Regarding Dominic Ford: Sales Manager

CLIENT VISITS DEC 2nd 2010
SAYS HIS GIRLFRIEND IS WANTING A PRE OWNED C CLASS
SHE DRIVES AN E CLASS NOW WHICH SHE IS KEEPING HE SAID
ONLY WANTS WHITE WITH ALMOND INTERIOR
OPTIONS ARE NAVIGATION AND SPLIT SEATS
SHOWED BLACK, SILVER, AND WHITE WITH BLACK INTERIOR
HE SAID SHE SAID NO WAY AT ANY FIGURE
FOR THE PAST 3 MONTHS I HAVE CALLED HIM ON EVERY WHITE C
FINALLY I SAID WE SHOULD LOOK AT A NEW CAR SO SHE GETS EXACTLY WHAT SHES WANTS; ARCTIC WHITE, ALMOND, NAVIGATION, SPLIT SEATS
THIS WHOLE TIME I DONT EVEN KNOW HER NAME, JUST ERIK WHO HAS BEEN DOING EVERYTHING FOR HER
HE FINALLY MAKES AN OFFER OVER THE PHONE FOR A NEW ONE, WHICH IS $2, 000 LESS THAN THE DESK MANAGERS PRICE I GOT.
I WAS TOLD TO GO TO YOU BY BRIAN, TO SEE IF WE COULD DO IT.
YOU SAID, "GET PARTIAL PAYMENT TO PRESENT OFFER BECAUSE THATS ABOVE MY PAY GRADE"
I TOLD HIM THAT, AND HE SAID HE WOULD TALK TO HER
I SET THE APPOINTMENT FOR TODAY

THEY CAME IN TODAY
I TOOK THEM RIGHT TO THE ROOF TO SHOW THEM THE C CLASS'S IN WHITE
BOTH WERE LUXURY
NONE HAD ANY OF THE FEATURES THEY WANTED; PREMIUM 1, MULTIMEDIA

I BROUGHT THEM BACK DOWNSTAIRS AND DID A WORKSHEET FOR THE CAR NICOLE LOCATED FOR ME A FEW DAYS AGO

SHE STARTED TO WRITE THE CHECK FOR THE PARTIAL PAYMENT THAT I TOLD ERIK ABOUT OVER THE PHONE PER YOUR INSTRUCTIONS.

SHE WROTE IT FOR $20, 000 THEN TOLD ME SHE WOULD BE TRADING HER CAR

I BROUGHT THE DEAL TO THE DESK, WITH THE DEPOSIT AND WAS TOLD TO MAKE A NEW WORKSHEET, WHICH I DID.

I CAME BACK TO THE CUSTOMER AND PRESENTED THE FIGURES AND THEY SAID THEY WOULDNT GO MORE THAN $20, 000 DIFFERENCE.

BY THIS TIME, YOU HAD TOLD ME YOU WOULD GET ANOTHER SALESPERSON TO CLOSE THE DEAL. THEN I TRY TO EXPLAIN TO YOU WHAT HAPPENED AND YOU YELLED AND SENT ME HOME.

WE TOLD ERIK $36, 000 FOR THE CAR WE WOULD GET FROM ANOTHER DEALER

HE BRINGS HER IN AND I GET SENT OUT WITH FULL LIST PRICE

YOU ALWAYS SAY, "WRITE IT DONT FIGHT IT"

SO I BROUGHT THE CHECK TO THE DESK

I BACKED UP AND DID A NEW WORKSHEET, WITH TRADE

I ALREADY KNEW ALL THE FEATURES SHE WANTED AND CONFIRMED THEM ON THE INVENTORY WALK ON THE ROOF.

I EVEN TRIED SWITCHING HER. WHILE YOU WERE TELLING ME TO SWITCH HER TO A USED BLACK 2011 OR A CPO, I WAS TRYING TO EXPLAIN THAT FOR THE PAST 3 MONTHS I WAS SENDING HIM INFO ON EVERY COLOR AND HE SAID ONLY WHITE, NO OTHER COLOR.

BOTTOM LINE, IVE BEEN ONE OF THE TOP PRODUCERS SINCE I STARTED, AND YOU'VE MADE ME FEEL LIKE A TRAINEE.

