A friend mentioned that he saw a 2003 Mercedes C230 at DreamCarsCredit and recommended that I check it out. He himself ended passing for a different car but told me that it was in great shape.
Before I went to look at it I called the dealer to verify it was still available and that I'd be there in an hour to look at it. You'll see why this is important later.
On the way to the lot I picked up a friend who used to work on cars and knows what kind of signs to look out for. When we arrived the first thing we noticed was how beat up the rims were. There were scratches and gouges all over each of them(which suggests somebody likes to run into curbs). The rubber lining was falling apart and the glass somehow looked faded. The headlights looked absolutely awful and there were scratches all over.
When we get to the interior, the first thing I noticed was the driver side door had a gaping hole on the mesh that was covering the speaker. The CD changer was somehow "missing" and the sun roof was broken... which is interesting.
When my first friend had tested the car he mentioned how the sun roof had a cloth liner which could be used to block sunlight. When he was test driving the salesman had manually tried to force the liner back (it was automatic) and broke it, forcing it off the track. My buddy mentioned that it wasn't a big deal to fix and should be taken care of... but it was still broken when i saw it a month later.
Another interesting thing is there were greasy finger print stains from when someone had worked on the car and not cleaned up. This was the interior mind you.
Now for the 2 best parts...
When we popped the hood there was an air hose which fed the engine air for combustion running along the very front. It wasn't even fully attached! It had been torn apart and was barely dangling. The salesman told me it was only a $2 fix and not a big deal. If it was a $2 fix why the hell didn't they fix it!
After all this we decided to just see how it drives. After all, the car had only 69k miles on it. When I sat down I tried adjusting the steering wheel and guess what, it wouldn't lock. The steering wheel was literally just dangling there. It was still driveable so we went around the corner to their service bay where their tech told us it would take him a while to fix.
So here is my thing, there were some things that obviously would take a while to clean and fix. But I told the salesman I'd be there in an hour which gave him plenty of time to make sure the car was presentable, at least to someone's standards somewhere. They didn't even bother cleaning it nor making the smallest repair to sell this vehicle.
After I came home I found that complaints of people who had to return their car because it had shortly broken down after they bought it. There was even an ex-employee basically repeats what customers were complaining about (granted he was an ex employee and given any other circumstance I would have dismissed what he had to say as being disgruntled)
Do a search for dream cars credit ripoff to find it.
My advice, move on and don't rush buying a car. I ended up buying the exact same model for 10.5k (DCC was 10k). Just comparing the 2 cars, I would have bought that car for maybe $4k... and that's it I had a gun to my head.
Pros: ... I was not dumb enough to buy from them
Cons: Condition of the vehicles, lack of basic knowledge by the st
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