[NorCalAthlete]

I was cross shopping Mercedes, but...

1. When I went into the dealership and wanted to test drive, they couldn't have cared less. I spoke to one person who said he'd get a sales guy over to talk to me, and I waited 20 min before just walking out. All the while, at least 3 sales guys were having a laughing / joking convo halfway across the room. Contrast that with me going into the BMW dealership, telling them I wanted a test drive, and they hooked me up with a BMW Genius who spent half the day with me test driving different cars with different option packages (w/ and w/out the adaptive suspension, 440 vs M4, different seat packages / audio packages). Let me take it on a freeway loop to replicate parts of my commute that I hate, everything. Absolutely sold me on the car from a brand customer service perspective alone, without even trying to sell me anything just letting me explore the options I was interested in.

2. Friend of mine went from an X5 to a Benz and ditched it after less than a year and went back to BMW. Another friend with a Benz is in a lemon law case with his for a recurring mold in the AC vent issue. Customer service was barely amicable at best with both of them. The one with the lemon lawsuit still loves the cars as a brand, but mainly because "my whole family is just a Mercedes family".

Meanwhile my brother's been super happy with his M235 for years and his 318 before that; my cousin's been loving various M3s over the years, multiple buddies with M3 / M5 / X5s over the years, just way more smiles and better customer service all around.

To me, that's worth far, far, far more than "blah blah dead horse pig snout".