Mercedes-Benz of Walnut Creek — Attraction in Walnut Creek

Evaluated this dealership for my ranking on Saturday, 25 May close to close of business.

Evaluated using the standard approach (purchasing a pre-owned vehicle under $40k with financing).

There are better dealerships; on my honesty index they scored a 3 /10, mostly for verbal misrepresentations, missing knowledge, omitting information they were aware of and understood to be relevant, and encouragement to act against the buyer's best interests. I did not negotiate the price, or ask for any favors.

To evaluate their behavior most naturally, I took financing, but I will pay it off before the first payment is due.

Experience was generally negative: Obvious minor stains/body damage on the car that the salesperson didn't mention or highlight (likely assumed I didn't notice). Salesperson for the dealership is trained to basically denigrate mom&pop auto traders, which seems unnecessary; if you have a better business, why take shots at your competition so directly? Salesperson encouraged me to steal from prior owners of the car, by using their still active account to charge the vehicle after I bought it Salesperson encouraged/sold towards financing regardless that I left several verbal cues that it was unnecessary. Finance rep several times encouraged me to sign documents which were either unrelated to our transaction, or which stated that I was acknowledging something that wasn't true. I declined to sign these, and the finance rep removed them. For trade-ins received by this dealership, they apply a ~$1.3k charge for a proprietary cleaning/wipe down with permaplate. I think the market rate for this from the manufacturer is like $150 or less. $1-2k for random markup doesn't bother me (they have to make their money too), but they avoided mentioning it until rather late in the process. This is a standard tactic, but is disingenuous and a sign that their sales team chooses to comport themselves in a manner that doesn't actually put the interests of the buyer first, so this problem is likely endemic to their team and leadership chain.

Because of their conduct I paid the financing off before the first payment was due; there are a few other negative things as well, but they're $$ related and I wasn't personally bothered by it.

Most of my dealership reviews are done by buying a pre-owned vehicle. It's possible the experience is different for a new vehicle.

Also worth noting it was late in the day, but their reaction to most of the things that came up suggested to me it wasn't specific to the individuals I was working with or the time of day, but more about the focus of training and culture of the team working there.

Overall, an aggressive sales organization. I'd estimate they do relatively well with this posture in this area.

Changes I'd like to see: Never encourage theft Never encourage a buyer to misrepresent the truth on a document they're signing Train more on understanding your most standard/everyday products (e.g. the cleaning they apply to every pre-owned vehicle)

Things a buyer should keep in mind for this dealership: The salesperson will not be up front with you about the competitiveness of the price, or the condition of the vehicle for pre-owned, though this is typical. It's rare to see a good dealership in this regard. All verbal representations about a sale are generally irrelevant, so make sure you know what you're doing. They don't seem to care about early repayment on financing as much as other places; definitely something a little suspicious about that, juxtapose to how aggressively they push for financing. I think it's just strategy for their sales team, motivated by kickbacks on data sharing, minimum finance charge requirements, and the forgetfulness of the general population though. You can deal with the data sharing afterwards with deletion requests.

I don't think the dealership should feel too badly about this rating, as it's pretty similar to other dealerships in the area, though I've never been encouraged to commit theft before, that was new...

I was an out of state buyer from Texas. I bought the car sight unseen other than photos and videos they sent me. For the most part they did a good job but I overlooked a lot of things and generous with my rating because of their price for my certified pre owned 2023 Mercedes 450+ SUV was $10k cheaper than ones sold in my area.

My sales person was Jeremy and his manager was John. The listed price was $49k but they added a non-negotiable $1400 ceramic coating and $250 for the car alarm and $1500 for shipping in addition to the sticker price. They wouldn't let me get my own shipping company, I had to use theirs.

I closed on the deal on May 2, it took 2 weeks after repeated attempts via phone call and email to get copies of all the paperwork I signed of the transaction. I was also falsely informed that I needed to get a VIN inspection and that I had to register the vehicle myself. Thank god for Chris who was in charge of out of state registration who took care of everything but I had to call and email around AFTER I received my car on May 13 to get routed to the right person. I didn't get my temp plates until May 19. The dealership could have easily just handed this over to Chris on 5/3 and I would have gotten my temp plates before the car was shipped to be on 5/13. The car had to sit for 6 days in my garage without use when I had no car of my own.

When the car got to me, the shipping company that they swore by, hit my car while it was on the trailer by other car because my car literally told me it was in a collision when i turned the car on. the shipping company then denied it at first and now is now fixing the damage, if i wasn't an attorney, i don't think it would have been fixed.