YOU POINT OUT ALL THE NEGATIVE THINGS PEOPLE DO AND DONT PRAISE THE POSITIVE. YOU MAKE THE NEGATIVE PEOPLE STAND OUT ON THE BILLBOARDS IN THE BREAKROOM, OTHER THAN PROMOTE THE POSITIVITY OF THE PEOPLE WHO ARE EXCELLING. YOU THINK BY BULLLYING OTHER EMPLOYEES TO DO BETTER MOTIVATES PEOPLE AND IT DOES NOT. PEOPLE LIKE A PAT ON THE BACK; A HIGH FIVE; A POUNDIE; A HUG; RECOGNITION. ALL YOUVE DONE IS SHUT PEOPLE DOWN WHEN YOU DO THIS. THE NEGATIVE ENERGY FLOWS HERE AND WE COULD SELL 500 CARS A MONTH, WITH MORE INVENTORY AND POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT.

IF YOU CARE TO KNOW, I HAD ALL THE RESPECT IN THE WORLD FOR YOU AND THOUGHT YOUD HAVE MY BACK BECAUSE YOU CARED. THIS IS NOT THE CASE.

Regarding GM Frank Cuteri
I worked for Mercedes Benz of Fort Wayne for 5 years and left in 2010 to work for Mercedes Benz of Tampa. Since my employment, as of December 1st, 2010, I have witnessed and been a victim of a hostile work environment.

Mercedes Benz of Tampa follows a strict selling process known as Automotive Profit Builders, which I have been involved with in the past, early in my career. This process focuses on hitting percentages based on how many clients you are able to convince to drive a car, present a price to, and introduce to a manager, known as a T/O.

I have witnessed managers throwing booklets for trade appraisals across the room for not being filled out right; I have witnessed racial and sexual remarks to fellow sales associates; I have witnessed offensive religious remarks such as accusing myself of being Jewish when I am Roman Catholic; I have witnessed yelling, profanity, derogatory remarks regarding perfomrance; I have witnessed public humiliation for under performers with justification by management stating that "we, as fellow associates, are to put peer pressure on the other employees (bully them)."; I have witnessed the general manager take the phone out of a sales associates hand and slam it to hang up on a client because someone was walking in the front door; I witnessed the assistant to Dominic Ford and Frank Cuteri physically grab a greeters arm and pull her back to her "post"; I have witnessed management threatening to falsely report negative material in our reports for not staying past our scheduled time to work or other things we are not required to do.

As of recently I had a client whom I worked with over the past 3 months bring his girlfriend in to purchase a vehicle. When I had given him figures for her new car over the phone, he had made an offer. When I presented the offer to my sales manager, Dominic Ford, he said he will not entertain any offer without a partial payment and the buyer here. I explained to the clients boyfriend, and he brought her in two days later with the offer. When presenting the offer to the desk manager, Dominc Ford interveined without knowing the situation or that it was the same client I had come to him for accepting an offer prior. He stopped and asked me retorical questions, spoke condescendingly to me, and then told me to go home while I was attempting to explain what was going on. He would not even let me explain. His superior, Frank Cuteri, witnessed the whole sitation and stood there with a smug look on his face and did nothing as Dominic Ford publicly humilated me; made fun of me for my age and blamed my age and where I come from, Indiana, on me not doing my job, which is not the case. I have witnessed this treatment to multiple sales associates including those who have been with Mercedes Benz, the company, for 10, 20, some 30 years.

In our process we are to sit up at the receptionist desk and wait for client who walks in. We are allowed a computer at the station to call and follow up with clients as we are waiting for new clients to walk in. Frank Cuteri, the General Sales Manager, told me that I cannot have my book of clients to call out at the receptionist desk to make phone calls but when go to my office to make calls from this book I am told to sit out front with the receptionist. This is causing loss of wages for myself. It is an inconsistant cycle that has everyone in a bad mood, calling in sick, or fighting. The only time management is smiling is when there is turmoil and frustration. They are ammused by it. Just recently, I went to sit up at the receptionists desk to wait for new clients and my name was not on the board. I was told Dmonic Ford had it. When I went to Dominic's office and asked for my name tag to be on the board to take new clients and make money he asked me why I refused to sit up there? I stated no one asked me to and I was following up with internet leads at my desk and was working on getting a payoff for a client as well as a spoiler installed for another client. He told me to take my name tag and discuss it with Frank Cuteri. When I went to Mr. Cuteri's office he wasn't in there so I went to the receptionists desk and put my name back on the baord so I can talk to clients. I sat there for 2 hours and then went to lunch. Right after I left for lunch, the receptionist was calling my mobile phone telling me to hurry up because other people want to go to lunch. We have 30 sales associates and it was slow due to rain that day. When I complained to Dominic about it, he told me to stop making excuses for my inabilty to sit up there and to get back up front. I was at lunch and checked out with Ariel before I left. Once again, harrassment and hositility. Later that day, as I was clocking out to go home for the day, Mr. Cuteri comes into the salespeople's office cubicle room, and yells at me in front of everyone saying "so Dominic said you want to tell me how to run my business...meet me in my office in an hour and we can discuss this" I said I never even said anything to Dominic about telling you anything and went into Dominics office with Mr. Cuteri present. I asked Dominic why he is putting words in my mouth, which is a common thing, and he said "I thought I told you to see Mr. Cuteri about refusing to sit up at the desk." He totally disregarded my statement earlier that day. Then they accused me of being Jewish and I am Catholic. Mr Cuteri made the statement, "well the Jews crucified Jesus so probably not." I stated I was Catholic. The management is causing an intimidating, distasteful, insulting, and hostile jobsite through discriminatory workplace harassment.

