MMM430

I have a short story to tell and would love to ask for your opinion once you have suffered through reading it!

Additionally I ask that you please forget we're friends, colleagues and fellow MB lovers...just read the story for the details. Consider that this could easily be your own story. What is your opinion? How would you feel? What if you were the service manager making the decisions in this matter? What say you?

Without further adieu;

My story begins on a normal workday morning as I pull into the parking deck at work. Unbeknownst to me, as I hop out of the car, lock up and head for the office, my headlights were were still shining on the parking deck wall behind me.

I left my headlights on for only a few hours and sure enough, as I approached the lifeless vehicle with visions of a nice lunch hour, I realized my remote would not unlock the doors. She was dead! Really dead and in need of a jump start. I pulled out the phone and dialed up the trusty MB Roadside assistance and asked them to dispatch a tech to my location and deliver me from my dead battery situation.

About 4 hours later, the very polite MB roadside tech arrived, jumped the car, I tipped him, paid for his parking fee in the deck, thanked him and showed him where to exit and be on his way.

Almost immediately after the guy was out of sight and my attention was back on my car, I noticed that neither of my headlamps were working. I called MB roadside back for advice and they suggested I go to the dealer service dept.

To make a long story short(ish), I brought my car to the MB Buckhead service department where they promptly declined responsibility for shorting out two lamp ballasts / igniters and the cost to replace both would be roughly $2600.00.

I feel it is important to mention at this point that both headlights are relatively new. One is a mere 3 months old and the other only 3 years old. The original lights I had in the car lived for over 7 years before I had to replace them due to an accident. Mind you...these things are built to last years if not for the life of the car. Bulbs you replace, but not $1200 headlamp assemblies unless you've had an accident and crush one to bits!

Thankfully, one of the lamps was still under a 12 mo. parts warranty.

Given that they were stonewalling me and my efforts to have the dealership admit liability were going nowhere, I asked them to go ahead and replace the battery and the one headlamp that was under warranty and declined the replacement of the headlamp that was no longer under the parts warranty.

I made this decision for two reasons; 1) I could not afford to replace the $1300 headlamp and 2) because I felt MB Buckhead and their roadside assistance should acknowledge that the jump they provided was the root cause for both lamps to be blown / shorted simultaneously....I just needed a bit more time to convince them.

Boy that was wishful thinking!

In fact the service adviser tells me that he can "hypothesize all day long" but can not tell me what caused such a short on two virtually brand new and completely separate units.

So much for a diagnosis!

Isn't the simple definition of diagnosis the act or process of identifying or determining the nature and cause of a disease or injury through evaluation of history, examination, and review of relevant data? So if you are charging me full price I want a full diagnosis...I want to know what caused this. Of course they were not about to give me the cause because I believe that would leave them liable.

What the service adviser was able to tell me is only that they were both blown (Duh!), that they would warranty one, wouldn't pay for the other and just how much it was gonna cost me!

Soooo. I figure I'll find a way to get the other headlamp working on my own dime and not involve MB Buckhead any further than the new battery and the one lamp replaced under warranty. After 6 (S-I-X) business days, I arrived to pick up the car and planned to pay only for the new battery.....but nooooooo!

How could I be so naive!? There's that obligatory "Diagnosis" fee of course! And as described above, I got a partial diagnosis at best and to boot they determined that one of two lamps was under warranty! So b/c it was a warranty issue I shouldn't have to pay for the diagnosis of that right?

WRONG!

MB Buckhead charged me $150 diagnostic fee for determining that a warranty part was blown. I argued that I should not be charged since the "diagnosis" led to a warrantied item but b/c I declined the one lamp replacement that was not under parts warranty, they saw fit to charge me.

Assuming there was a trace of good customer service practice in their blood, Mercedes Benz of Buckhead saw fit to change how I was billed in order to save me $15 across the board! My service adviser changed the $150 diagnosis fee to a $125 installation/labor fee for the $160 battery I bought while I was there. So nice! (insert sarcasm here) Thank you!

So here I sit, writing to you out of frustration and bewilderment with $300 less than I had this morning for which I have a new battery and I still don't have the 2 working headlights that in my opinion were blown out by the very service department that wants to charged me to replace them!!

So now that you've suffered through this long and largely uninteresting story, I invite you to leave your opinion. Any will do!

Am I just mad that I paid $300 for a new battery and still don't have two working headlights? Did they royally screw me? Got any ideas or possible solutions to my problem? Learn to write in shorthand your story is too damn long? Serves you right for owning a car you can not afford?

Whatever you got....let me have it!

All humor aside, I really value your input and your opinion! I hope I haven't bored you. I hope you can relate to my story and maybe even be a little wiser having read it.

Regards,

Matt Minton