MARTYMAR

Hey Timeless, nice ride buddy! I was checking out your signature and wanted to know where did you get your steath side markers from? I assume they're relatively cheap ehh?

Timeless

http://www.stealthauto.com/

Aaron https://mbworld.org/forums/members/37837-stealthauto.html should be able to hook you up.

MARTYMAR

Good looking out! Thanks for the links my friend

CWW

Well, that certainly addresses the most offensive and inflammatory issue at hand here. When someone buys a $30k+ car from you, and the floor mats (shown in your own sales photos) are missing due to no fault of the buyer, then the only proper thing to do is clearly to send out a set of *new* mats. Not used. Not off the wrong vehicle.

Brakes down to 5% aren't a 'subjective' issue. You may find some customer more willing to put up with it than she was, but that doesn't change the fact that you shouldn't sell a car in that condition, for two reasons; 1: It's unsafe, and 2: You're going to have a royally pissed off customer on your hands when they find out about it. And they will find out, in very short order...5% doesn't last very long.

No, you didn't. That's the problem here, especially with the floor mats. Nobody tried to "stand behind" anything, rather you sold her a car with almost no time left on the brakes, some cosmetic damage, and then tried to pawn off a set of used floor mats from the wrong vehicle when the original mats disappeared due to no fault of Ms. Stone. "Standing behind" your description would have entailed sending her a new set of correct mats, and making some kind of arrangement with her to give her some kind of credit or to take care of the most obvious of the mis-described items, like the brakes.

Naturally. She probably didn't get down on her knees to check out the fender lining, and I'm sure she probably didn't have her measuring calipers and lug wrench handy in her purse, in order to have discovered the worn out brakes. Lol. Those were the two most expensive items, and there was no way for her to know about them. She had to trust your description.

Are you really going to argue that the brakes could be worn all the way down to 5% in one month? I hope not. That's preposterous. So is the notion that the fender liner could miraculously disappear through one month's worth of normal useage. Clearly someone took it out and never put it back in, before she bought it.


Haha. Cute. Except you knew she was unhappy, because she told you she was unhappy. And in return, your dealership told her to pound sand and sent off a set of used floor mats from the wrong vehicle as a consolation prize. I continue to be amazed at the amount of gall it takes to come here and post this stuff after the way she was treated.

Right. Because she had to fly in and then drive it home 1,000 miles. You knew this, or should know this, since you guys processed her paperwork which undoubtedly included her address. So the *real* mileage we're talking about is 500 or less, when you deduct her trip home from the equation. I guess she stopped at every drag strip on the way home, is that what you're implying?

Well that depends on your idea of "perfectly good", doesn't it? If you are talking about brakes that are at 10% and then you hear squealing by the time you're headed home from your road course, then yeah I can see that happening. But if the brakes are at 95% and you spend two days at the track, then no I cannot possibly imagine how you could use them up in one or two track days. It's impossible. Also, she didn't track the car, so that point is moot.

And maybe you were behind on your own quotas, and mis-described the car to move it along? What seems more likely? That logic cuts both ways, you know. And after the way she's been treated, I'd trust a service writer more than your salesman any day.

You're grasping at straws here. Way too many stars have to align for your suggestions to make any sense, like that during the span of one month and 1,500 miles (1,000 of which were on the road trip home) she could have worn the brakes down to 5%, broken interior buttons, removed the wheel and taken out the fender liner, etc. etc. That's an awful lot of unlikely stuff that would have to happen in order for you to be right, don't you think?

Gimme a break. The reason you offer inspections in your eBay auctions is because anyone who doesn't cooperate with them is throwing up a giant red-flag to potential buyers, and you have to meet the common expectation in the marketplace or your sales will suffer. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the condition of the car.

We're not rubes here, and I'm sure many of us have our own businesses of one type or another. We know how it works.

The only remorse she had was over how she was treated! And I doubt you know enough about her financial situation to call her "financially troubled". Odds are, once she saw how much work the car needed, she just decided to move it along rather than try and deal with it at the same time she is going through several life-changes. The outcome would probably have been different had the car looked like it would be reliable long-term, though she is the only one who can answer that. Either way, "buyer's remorse" is lame, and seems to be the fall-back excuse when a car salesman catches any kind of grief from the customer.

You already did ruin your integrity in this situation, by selling your 100% eBay feedback rating for a silly $140 set of floor mats, so it's kind of late for comments like that.

More B.S. If that's going to be your position, then you have no business selling cars retail, you should be wholesaling them. That's why there are "retail" and "wholesale" values. Picking up a car at an auction and moving it along in whatever condition you found it is wholesaling, not retailing.

A retail buyer expects certain things related to the condition of the car, and those expectations were grossly disappointed in this situation. If you are going to wholesale cars at retail prices, which is exactly what you are here saying you did in this case, then you shouldn't expect a happy customer. This ain't rocket science.

Exactly. Brakes at 5% aren't safe.

More B.S. The car is worth whatever its market value is, and if she wanted to pay $70k, she'd be at the MB dealer buying a new one, not dealing with you at the first place. Just because she isn't paying new sticker for a preowned car doesn't mean she should automatically expect to wind up with a piece of crap! You're making an absurd bifurcation here, wherein you are arguing that there are only 2 reasonable options; either buy a new car, or be happy with a piece of junk if you buy one used. That's ridiculous, and not the way the business works, as you well know. The 3rd option, which you are falsely excluding, is that she should be able to buy a used car and still expect that it be in good condition. That is hardly unreasonable, especially when the seller has described it as "immaculate".

You just can't retail a car in the same condition it was in when it rolled off the hauler at the auction, and still expect a happy customer. Again, this is the difference between retail and wholesale. You provided an auction quality car at a retail price, and your employees treated her like crap in the process. She's rightly upset. Wouldn't you be?


Because, in the course of conducting business online, you came to understand (correctly) that if you don't offer to participate in independent inspections, then you'll drive off potential customers. You really don't have a choice in the matter, that's why you do it. None of this speaks to the quality of any particular car, it's just your corporate policy which I'd venture to guess is included in the auction description for every car you list online.

I'm not passing judgment on the car, I'm passing judgment on your customer service. Thus far, you sold her a mis-described car, you added insult to injury by sending a set of used floor mats off of the wrong vehicle, then when she was (not unpredictably) unhappy with the situation, you fought her tooth and nail through eBay, and come here to insinuate things about "buyer's remorse", her allegedly weak financial situation, how she must have tracked and abused the car, etc. etc. etc.

That's pretty weak.

x-tian-230k

+1

AMG Phoenix

At this point, I won't argue with allegations that are simply not true. We messed up on the mats and I owned up to it, but the car didn't leave our dealership with 5% brakes because we can't sell it that way. The liability costs are far more than any brake job and there is far more to lose than an upset customer.

I guess at this point we will now have to go so far as to "require" out-of-state clients to pay for third-party vehicle inspections and then have them sign off on them before they drive away. (And everyone wonders why the paperwork has gotten so thick and the legal disclaimers so numerous).

Just out of curiosity for my own market research, is a mandatory inspection something that you would be willing to participate in during a car purchase process, or do some of you think it is a waste of money? If it is not mandatory, where do you think it is fair for a dealer/private party seller to draw the line on our own exposure, especially when a client has visually inspected and driven the vehicle?

I would appreciate any thoughts on this idea..................