Review of Mercedes - Benz of Arlington

4 years ago

UPDATE #2

UPDATE #2
My tag issue has finally been resolved (a few weeks ago I just forgot to update this post). I'm not sure what the issue seemed to have been but whatever it was took the title office about 15 minutes to resolve. Which begs the question why it took over a month, a ticket.
I increased the stars because they finally got my registration but couldn't give them the full original 5 stars because I had to pay a ticket and I had to pretty much pester them to get a very basic service I'm paying for.
Even after all of this I still stand by the fact that James was great as a salesperson.
I still think it was the most stress free car buying experience we've had (I guess pre sale?), this is what make everything that happened post sale so disappointing.

UPDATE (long explanation):
I unfortunately have to downgrade my review by several stars. It seems like the (truly) great experience I've had buying the car is markedly different from what happens once you've purchased. I'll still leave my initial review up because it was heartfelt.

So since purchasing I've had my temp tags expire because my old tags haven't been transferred. This has never happened. I've gotten a ticket for unregistered vehicle and I can't access military installations with expired temp tags.
In and of itself that isn't enough to warrant an update. What happened after is worse. 1st I'm being given conflicting information, I've been told I need a duplicate registration then a duplicate title (that I ordered and am waiting on). Now I'm reading from MVA website that it's a duplicate registration (which I provided when we purchased). All of this in the span of a almost 3 weeks of me trying to get into contact with them (while asking for a new temp tag without a response).

This in and of itself is STILL not enough for me to update the review. What was mind boggling was I called today in order to get definitive information on what I need to get and was put in touch with a gentleman called Mike. Maybe Mike was having a bad day but he flat out told me that their salespeople do not know anything about registration. That the ONLY person in the dealership that can answer this is their title clerk. When I asked him what do you ask customers to provide when they purchase a car? He said: "they provide whatever they have". I was floored. In other words of the hundreds if not thousands of sales not a single salesperson is able to tell me what I need to transfer my tags (never mind that we were asked for specific docs when we bought the car)!
I understand not wanting to commit to an answer. But when a customer is simply asking you what have you've experienced in the previous sales you've seen, you owe him an answer. It's that simple.

It's sad because my wife and sister are both in the market for a GLC in next month and I had such a great experience buying my car but now I feel like I have to go elsewhere to avoid this mess. I'm never the difficult customer. I actually go out of my way to not leave a review at all instead of leaving a bad one but this shouldn't be this difficult. This is my first MB and I was naively thinking that everything about purchasing it would be easier.
My suggestion to the dealership would be to train their employees on what is needed to title their cars. I thought that was already the case but per Mike not the good folks at MB Arlington :(

ORIGINAL REVIEW _______________________________________
I'm normally the one family and friends call to go with them to dealerships. In the past 2 years I've either purchased or helped purchase about 9 vehicles. This is by far the most pleasant, pressure free car buying experience I've participated in. James was laid back yet professional, he played more the role of an informative friend than a car salesman and we really liked that. He answered all of our questions thoroughly and made sure we got the exact car we were looking for.
It was so simple and painless I almost felt like something was wrong.

I highly recommend Mb of Arlington and in particular James, just keep him away from the printer :).