djf1

For the past 25 years I have owned nothing but German cars. Mainly Porsche and BMW brands.
In 2005 I decided to park my 911 and get a daily driver to ease my ageing left leg pain in traffic. Older, something more comfortable.

I bought a used 1997 E320 with 100K on in excellent overall condition. For 3 years I used to service it at the MB dealers in the lower mainland of BC and was pretty pleased with the service. Nothing major really, just normal A and B services. I was so stocked with the car that in 2008 i decided to lease a new 2008 E230 4matic. The E320 went to my wife who sold her M3.I was thrilled with both Mercs. Lovely cars to drive daily.

Enter problems with the service departments when I started doing other stuff than A and B services on the E320.

First I bought a set bottom from Mercedes to replace the sagging drivers bottom, Mercedes in Richmond BC replaced it, half the heater is not working any more on this seat, of course part of the new bottom! Complaint to them, complaint to the "customer" service in Ontario. Nothing. The seat still heats in half.

Then it was the case of a very bad misfire. The dealer in Burnaby BC proceeded to tell me that I needed a new wiring harness and over 2K in cost. As it turned out a local wrench diagnosed correctly a faulty spark plug. 50 bucks later and the engine returned to be the silky smooth straight six it is.

Then it was the case of the single wiper. In a downpour driving to work the wiper gave up the ghost. I was close to Mercedes in Richmond again and decided to drive half blind to them. they charged me $200 just to "diagnose" the problem, their diagnose was a new motor was needed. Well you know how that went, with RainX on hand I drove to the local wrench, the issue here was the joint that hold the arm in place. Changed the arm, 30K later the wiper motor still works...

When the lease expired last year for the C230, i was so disgusted with Mercedes service that i saw no reason to extend, buy the car or even have the appetite to get a new one.
We kept the E320 though as my wife likes to drive it and kept on servicing it at a friend of mine who is servicing my Porsche.
Last week, with the car now at 200K some major stuff needed to be changed. the car has been amazingly reliable and trouble free so replacing some parts to keep it in top shape makes sense to me.

One of the parts we changed was the AC compressor. It was still the original unit and while it was chugging along it was clear that it had seen better days. So new one came in, but my friend is not equipped with recharging equipment for the refrigerant so I knew I just had to take it to another mechanic to recharge the system.

My wife works across the Mercedes dealer in Surrey BC. It was a matter of convenience for us so she took the car to them to recharge the system. How difficult can that be right?

So I get a call from the service advisor and it goes like this:
| So we charged the system, but the EC light is one so the AC is not working. I was like ok, it has a new compressor, there was no leakage before of any kind, what is wrong with it?
He says, well in order for me to find out what is wrong, I need to hook it up to our system and charge you $200!!!! I was like why would you charge me to read a code? He said that Mercedes is leasing to them the diagnostic system and there is a cost of using it!!!!!!!!
I went into a mild argument with him, i was appalled. I mean come on... two hundred bucks to plug in the stupid computer and read the error code??? I said to him not to do anything else and just give the car back to my wife.

So reading this board, I went into my car did the diagnostic procedure and got the error code. No I dont have the lease Mercedes equipment, but I guess Mercedes technicians dont even know they can get the error codes straight from the car without hooking up any special equipment.

It took me the better part of 3 minutes. Then reading this board further I realized that the error code was low refrigerant.! Really? I suspected to clear the fault code and restart the car to see if that would take care of the issue... Lo and behold another 5 seconds to clear the fault code, restart the car, the AC blows ice cold within 1 minute of starting and no EC light on, no more error codes... I would have thought that since I brought the car in without refrigerant, the unit would be reset as to clear the previous fault which correctly had identified no refrigerant in the system and therefore threw in the EC light to protect the compressor and the other parts. So not only they dont have a clue, but they wanted to charge me 200 bucks to correct their stupidity? Something they should have done in the first place!!!

It seems like their policy is to charge you no matter what 200 dollars in order to even start working on the car. Kind of like a bouncer fee at the door of the night club. I just find that unprofessional, appalling and borderline fraudulent.

So the question is. Since my experiences with service is consistently bad with 3 dealers now, does Mercedes really want to alienate any old owners and never buy from their brand again? Do they want all the out of warranty cars to go straight to the dumpster?

I'm personally so disgusted that I will never buy another Mercedes, although I love the cars, but if a company really does not care for the after sales experience, then why would I spend my money on them? I'm I alone in this?