I was making $80, 000 per year, working 45 hours a week, and moved to Florida to better my life and opportunity. I am scared to sit in my office and make phone calls in fear of management coming in and talking with profanity and intimidating me. Over half the sales staff is actively seeking other employment as well and are more than willing to testify on the treatment of employees, including ex-employees who have quit due to the hostile work environment. I moved down here and left my old job behind and am seeking retribution for the hostile work envirnoment in excess of $500, 000. The stress and initimidation has caused physical illness as well as financial suffering. I have been one of the top performers at Mercedes Benz both in Tampa, since my first month selling in December 2010 and at my previous position in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

email sent to my be a former african american employee:

My name is Wesley Jackson. I met a Courtesy recruiter at a job fair About 6 months prior to being contacted for a interview for Mercedes-Benz of Tampa. I show up and not one manger had any clue of my appointment. I interviewed with Ed Jablon the Pre-Owed manger. During orientation I was told I would get paid $100.00 a day 5 days a week, but also that Mercedes-Benz dealership does things differently so they was not sure. Once I started working, the managers said it was six days a week not five. I asked if I will get paid $100.00 for the sixth day, from accounting and other managers at the Mercedes-Benz of Tampa location and got no straight answer. Finally I got pulled aside by the Customer Relations/New hire trainer Bernie Freedman and he told I would be paid $100.00 a day. The pay plan given to me was for Smart Car employees not Mercedes-Benz of Tampa.


Because the trainer was also a car salesman and customer relations, I was left alone or sometimes with other new hires to learn most the time. It was obvious he was over work so the time together was rushed, rude, consistent indirect fear of job loss comments. After my training was complete Bernie Freedman became much less of a hard ass and a bit more of a mentor. But at the same time he always seemed to have a primary motive to protect his job and his boss at the same time appearing to be concerned for my well-being.


Ed Jablon is the primary reason most new hires quit, also a direct quote to me from Mr Freedman. The man has a God complex. He is stuck in the old days and ways of car business and attitude of dog eat dog. Again another person that would speak not only indirectly but, directly using fear of job loss, even in the most uncalled for, left field situations, and conversations. My first confrontation with Mr. Jablon happen when I had a disputed with one of his top per-owned salesman who tried to steal a sale from me that was to be split between the both of us. Mr Jablon jumped in making a comment that implied that Keith did all the work. I corrected him, then he responded that he didn't know what was going on in his defense. I asked him then why are you in my conversation then? He got upset and started to argue with me and threaten me about losing me job instead of moving forward with a solution on the actually problem.


After that disagreement the manager realized I wasn't a push over and began to speak in decent respectful manor. But started to black me out. With is a term used with manger will not close sales deals or assist the employee in anyway to cause them to lose sales and quit. There was several discrepancies on my performance log that was inaccurate. Instead of being them to my attention they began to label me as a salesman to let customer walk away with seeing a manage to my co-workers, all the long purposely letting this inaccurate log continue to convince the GM that I should be let go at my evaluation. Finally I catch on to this and provided proof to correct this issue. But the very next day I was fired.


Before I was fired, I attended a special training meeting that was to address some of the odds and ends that wasn't cover clearly during training for all new hires. Procedures of logging manager introductions to customer was one of the subjects. I showed up late to the meeting due to the fact it was my day off and I could not get a babysitter till later in the day. Dominique the assistant manager took the opportunity to fire me because I showed late to that meeting.


Very soon after I was let go. I found out they where routing my customers to another salesman, again to take away my income. I have a customer who wrote a letter to the dealership, expressing how they was miss-treated and felt disrespected after a manager spoke with them. That letter has been filed. And Shaun was given that customer to follow-up with. And I was taken off the deal.


