Enjoy the car. I also got hosed on my first lease MB GLE 350 in 2016 which I just got out of last week. I paid about $810/month including maintenance. It had lot of packages (premium sound, driving assist, etc etc). I did not like it right from the second week as the infotainment system felt like using a Nokia phone v/s todays phones. I had my eyes on the a-class. It is a nice car with great dashboard.
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At the same time, dealer does not HAVE TO give you discount. I have also yet to see awesome deals on A series so do not feel so bad. Only thing I would feel bad about is the maintenance plan you pre-paid.
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I actually saw my first one in the wild yesterday, in NJ of course. It looked like the classic example of a Northern NJ housewife driving it (you know exactly what I’m talking about!) turning into a shopping center at about 9:30 AM. I was wondering how badly she got screwed on the car, either lease or purchase price.
Oh, I know. The one positive thing I’m seeing is any A-Class that’s been put up for a lease transfer has been in the same $$$ range as mine. Either dealerships just aren’t heavily incentivizing it, or the few on LT/Swapalease are also just trying to get out of their shitty deals.
Can you tell me more about prepaid maintenance and why it’s bad?
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You are paying dealer price for maintenance that you will not benefit from unless you will purchase the car at lease end. Most savy lease hackers keep their maintenance to the bare minimum required if they pay out of pocket. I would think some people even skip it , but it is not ethical in my opinion.
Edit: Grammar
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From my experience, one of the main profits for finance dept at the dealership is from selling those maintenance packages. Their goal is to claw back the potential profit “lost” from the sale price discount.
There was a time a finance person was trying to sell me the maintenance package to cover the brake pads for $1k, telling me that how other customers didn’t purchase it and blaming dealership not reminding them to buy the maintenance package (yea, that has to be true 
), despite the fact that my lease was only 24 MONTHS FOR 20K MILES 
When I was signing for my 1st lease, the finance guy’s office was literally set up with all sorts of props like blown tires, punctured tires, etc. And the guy was pointing to different props depending what kind of maintenance coverage he was trying to sell me 
And that was before I came across leasehackr, so I felt super lucky I stood on my ground and said no to all of them.
As a rule of thumb, unless you know exactly why a maintenance package is worth buying (e.g., I believe some brands like MB sometimes bumps up RV when you purchase maintenance packages), just say no.
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You made a bad financial decision first time around and now you want to make another bad financial decision by getting rid of it so you don’t remember your “incredible dumb, impulsive decision”.
I paid $420 per month for my E300 65k MSRP 
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We all should thank to OP, people like him are only the reason we all can get good deals :). Joking aside, OP should try to cancel those maintenance and excess wear and tear insurance, at least you can save $100 bucks a month by doing that, then I would try to flip it.
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do you feel better now, bro?
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Is that even possible?
Go take a look at your contract. There often is a clause on some of those add ons.
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I believe so. just call mb financial, they should be able to help you.
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Will do, thanks.
Since you guys are mentioning about keeping maintenance to minimum. do you get it done outside and have copies of it to hand it over incase of issues? I paid about $25/month for my GLE for maintenance (yes bad first deal) and I am sure they just did oil change and tire rotation. I used to be concerned about the car dealer/manufacturer dinging me about maintenance not being done.
That or have mechanic friend make bogus receipt. (But surely none of us here will do that)
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I have not heard of anyone charged for skimped maintenance. This is something very difficult to prove for them and even if they can, it is too much of a hassle to pursue. Do you guys know if there is a clause in lease contracts that says customer must perform proper maintenance?
are you joking? I literally wrote what you wrote and pointed out how it’s a bad financial decision to comp someone to take it so soon. feel free to do it because you don’t like how it drives (although I still don’t understand how one doesn’t test drive a car), but from a financial point of view what you are doing is yet another bad decision.
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Or just get a BMW instead. 
BMW charges $750 if you skip the required maintenance.