I don't think they are really spending all that time working on the car. I have had things like that happen to me too. I needed to have my car pass emmissions and they kept it for almost a week. They gave me a dodge intrepid or some piece of garbage to drive while they had my car. Anyways, I know they didn't spend the whole time working on it because my whole bill was $300. That's about 3.5 hours of labour billed over five days, or else they worked on my car for an hour and let it sit for 2 days to see if it would fix itself and then worked somemore and so on. I wasn't impressed. I won't blame the mechanics, I just think alot of these service departments at dealerships are really poorly managed. Everytime I would go in the main service manager, who never spoke to anyone who hadn't just bought a new S500 in the last month was sitting around laughing , and his two service co-ordinators were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. I don't think there is any schedualing or estimation of time to finsh a job, and there certainly is no, start work on a clients car and work on it until it is fixed attitude. I Halifax the service was great, but I have to admit they weren't busy by any standards. I think a lot of these dealerships need to couble thier service departments. I would complain and complain, especially about having to drive a ford taurus in Beverly Hills. I can understand giving a piece of garbage car to a punk like me with a 15 year old car, but your dad's car sounds pretty new. I think he deserved a comparable ride. For what dealers pay for trade ins they could buy a half dozen 300Es on trade in for a few grand each and use them as loaners. But that would be too perfect.

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Jason Priest
1999 E430
1995 E420 - retired
1986 420SEL - retired