Americans owe trillions in car payments and the last few years have shown that people are willing to accept life ruining payments to be able to drive what they want. A recent video of a customer at a Mercedes dealership showed in real time just how wildly financially irresponsible folks who get into these car buying situations can be.
BenzandBowTies is a YouTube channel run by Doug Horner who’s part of the sales staff at a Mercedes-Benz dealership. The channel gives a behind the scenes look at the sales process at the dealer. A recent video posted to the channel is almost unbelievable in it’s absurdity. Horner and a member of his sales team by the name of Angela have a customer who’s looking to get into a new Mercedes GLE. There’s just one large problem: he’s upside down to the tune of $29,000 on his current vehicle. He also mentions he doesn’t want an EV.
Angela mentions that he currently drives a 2024 Genesis GV80. The kicker is that they purchased – not leased – the luxury SUV just four months ago. What could bring someone to want to get out of a car they purchased just a few months prior? Angela mentions the customer says he finds the GV80 “uncomfortable.” As someone who has been in the car sales business before, I guarantee you that that’s the kind of excuse someone makes when they’re trying to justify the decision they’re making; he just wants the GLE because he wants it.
So Doug and Angela are trying to get the customer into either a 2025 GLE 53 AMG or a 2024 GLE 53 AMG Coupe. The problem is the customer only wants to put $7,500 down, which if you know the base price of either of those models ($89,200 and $92,150 respectively) and do the math is not even 10 percent down. Angela mentions that the customer doesn’t even want to put anything down but they need something given his negative equity. This all gets better when you hear that the customer is willing to accept a $2,500 monthly payment. Doug says the 2024 would be the better choice (likely because they’re just trying to get it off the lot) but both Mercedes’ have $5,500 incentives for American Express card holders, which the customer is, but that still doesn’t help much.
Doug has the customer figured out though. Angela gives him more details regarding the Genesis. Aside from having just purchased it a few months back, the customer has already put 11,000 miles on it over those four months. Given that fact, Doug says this guy is likely a high-mile driver with a pattern of getting out of cars early and then flipping a massive amount of negative equity onto something else.
In a sane world, neither Doug nor any other dealership, would entertain this guy given just how underwater he is on his current loan. Sadly, this isn’t a sane world and both dealers and people are financially irresponsible. Doug mentions the customer has a loan to value ratio – the amount of the loan divided by the actual cash value of a vehicle – of 121 percent, which is absurd; the higher that ratio is the riskier you are to lenders. No bank on the planet should lend this guy more money to get into a bigger hole just for a newer car. And while the video ends without us knowing whether or not he got into a GLE, it’s sad to think that he likely did and will likely start the whole underwater process again when he gets tired of the GLE.
