Mercedes Benz Of Walnut Creek Rip off Artist as Sales Man, Stole money from us! Told lies Walnut CreekWalnut Creek California

In March my husband and I bought two cars from your Walnut Creek, Ca Mercedes Benz dealership. A 2008 C300 and a 2006 CLS500, yes two cars at the same time.
The CLS500 was sold to us as a Mercedes Benz, certified pre-owned vehicle. VIN#WDDDJ75X16A043154. We really like the car. I asked why the mileage was so low on a 2006 car, was it in an accident? The salesman (Jimmy Molakides) told me no, that Mercedes Benz won't buy damaged vehicles as pre-owned. On the way home we noticed the car was shaking at a speed of 60 miles per hour. We got home and called the dealership, our salesman told us to bring the car in for service and that they would fix the car. We returned the car with in the next week for service.

They balanced the tires and sent us home stating there wasn't any thing really wrong with the car. Within a day we notice the shaking was still there. At this point we got worried and decided to run a Carfax Vehicle History Report on the vehicle, and found it had not been registered in over a year ½ and was in an accident. We were never told the vehicle was damaged. In fact we were told just the opposite.

We called the dealership and spoke with our sales man Jimmy, he told us if we wanted to trade the car in for another car to bring it back, that we knew the value of the trade and could just get another car.

We were in and out of town for the next month, but on return had had enough of the shaking car and decided to take Jimmy up on his offer to exchange the car.
Now this is where is get crazy!

This past Saturday August 29th 2008, four month after we purchased the vehicle for $52,988, the trade in amount given to us was 34,000. an $18,988 loss. We were very angry about this loss and asked why, when we had tried to get Mercedes Benz to correct the problem with the pre-owned certified vehicle and they failed to fix it. All we wanted was to get the fair market price for the vehicle we had just paid for. I asked to speak with the manager in charge, (John Sala) he told me that the car had depreciated in the four month and now worth just the 34,000. As you can image we are shocked. A Mercedes Benz depreciating this much in four months! We still went ahead and purchased a 2008 CLS550 because we needed a car and needed the 2006 CLS ($52,988.) to be our down payment. No other dealership would have taken the car after running a CARFAX report.

Instead we were treated as idiots and pushed out the door with a loss of $18,988.00.What is even worse than the treatment and loss was that we have been repeat customers of Mercedes Benz, at that location for over 18 years and have purchased a total of 6 cars from them. I know that this location was a Stead Motors location, which actually treated us with respect and dignity. The new owners of this dealership and management team are full of rip-off artist.

Hicks
Discovery Bay, California
U.S.A.