It was hard to prove that these attacks came upon me due to my personality or my color, because I was the only African American car salesman. There are at least a dozen other employees from all over the dealership, not just in the sales department that had a run in with Mr. Jablon that left them feeling disrespected. Mrs Jablon, Mr Jablon's wife works as a car sales woman at Smart Car dealership. I had my friend go up to Mercedes-Benz right after I was fired because there was an opening, knowing having a bad job is better then no job. He got hired and placed at Smart car with Mrs. Jablon. My friend being Spanish but looks white, spoke with Mrs. Jablon about me and why things turned out the way they did. And her response was something of the effect of “those people don't really come to Mercedes-Benz dealership”. He called me up and told me and concluded that he thinks it was a strong chance my ethnicity played a strong part in my experiences at Mercedes-Benz.


This is my testimony of my experiences at Mercedes-Benz of Tampa. I would have taken actions against them sooner if I had the finances and resources to do so. Until now all I've been able to do is contact the of the violations in the employee break room in the old facility. That did carry much weight because of the fact they where moving into their new building within two or three weeks.

A sales manager, John winters, is older and has a handicapped sticker for his car. He parks in the handicapped spot at the dealership. Mr. Cuteri has bullied John to not park his car in the handicapped spot; he has gone as far as to run the license plate to see if the car is in mr. winters name; and is still harping in it.


Since this email was sent, I have left Mercedes Benz of Tampa, and was a top producer. They have numerous assoiciates leave weekly. I contacted the Human Resources department and she just covered up all the issues. Instead of interviewing people about how we are being treated, she forwarded the email I sent her (above) to the GM and held a meeting with him present where no one would speak up in fear of losing their job. She then accused me of lieing and trying to cause problems. I have documentation (above). Nothing has since been done.

My wife and I went in the Mercedes Benz of Tampa Dealership and test drove a used Lexus LS 460 vehicle that initially had a low sticker price. We test drove the car and liked it. It then came down to the negotiations and trade in. We requested the dealership provide a trade in value for both our CPO Lexus LS 430 and a CPO BMW 545i and stated we would only trade in one of the vehicles depending on the trade in offer. We were shocked when the initial trade in was $7, 000 below Kelly Blue Book for Good condition. They provided a trade offer for my BMW 545i and valued the vehicle at $8000 below KBB. After the low ball tactic we we then proceeded to raise the value with no luck. The Mercedes Benz of Tampa internet Sales staff ignored the printed Kelly Blue Book document that stated fair, good and excellent values from that days Kelly Blue Book. It appears they were trying to make a $7000-$8000 dollar profit from the sale and trade of these vehicles. I then had an uncomfortable situation retrieving my wife's Title and later Drivers License which they had in their back office. We walked out in disgust and they later came out to try to negotiate in the parking lot. I would have never expected this from Mercedes Benz dealership as I have had past good relations and negotiations wtih Lexus, BMW and Acura. I can only believe that the General Manager of Mercedes Benz of Tampa is not aware of these tactics from their internet sales managers that are deployed upon the customers. I would strongly recommend to not conduct business at this Mercedes Benz of Tampa dealership.

Just to set the record straight... Mercedes Benz of Tampa came through for me! - Bernie Freedman, The Client Relations manager arranged for a meeting with Dominic Ford, The General Sales Manager of Mercedes Benz of Tampa, myself and with Bernie present, they realized and agreed to fix my power window motor at no charge. In fact they were extremely polite and professional about the problem. The issue was solved in minutes and is already scheduled for repair.

Jerry

I would do business with them again!

I purchased a "Certified Used Vehicle" (a 2002 Porsche 911 targa) with a 60 day 2000 mile Warranty from Mercedes Benz of Tampa on 2/2/09 - After delivery I noticed the right passenger window was not working properly. Their service dept did not acknowledge the problem and no work was performed. I took the car to a Porsche Dealership where they told me it was a power window regulator that was not working properly. I asked them to further explain and Porsche told me I would need a new Power Window motor and that the regulator is attached to the motor. You can not buy it separately, so therefore I need a new Power Window Motor which is covered under the warranty. Mercedes Benz of Tampa is not willing to pay for the repair completely and offered to pay for half of the repair which I am unwilling to accept. They should replace the Power Window Motor. The Repair is $600. When I told I would write to Action News they withdrew the entire offer. Bernie Freedman is my contact and has tried to get Mercedes of Tampa to repair my window and has had no luck in his efforts. I would have expected this problem from a regular used car lot but not from a Mercedes Dealership!!!