I've been fighting with a minor problem with my 500E since I bought it. It has a subtle engine miss at idle and a prominent miss at high RPM at high speed. I've done everything to the car I can think of, including rebuilding the engine wire harness. It was time to let a pro take a crack at it.

I gave up, took it to my friend who is a benz mechanic.. he can't find anything. No fault codes stored in any modules. I take it to another benz mechanic I know. I tell him to take a look and give me a call. I drop it off 10/3.. he says it might be a week before he looks at it. I say OK. Call him two weeks later, he still hasn't looked at it. Call again in another week.. still hasn't looked at it. I drop by two days ago out of the blue, I just want to pick it up at this point. It's been 6 weeks now.

He tells me he just looked at it, it needs a wire harness and his computer can't communicate with the cars CAN network (which is BS). He wants $380 for 4.2 hours labor. I said "HOW MUCH??". After arguing and arguing for 20 minutes, he goes down to $250.. then $200. At this point I am 55 miles from home, and he isn't giving the car up unless I pay. I have no other way to get home, so I paid.

There is no way it took him 4, or even 2 hours to diagnose this problem. I put a order to reverse charges on my credit card today.. he does not deserve $200 for this crap. I'll mail him a check for one hour of labor for his time. 6 weeks.. and then a $380 bill for a BS diagnosis? Come on!

I took it to my friend today.. his scanner communicates fine with my car, and the harness is fine. No errors. I feel like I got raped.

What do you all think?