Well my dad is extrememly pissed off with the Mercedes Dealer in Beverly Hills. Thay have had his car for 3 weeks doing the 60k service, something which I would think would not take very long at all.

Not only that, but they gave him a real crappy ford taurus for a loaner, after he took his car back to them because they hadn't done the service right.

Looks like I'll be taking this up with MBUSA on my dad's behalf.

I told him I wanted copies of the invoices, the tech and service managers names.

All I plan on doing is filing a complaint with MBUSA about the extremely slow servicing of the car, and some of the other things that has been done.

The tech who is working on the car seems nice, but how can it take 3 weeks to do a bloody service? What could they be doing where it would take that long?

Not to mention the large bill he has gotten, perhaps MBUSA will eat some of the cost.

What do you all think I should do, or how do you think I should handle it.

Should I just file the complaint, or should I work on trying to get something out of it. I really don't care about getting anything out of it, but better service for his car, without him having to be without his car for 3 weeks and having them not fix things they are supposed to.

I hope I don't run into too much trouble getting a hold of the right person. Who should I try to get a hold of at MB USA? The so cal rep or west coast rep? A Supervisor? The complaints dept?

Thanks for your advice, I want to make sure my dad is not getting screwed because of shoddy service to his car.

Alon

Tell us what exactly the problem(s) were...

I had a similar problem with a Toms River Dealership, (since then, Mercedes has pulled their dealership), because of wind noise in the drivers door. Because of their inability to resolve the problem, I contacted MBUSA by phone. After giving all the information, the district rep. called my home the NEXT day and made arrangements to meet at the dealership. My problem was solved that NEXT day!!!! However, I am interested as to the excuses given for the service taken so long?

I took my car in for it's 60k service this morning, and got it back this evening. However, I have found multiple things that they did not do corretly or at all... I am contacting MBUSA on Monday. BTW: my dealership is Elite Mercedes in Springfield, Missouri

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.

they were out of loaner benzes.

Benzmac, I'll get a hold of the invoice. Not all of it was 60k service stuff, but the 60k service is what they didn't do correctly.

I'll try to get a hold of the invoices.

On another note, a client of mine who has a 4 month old 2001 C320, had the cars computer completely fail on her. she took the car in on monday, they called today to say it was ready, and when she asked them if they had fixed the computer they said nothing was wrong, and while she was on the phone, the service advisor gets word from the tech that the computer is going haywire.

The Advisor tells her that this was the first time the problem showed up. Now I would think that if you brought the car in for a problem like that, that they would extensively test it and or replace it to see if the problem was still there. So instead she is stuck without her car until sometime next week. And this is the Same dealership my dad's car is at.

She got a Daewoo as a loaner. and was not too happy about that either.

I think its time I get my dad to take the car to an independant tech from now on. It seems like he isn't having much luck with that dealership, and it seems like other people arent either.

Aparently her cars computer would sit there and shut off gauges and flash all sorts of weird stuff on the screen, and dash lights would go on and off, not to mention the car would stall on her when it would start acting up.

I'll keep you guys posted.

benzmac, I'll try to get a hold of the invoices and I'll send the info to you. I'd love to get your opinion on it.

Oh, and my dad still doesn't have his car back. it'll be going on the 4th week next week.

Alon

I agree with the assessment that some delearship-service departments are now managed very well. I have had a 9 week-long 'nightmare' with the local dealer... It ended OK but the first four weeks set the stage for conflict. IT started with the service advisor's attitude. I would call him up to get status and he would say he did not know and would send me back to the tech.When I wanted to talk cost the tech would send me back to the service advisor who would tell me that the tech was keeping up with the costs BUT he would call me back which he NEVER did... A LOT of integrity issues which I attribute more to the individuals that the dealership(s) itself. IT wasn't until I involved the service director and the shop foreman that my issues were given proper attention.

My guess is that new car warranty's take precedent over these older/out-of-warranty vehicles. There must be some techs who can give us some insights on how the system works and how to work best with the system!!

I've been through dealer problems in the past. I believe that there is an issue of typical human nature. Typically, people will be nice and put up with BS. Many people in all businesses get accustomed to this. This allows people to get by with shoddy attitudes in many cases. If you elevate this to the area MB representative and let them know in no uncertain but polite terms that you are not happy, you will get satisfaction at some point. If the area rep doesn't get the job done, email the CEO of Mercedes Benz and cc everyone you know of within the dealer and Mercedes Benz.

Good luck,