Complaint Review: W.I. Simonson Mercedes Benz - Santa Monica California

We walked into W.I. Simonson Mercedes Benz in Santa Monica, CA on a Sunday in February with the intention to lease two cars. A 2014 E350 and a 2014 SL550. I have known Mark Matias (the salesman) for a while and sat down with Mark and went over the numbers, negotiated and finally agreed on the monthly payments for both vehicles. It was our lucky day! We got sent over to the most condescending scam artist of a finance manager W.I. Simonson has to offer. The wonderful Marc Rose. Marc Rose did not say hello or thank you to us at any point of the transaction, treated my parents like they were zoo animals and lied to us about numerous things.

While Marc was getting the documents together for us to sign, every time either one of my parents tried to ask him a questions he would shove his hand in their face telling them to be quiet as if they were second class citizens. He really has an inferiority complex, he truly thinks he is the CEO of Mercedes Benz but needs to calm down and wake up to realize he is just a finance guy at a car dealership.. a shady car dealership.

So Marc tries super hard to sell us maintenance packages on both vehicles (this is where he makes his little commissions) and this paint protection package which we tried to decline multiple times but in his words and he kept repeating "It's a no brainer" "Done" "No Brainer". So after going back and forth multiple times we denied the paint protection which was $250 on both vehicles and added the maintenance package on the SL550 which he quoted at $549 and later on the paperwork we realized he charged us $750.

At this point they took so long to get the numbers finalized and checked over it is midnight. We begin signing the paperwork at midnight!!! My parents are starving, I'm starving, he doesn't offer us anything to eat or drink the whole time we are in his office. It's now time to sign the paperwork and we are not allowed to ask any questions or read the paperwork. He literally would keep his hand on the documents and snatch them from us the second we signed and move to the next document. He is a pro, a professional scammer who has most likely had years of training. At 1am the paperwork is completed and we leave the dealership and head home.

The next day we are reading the paperwork and we decide Mark Rose really pushed us into the maintenance plan which we did not want and the payments were at $1,260 a month and we called the dealership to ask them to remove the maintenance. The called us a week later and asked for my parents to come in. My parents went to the dealership to sign new documents and Marc Rose was terribly rude and disrespectful again to both of my parents.

Our original deal was zero out of pocket and $1,180 a month for the SL550 for 24 months. We rolled everything into our monthly payments so we did not have to put anything out of pocket. Marc is now rudely telling my parents that the payment will only be at $1,180 if we put $2,000 down. Wow! Talk about bait and switch... So now they are asking us for an extra $2,000! They kept my parents there for over 6 hours again just to leave without a resolution.

I call Mark Matias to ask him about this and he DOES NOT EVER ANSWER HIS PHONE. Once you purchase a car from him he disappears, he will respond via text message once in a while saying he is with a customer and he will call back but he never calls back. So after numerous calls (over 10 in one day) Mark Matias returns my calls and says he is on it and will take care of it. Finally two weeks later he calls me and says everything is ready and to have my parents come back to sign the corrected paperwork.

My parents go back to the dealership to meet with Marc Rose to complete the paperwork and at this point does not even say hello or anything, literally treats them like garbage and acts like they are not there and begins printing the documents which were incorrect again! Marc Rose calls Mark Matias into his office and they literally get into a verbal altercation right in front of my parents which other members of the W.I. Simonson staff had to walk in on and break up. So again my parents are there for over 5 hours and they can't seem to get the numbers to what we were quoted and we agreed on.

I get a phone call from a Lauren who apparently is the Finance Manager and asked me to make her aware of the situation, so I explained everything to her and she acted as if she was in complete shock and apologized numerous times and let me know she would be calling me back by the next day to get this resolved.

One week later, this has not been resolved, I have not received a phone call from Lauren and our payment is $80 a month more than it was supposed to be. Mark Matias will still not answer his phone, and Marc Rose hung up the phone on me today when I called him asking him what was going on with this.

I highly recommend to stay away from W.I. Simonson. There are lots of better dealerships in the Los Angeles area.