The car was not detailed at all, the inside and the outside was filthy and there were remnants of stickers that were pulled off that were not scraped off. There was also an all season cargo mat that was mentioned in the spec sheet that was not present when the car arrived. I have emailed several times and no one from management has yet to respond back to me about it, the salesperson, Jeremy, had to pay for it out of his own pocket and shipped it to me so that I wouldn't complain about it further.

My husband bought a Mercedes at a dealership near us and the service was amazing and that's what I was expecting. I was already skeptical to do an out of state transaction. Jeremy was great in his customer service. The dealership's management dropped the ball in so many ways. If the price wasn't good in comparison to my state and I didn't love my car itself, I would rate this dealership at a 2. They are getting 4 stars because Jeremy tried to rectify the situation as best he could and kept responding to me until all my concerns were addressed, Chris, and Jasmine were also great. Chris for finally getting my plates and Jasmine finally got my paperwork to me after 2 weeks.

I shouldn't have to chase people down to get simple answers. If they sell so many out of state sales as they claim, I shouldn't have to wait 2-3 weeks from the close of the sale to get copies of the paperwork I signed or temp plates. My husband went into a dealership and came out of the same dealership with copies of the paperwork he signed and temp plates and his certified pre owned car detailed from the inside out. There wasn't a ceramic coating cost and alarm cost on top of the sticker price. It was a seamless process, my process with this dealership was far from that.

This dealership needs to go over their processes and procedures and do a major overhaul. They need to add the ceramic coating and price for alarm in the sticker price because it catches people by surprise for no reason. I have never had to pay for both separately. Mercedes is a luxury brand and customer's expectations are to be treated with transparency and courtesy and transactional ease. This dealership did not...

Update: Not only did this sorry excuse for a dealership not return calls or care to contact me back after leaving numerous messages, we found that even though the sold the vehicle as a CPO vehicle, it's basically a Lemon and we are stuck hold the bag. They saw this vehicle had codes and instead of repairing them, they cleared them and sold the car anyway. We know and have proof of this. I will never buy anything else from them again.

I deeply regret not heeding the numerous negative reviews about this dealership and strongly urge others to avoid them. I would never recommend this dealership to anyone. Earlier this year, my husband purchased a Certified Pre-Owned (CPO) G63 for me from this dealership, expecting fewer issues thanks to the CPO inspection, and had it shipped from California to Alabama. Unfortunately, our experience has been nothing short of frustrating and disappointing. Despite the CPO certification, we’ve had to pay for multiple repairs that should have been identified and addressed during the inspection. Worse yet, the dealership caused additional issues, leaving us to cover the costs. Upon delivery, we immediately noticed several problems: • The driver-side seat bolster was non-functional. • The 12V battery was failing, as indicated by the auto stop/start feature not working (a feature I don’t use, but the battery still needed replacement). • The driver-side headlight was malfunctioning and not adjusting properly. We initially drove it for a few months, compiling a list of issues before taking it in for warranty work. However, our plans were hastened when minor oil drips turned into larger pools of oil. When we brought the car in for service, we were informed that the oil pan drain bolt was stripped—a problem deemed “negligence.” The dealership refused to cover it, citing a lack of surveillance footage to verify the claim, leaving us with a $1,000 repair bill. Neither the selling dealership nor the local dealership took responsibility, despite it clearly not being our fault. When questioned about the issues present upon delivery, the service manager claimed no errors were present during their inspection. However, we suspect that the technician cleared the codes before running the report to provide a clean record. Unfortunately, we have no way to prove this, and the dealership showed no concern. Additionally, the failing 12V battery was not covered by the CPO warranty, requiring yet another out-of-pocket expense. The non-functional seat bolster, also not covered, came with a hefty $1,800 repair cost. To make matters worse, the car is now throwing intermittent codes for a low-pressure fuel pump, resulting in cylinder 2 misfires, along with repeated issues with the COMAND system locking up and rebooting. These are ongoing problems my local dealership is trying to address but cannot duplicate consistently. All of these issues were present from day one and should have been identified during the CPO inspection. When we reached out to the selling dealership, they claimed these issues were not caught during their inspection. That is simply not credible, given that these problems have persisted since delivery and have only added to our financial burden. This entire experience has been a nightmare. We paid a premium for the CPO designation, expecting peace of mind and reliability. Instead, we could have purchased a non-CPO car at a lower price and still been better off financially, even with the cost of repairs. I am beyond disappointed and will never purchase from this dealership again. I strongly advise anyone considering buying from them to reconsider. Buying CPO should mean something, but in this case, it has meant nothing but added frustration...