Heritage Volkswagen Catonsville

This is a mixed review that started very well, had a very bad sales experience, and was later fixed by Heritage MileOne Management. Based the final outcome, we decided to elevate it from 1 to 3 stars. Coming in for initial test drive went well. No pressure to buy immediately. We used Edmunds to get a dealer quote and Heritage VW quickly responded with calls and texts as did others. Heritage VW negotiated a price for the car and answered our questions concerning incentives including $1000 cash back and 0.9% VW financing incentive. Price was right in line with Edmunds TMV and they confirmed the incentives were in play by text. We really appreciated the no hassle of the text offer at the time. My wife and I came in for a final test drive and to put a deposit on a car based on the negotiated price. Sales staff acted polite and professional and confirmed the price texted in writing. We also mentioned how we were looking forward to the 0.9% finance incentive. The next day we filled out paper work, our credit was deemed excellent and put insurance on car. The big surprise came when we went to the finance manager to sign the finance paper work. It's there where we noticed that we were not getting the 0.9% financing offered by VW and clearly discussed in the text offer, but a very non-competitive 3.9% rate. We were told we would only get the $1000 or finance rate. When we showed him the offer was clearly both advertised on VW page and discussed in the text message, he walked away for some time. He later came back and told us they used a different incentive to arrive at the price and failed to inform us although having multiple opportunities to do so including the initial texts. We considered this deceptive at best given the clarity of the text exchange and discussing our financing expectations several times during the process. They ended up dropping it to 2.9% but still did not honor the original text agreement. The finance manager also made two other major mistakes. The wrong number was inserted into the car loan document initially inflating the car loan by $2300 and was caught by us. He did not have our $500 deposit receipt and wouldn't have given us credit for it if we didn't raise the issue and have our own receipt copy. I'm hoping these were both honest mistakes but would have been costly if we didn't catch them. We sent an email of our dissatisfaction to the dealer GM. He called but really didn't seem sympathetic or offer us anything but a couple of free oil changes for our troubles. The Heritage MileOne Director of Operations and VW Customer Care did respond to our complaints. The Heritage MileOne Director said that they are customer focused, live up to their commitments, and sell cars the right way. He thought that the text offer was clear enough that he had us come back in and resign the contract for the 0.9% financing we were originally promised. Although we initially had a bad sales experience, we were very impressed with the Heritage MileOne customer commitment and satisfactory resolution to our issue. We would not be hesitant to buy from a Heritage MileOne Dealership again based on this final outcome. We were also impressed with VW customer care and their responsiveness to our issues and has kept us positive about Volkswagen. Advice to buyers: Make sure you get the whole deal including financing assumptions in writing and that it is crystal clear to everyone before making a deposit.