When a Mercedes main dealer presented a 4376 estimate for repairs needed to a customer whose car had broken down and been towed in, his response took them by surprise.
The customer was Mark Cornwall, a director of Carparts Direct www.carparts-direct.co.uk a discount parts supplier that has offered some excellent deals to Motorbase.com readers in the past. Mark's response was to send an employee to the garage to sit with the car and make sure it wasn't touched, then call in an independent mechanic and a technical expert from Mercedes head office to inspect the car.
The Independent Engineer, Steve Ward of SW Auto Services from Mansfield, Nottinghamshire said "I repaired the vehicle in less an hour and charged Mr Cornwall 36.25. My invoice was 30 for my labour and 6.25 for the cleaning materials."
The fault - an all-too-common one on modern cars with increasingly complex electronics - was simply poor electrical connections on the ECU.
The Mercedes response was somewhat fudged, claiming that, as the dealership didn't have the facility to check the ECU, its only option would be to replace it - though the technical engineer did admit that the dealership could have offered the customer the option of cleaning the contacts.
Mr Cornwall said, "I feel the Mercedes dealer tried to cheat me out of cash and looked to manipulate the situation to sell me a new vehicle through devious and unscrupulous practices - my vehicle is running fine now as a result of one aerosol of electrical contact cleaner."
Was he cheated? At first glance, it certainly seems that way - but on another level this incident highlights the difficulties faced by garages in meeting customer expectations. A Mercedes main dealer's top priority in dealing with a breakdown is to maintain the company's reputation (sadly somewhat tarnished in recent years due to reduced build quality) for exceptional quality. If you buy a Mercedes, you expect servicing costs to be higher than for a Jaguar or even a BMW. It is that way because Mercedes replace parts before they go wrong, parts that other marques would never include in the service schedule. You pay more for servicing, but your car does not let you down (usually). When it does, the dealer will replace everything (almost regardless of cost) to make sure it doesn't break down again.
So, the moral of the story is, if you don't have bottomless pockets, either don't buy a Mercedes or, if you do, get it maintained by a local garage that takes a more pragmatic approach. And don't complain if they charge you 36.25 and the car breaks down again soon afterwards - remember, they could have charged you over four thousand pounds, which is surely worth a few breakdowns, to most customers!
Malcolm McKay, Motorbase News Editor
