My experience with Mercedes-Benz of Winston-Salem began - ziallen
My experience with Mercedes-Benz of Winston-Salem began quite well but ended up very poorly. I contacted the store for a newly listed pre-owned S550 cabriolet with under 6000 miles. As a collector, I only look for low-mileage future or current collectibles, and given the fact that this car was at a Mercedes dealer, I assumed the car had gone through a proper inspection and was ready to sell. The used car sales manager, Allie Philips, reached out early in the morning, and we concluded our deal in a bit over an hour, after she assured me the car was utterly pristine except for a minor scratch under the driver's door. I left a deposit to secure the car, while we planned to go through the vetting process in the following days since I was traveling. I must note that Allie, while being very prompt, was rather curt throughout the process, and she had little idea as to how to take care of customers of my caliber. She was also very inflexible on literally any concession I asked for, which was/is rather odd for an experienced sales manager. Anyway, the next day, after I insisted that she look underneath the car (since this was a remote buy), Allie came back with a couple of videos showing the front end of the car having had sustained heavy damage (in terms of rubbing against dips or bumps, with a torn bumper cover that was poorly fused together with plastic epoxy), and it was improperly repaired. I spent considerable time chasing up a new bumper cover and working on what it takes to repair the car promptly. I got back to her asking the dealership for sharing, at whatever possible amount, the cost of the repairs. She was again very curt and unaccommodating and did not offer a solution or compromise. I asked her to connect me to the GM of the dealership, Stewart Cooper, which she refused to do, suggesting that they had local buyers who wanted the car and pushing me to release it. I ended up reaching out to Stewart myself by the day's end since Allie stopped communicating with me. While Stewart was polite and promised to look into this late on Friday, he did not accomplish anything since he was "off" over the weekend. I learned that the car was sold to a local buyer from Stewart this morning. He offered no apology and felt like he preferred to hide behind Allie's decision not to accommodate or adequately communicate with me as a customer. I am very disappointed with my experience to this dealership and will point out again that I believe they were very unprofessional and unethical and wasted hours of my time. If you have a choice to take your business to a different dealer, I highly recommend you do so. I cannot repeat how utterly disappointed I am with the ending here.
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