Originally Posted by Streamliner

No way!

With MB, if you have an issue that did not “throw a code,” at the dealership, a big, tall, blonde guy in a white shop coat comes out to talk to you. He says “Vee fine nossing vrong mit dis very fine Medcedes, YOU mus be doing somsing vrong!” If you question this, even a tad, the blonde guy nods to the two big guys who have appeared out of nowhere and are now standing behind you. They are wearing full length, black, leather trench coats. The blonde guy says “take him, take him” and you are disappeared into the MBUSA never-never land, never to be heard from again.

With Lexus, if you complain about a sound that is about as loud as a butterfly flapping it’s wings, the service advisor will bow to you and say “We are so very sorry to have disappointed you. Your salesman will be committing Hara Kiri shortly. We are sending your car by 747 airfreight, back to Japan, where it will be completely disassembled and each part will be blueprinted. In the meantime, here are the keys to a brand new LS for you to drive, until your car is ready. Is there anything else we can do for you?” He bows three more times and invites you to have a cappuccino, hand made by a Geisha Girl in the guest lounge and she asks if there is ANYTHING else she can do for you.

I realize that I have gone overboard here, but honestly, my service experiences with Lexus and MB have been somewhat proportional to my pageant noted above.

Originally Posted by flint350

When I bought my first Lexus in 2001 (the year of the big refresh), I got home (after the gourmet smorgasbord) and realized that the seat belt fabric was twisted. The buckles were very tight and near impossible to allow me to un-twist the material. Next time I was near the dealer, I stopped and explained the (minor) issue. They fell all over themselves with apologies and whisked the car away to the shop for immediate repair. I ate free Dove bars and gourmet snacks in the waiting area while this catastrophe was resolved. I thought that was the end of it, until a few weeks later I received a thick letter from corporate Lexus. Inside, I read the additional apologies and was directed to the cardboard insert contained within. That was a $50 gift card from American Express to further ease my pain of the awful seat belt fiasco. That was my first experience with Lexus Customer Service and it continued.

My wife actually volunteered to take the car in for service in the future because of the treatment she always received. She really enjoyed the amenities and the joy only a female gets out of picking out the color of the loaner vehicle she was going to drive. I don't know if it's still like that, but my Mercedes service experience, while decent, has never risen to that level.

Originally Posted by hyperion667

Please forgive/excuse my retardation....but how can that be the 2023 car of the year? It's only day 12 of 2023.

Originally Posted by W205C43PFL

Good question, I guess they meant the 2023 model year G90 is MT car of the year of 2022 since it came out in 2022?

Originally Posted by bishop64

Looking back, MotorTrend named Lucid Air as Car of the Year 2022, back in Nov 2021.
Well, it seems Lucid Air did not really 'make it' last year and is, kind of, still struggling with sales.
Anyway, I guess MotorTrend seems to like make 'prediction' and look into the future. Maybe this is why they call themselves the trend of motor?

Originally Posted by Streamliner

When Lexus of Westminster, here in Orange County built their new service facility, back around 2001 or so, they built a lounge that was the best I had ever seen. They had a uniformed young lady attending it and she would make the coffee drinks, toast your bagel, etc. Brand new RX350 loan cars were always in abundance and I was never asked to put gas in before I returned the loaner. I always got my cars serviced there and I always looked forward to it. Taking my MB’s in for service is pretty much like going to the dentist for me.

Originally Posted by SW20S

Yeah, I was a Lexus customer between 1998-2020, and I never experienced that level of service at all. The service was very good, but very similar to Mercedes. No gift cards or people falling all over themselves, I even had an LS that was in the shop for the first 2 weeks I had it for an infotainment issue, they delivered it back to me, damaged, with the issue unsolved after 2 weeks. I suggested a simple SD card replacement might solve it and it did, making all of that unnecessary. I received nothing for that experience, zero. I even asked, and they never even followed up. I paid $250 a week in lease payments to drive an ES loaner. Then there was the time they damaged the car when it was in for service, tried to fix it and damaged it further and we had to have a shouting match to get them to refund me the $200 service cost and just let me fix the car myself.

Nothing special at all, in my experience.

Originally Posted by flint350

Interesting, as I lived in MD (Baltimore/Annapolis area) during the period I mentioned (2001) when I received such service. You may be in a totally different area of course and used different dealers which could possibly explain the disparity in service. Now living in Pensacola, there is only 1 MB dealer (unless I want to drive an hour to Mobile) and the service dept is average at best. And of course, I left Lexus cars when I bought my 2015 S550 and current S560.

Originally Posted by SW20S

No guys lol, this is the 2023 model year, all the 2023s were out in the fall. Its the 2023 model year car of the year. Its not a prediction of sales success, its the car that they think is the most excellent, biggest improvement, etc. Sadly many great cars never sell very well and vmany mediocre cars sell a ton. Think Camry, the world's most mediocre car...and best selling car. I wouldn't drive a free Camry...

Originally Posted by SW20S

They used to have full service snack bars in Lexus dealers here too, fountain sodas, real coffee bars... they are gone and replaced with a countertop with stuff you can get yourself, a fridge with sodas, etc...same as Mercedes and all the other luxury dealers. My Mercedes dealer has tons of new GLA/GLB/GLE/C CLass/EClass loaners. I was there one time and they didn't have a loaner as I had requested, they pulled a new C Class off the lot, scraped the stickers off of it, put a loaner tag on it and gave it to me. Just added it to the fleet. Lexus when out of cars rents you a car from Enterprise.

Now with that said, there is a Mercedes dealer here that has NO loaners and directs people to rent cars from Enterprise. I don't use that dealer for that reason. Overall though, I have been treated like a "high roller" way more at Mercedes.

Originally Posted by SW20S

Which dealer did you use? Annapolis? Annapolis is a very good dealer, I'm in Montgomery County though, so too far for me to go for service. I bought my 2003 ES300 from Lexus of Annapolis. The Lexus service experience overall is just really different than it was back then.

Originally Posted by cfmistry

Pretty sure we use the same dealer in Germantown. The service is good but the prices are definitely high. I expect dealer prices to be 1.5x more than a good (reputable) independent, but they are more like 2.5x. I think their larger service ran me around $2k w/o sparkplugs.

Originally Posted by martinlarose

The only Benz dealer in Nova Scotia has mercedes vehicles for loaners. I have had more than a dozen various models and the dealer always provides me with a mercedes loaner.

Originally Posted by js_cls

The wife and I just signed for a Genesis GV70 last night.

Originally Posted by js_cls

The wife and I just signed for a Genesis GV70 last night. The experience was pretty decent. Nothing extraordinary, but not awful either. I guess we will see how servicing goes in the future, but for the first three years we have the “Genesis Concierge.”