20k car budget elsewhere.

littlemissy29

No excuse for the bad attitude, but did you expect him to sell it to you for £4k less than it is worth, incorrectly priced or not?

vikingaero

Most Mercedes dealers have the attitude that they are a premium product and everything will sell at the price they want.

Bratty attitude seems standard for Mercedes: http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/Chauffeur-rejected-Sytner-Mercedes-Bristol/story-29049034-detail/story.html

Charliezoo

littlemissy29 wrote: »

No excuse for the bad attitude, but did you expect him to sell it to you for £4k less than it is worth, incorrectly priced or not?

No and I do understand that mistakes happen. I just think it was pretty poor that I'd made an appointment in advance to see that specific car and the price error wasn't noticed until I was about to take it on the test drive. There was no kind of deal offered at all, I possibly would've still bought the carol another with similar spec if say a grand was knocked off and a couple of years servicing thrown in to make up for the inconvenience.

The business manager said "You're not happy? Ok bye then."

agrinnall

I'd see that as having saved you from spending your hard-earned money at a dealer with a couldn't care less attitude. Find one who does care and buy there.

robatwork

Well I wouldn't bother going to the dealer in Watford either.

One place where you actually want to be approached and talked to is in a car dealer - you don't go there just to browse the goods.....

I walked around the sales floor for a few minutes trying to get some attention but all the people in offices just kept tapping away at their keyboards. If they can't be bothered to approach a potential customer or even just look up and say "I'll be with you in a moment" then they won't get my business, and didn't.

Perhaps I didn't have a suit on so wasn't a Merc kind of person.

Gavin83

Charliezoo wrote: »

The business manager said "You're not happy? Ok bye then."

Is that actually what he said?

Be honest. Is this one of them situations where the manager doesn't give you what you want and therefore you label him as having a bad attitude or was he actually rude?

AJXX

Gavin83 wrote: »

Is that actually what he said?

Be honest. Is this one of them situations where the manager doesn't give you what you want and therefore you label him as having a bad attitude or was he actually rude?

Sounds like it going off;

There was no kind of deal offered at all, I possibly would've still bought the carol another with similar spec if say a grand was knocked off and a couple of years servicing thrown in to make up for the inconvenience.

So OP wants £1,000 and a "couple of years servicing" (what's that roughly like £250?)

So OP wants £1,250+ for the "inconvenience" of a mispriced car.

The sense of entitlement is strong with this one.

macman

I once went to a dealer with a friend for a pre-booked test drive. Kept waiting nearly half an hour for the rep, who then sat us down and tried to sell her a PCP for 20 mins before we could even get in the car. Eventually I pointed out that we were on a tight schedule and could we please get on with the test drive? Driving licence was then handed over and copied. She then said she had to print out a disclaimer and get it signed. Fine. 15 minutes later, still trying to make the printer work (I offered to help, it was out of toner). I suggested printing to one of the other network printers in the (large) showroom, but she had no idea how to do that either.
Since the disclaimer was less than a page of A4, I offered to write it out by hand for signature, which was refused as it 'wouldn't be legal'. At this point I reminded her that we has been there nearly an hour and was she going to give us a test drive or not? Once again, refused with minimal apology. No offer of a fiver for our wasted petrol, or even a cup of tea. We left, and my friend bought a different brand, almost on principle, as she quite liked the car had it not been for the rep's attitude.

PhylPho

Mercedes UK dealerships don't seem to have the best of reputations. We called into our local one to enquire about a Personal Contract Purchase where you borrow the difference between your PX and the retail price and repay it over 35 months, interest free, with the interest then going on at the time of the 36th payment. You can make that payment, and keep the car, or use the vehicle's 'Final Value' to PX against any car (or another Merc).

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with these contracts; thousands have 'em. But you need to be careful.

We asked if Mercedes would bundle in free servicing over the 36 month period. Not. A. Chance. Fair enough. Their decision. We then asked about 'Final Value', knowing it's bound to be in the realms of speculation but hoping they might have some general idea. They did. Sounded really good. . . but, of course, they wouldn't write the figure down on paper. We didn't expect them to. But we knew it meant that, more than ever, we were going to have to take the motor trade on trust -- and really, who does that?

We dickered over the price a bit and the so-called 'deposit contribution' to be made by Mercedes-Benz UK. We also got into a tangle with them about how much we could, in terms of cash + PX, pay towards the initial acquisition of the vehicle. The sales guy was keen only to talk of "how little" it is "to own a Mercedes". Get a great car at a really low, low monthly price. What d'you say (he asked us) to just £240 a month, eh?

We said: what d'you say to (a) a decent PX price for our vehicle and (b) combining that PX with cash from us to the value of 49% of the vehicle price? He seemed very reluctant to consider that. Called in the 'finance adviser' who likewise was uncomfortable about what we were proposing. No surprise, really: MB want you to owe MB as much as possible. Pay as much interest as possible. (Same way every other UK dealership network wants; MB is no different.)

Anyway. We took the car for a test drive and were surprised at just how. . . poor it was. Road and tyre noise: high. Suspension: primitive. Seat comfort: average. Dashboard ergonomics: some of the daftest we've ever seen.

That night, we did what we normally do when considering a car, and hunted down owner groups on the 'Net. Time and again we read complaints of how the UK MB dealership network offers the lowest 'final value' for any Mercedes Benz model retailed by any dealership. In one case, Buy-My-Car (or something of like name) was said to have paid out more in actual cash.

And that decided us not to bother with Mercedes Benz at all. We had a 190E years ago that was a delight, bought not for its badge but because it was a really good car. We were left, on this occasion, to wonder if it's all about "the badge" now, the sale of a fairly nondescript vehicle to those more interested in brand name than product substance. The obvious reluctance of the dealership to contend with customers who wish to minimise, not maximize, what they owe, was embarrassingly obvious.

The OP may have done himself / herself a favour by not acquiring a Merc. We certainly got everything we wanted from Nissan UK with a vehicle at the same price as the new Mercedes, 49% deposit by us including a PX on our existing car astronomically better than Glass's Guide (which goes to show, this kind of dealing is all about money, not motors), bigger so-called 'deposit contribution' (yeah, right) and three years' free servicing. Built in Sunderland, too: yay!

robatwork

PhylPho wrote: »

Anyway. We took the car for a test drive and were surprised at just how. . . poor it was. Road and tyre noise: high. Suspension: primitive. Seat comfort: average. Dashboard ergonomics: some of the daftest we've ever seen.

Good story. What are the seats like in the Nissan?
I've now got to that age and state of back that the seats are more important than the looks or panache.

In any case I'd recommend Volvo as a make if the seats are a priority. Never had such a comfortable ride on long journeys.