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Our Salesman (Paul, I think) didn't know anything ...

Our Salesman (Paul, I think) didn't know anything about the car we wanted (Mazda 5) such as how many speeds it had (5 or 6), seats (he apparently fits himself, his wife, their 2 sons, their wives and children into a car with 6 bucket seats), or MPG (according to our salesman the car boasts 30+MPG but actually gets much better than that). I also made it a point to ask if we needed to be concerned about the fact that we live in PA but were buying a car in NJ. Paul told us that they sell cars to PA residents all the time and that they'd take care of everything for us. Unfortunately he never told me that excluded PA inspection, which is now something I have to take to a PA mechanic and pay to have done within the next 2 weeks.

After he handed us off to the financial guy, he never came back to check on us or thank us despite the fact that we were there for another 90 minutes filling out paperwork. Of course, he called on Monday in the middle of the day to make sure we were happy with the car, and wouldn't hang up until making sure to tell me he needed me to give him all '10s' on the customer satisfaction survey, even after I told him I was at work and couldn't talk. Not the best time to push for a positive review!

Paul was clueless, but nice. The financial guy he paired us with acted like we were an inconvenience, and every little speedbump became a major problem. He actually has us worried a few times that we wouldn't be able to buy the car that day and would have to come back during the week. We had to pay the down-payment with two debit cards since it exceeded the daily limit on either, and didn't have our insurance rep's cell phone and couldn't get ahold of him on a Saturday. Two relative minor problems, stuff that I'd expect to be pretty common occurrences at a car dealership had him acting like they were really big hassles he had to deal with. He had both my wife and I feeling like we were inconveniencing him by asking him to help us buy a car and were taking him away from his 'real' work.

The dealership also didn't have the parts to install the remote start option we wanted, so told us they'd call in 2-3 days when the parts came in to schedule an appointment. I followed up a week later after not hearing anything and the receptionist just 'harumphed' when I told her that we were told that the parts would be in 1-2 days. It's been almost a week and a half since then and they still haven't called to tell me the parts are in.

Suffice it to say that we bought the car despite the dealership, and only then because it was the only local dealership that had the make/model/style that we wanted. The car has been OK so far but nowhere near as peppy as I expected and gets much worse than the 30+ MPG we were told (closer to the low-end of the advertised 22-28 MPG with a good mix of highway and city driving). Based on my experience at this dealership and the lackluster performance of the M5, this is probably the first and last Mazda we'll be purchasing. Nothing against the brand itself, but we definitely recommend against buying a Mazda at the Maple Shade dealership!

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