I was wondering if anyone on this forum has bout their MINI from them. If so, how was your experience? It seems like the boss is an *** and the only other guy I have talked too doesn't know half as much as me about MINIs and I am by no means an expert. This concerns me. Anyway, that all may not matter as long as they give good service and the mechanics know what they are doing.

So back to my original question. How was your experience? What kind of fees did you pay? Was the document fee outrageous like I have been hearing from some people? Whatever you can think of would be greatly appreciated.

Also, I believe there is one in Rockville or Baltimore or therabouts. Anyone been or bought from them? Opinions on which if either is better?

Thanks in advance. Really, thanks a lot. I'm sure this will help more than a few people.

 

I have no experience with Tate, but Towson MINI (of Towson MD, south of Baltimore) is one of the biggest MINI dealers in the eastern US. I had an excellent buying experience with them and have been pleased with their after-sale support. Suggest you give them a look.

 

Thanks a bunch man, I will definitely give them a look next chance I get to go to Towson.

 

Before purchasing my MINI I talked to MA's at TATE MINI, MINI of Towson, Otto's MINI and MINI of the Main Line (all are within 1-2 hours of me). The MA I talked to over at TATE was Sean Peria and he was a major help. Unfortunately he couldn't get me my ordered MINI below MSRP, which is the main reason I decided to go with Otto's instead, not to mention it's about an hour closer. He did however, offer me employee pricing on any accessories I wanted, and free floor mats. The document/processing fee he quoted me was $95. Although I only paid $55 at Otto's, it certainly doesn't seem too unreasonable. The only thing that I found very strange is that he quoted me a 'tag' fee of $350. Over at Otto's all I paid for title, registration, license, etc. was $80.

 

thanks for your help

 

I bought from tate. The man to talk to is Scott. He knows his ****.

 

We get service at MINI of Towson but we bought from Tate.

Towson didn't have the quotas available to fill our two orders in the timeframe we wanted. Plus, they weren't willing to give us ANY dealer throw-ins. And when you're handing them over $50,000, that seemed pretty ridiculous.

Buying at Tate was a good experience. No BSing, good communication, and smooth delivery. Scott was our MA, and he's top notch.

 

thanks, i dont think ive talked to scott yet, but ive only been in two or three times. next time ill ask for him specifically. hopefully ill be in there buying by the end of the year.

 

$80 for registration? wow! that's awesome.

Hawaii charges about $167 a year to register a MINI.

 

WOW, that's insane!!! I actually got my MINI dealer to break down all fees for me to make sure he wasn't trying to pull a fast one or anything. The $80 was actually for everything other than documents. If anyone is interested the breakdown was as follows (copied straight from the email he sent me):
$55.00 document fee
$36.00 registration
$22.50 title fee
$2.05 PA electronic license
$15.45 PA electronic registration
$4.00 PA dealer tire tax

 

blame the state. Reg fees are based on weight so the MINI is one of the lower cost cars to register.

you'd think with those high reg fees our roads would be immaculate. far from it. We might be ranked in the top ten for worst roads..

 

You'll get a better response if you ask your question on the DC Metro MINIs forum.

I bought through MINI of Towson and was very pleased with their service.

 

I think you'll find that a lot of people are happy with the sales experience with TATE, but for a good number of people (not everyone) their service experience leaves much to be desired.

There have been quite a few scary stories from TATE service, to the point that a number of folks have completely switched and now take their MINIs to Towson instead - even if it's less convenient.

As wolf617 suggested, ask the same question in the DCMM forum and you'll see what I mean.