So fed up with Mercedes after-sales service, and particularly Mercedes Romford.
I have had my E220 CDI since 2002 the car ran perfectly for couple of years until it needed it's first service, this is when the trouble started.....
I took it to my local dealer for service (the sales side was crap so dont buy the car there) they did the service all fine for few days, then little problems started to surface, took it back and forth for few weeks and things settled down for a while, as it was under warranty I didnt bother much.
Anyway all fine for quite a while...
Then there were a bunch of recalls to be done, so took it in for those to be done, after which more problems, this time the SATNAV and radio would switch off, sometimes the AIRCON would get stuck etc.
Back to the service centre again for another round of back and forth for weeks, until I got fed up and wrote to customer services, which prompted them to change the satnav system and problems went away.
Year or so go by and my car decided that it needs B service, again I took it in to Romford service and got a large bill of about £1200, anyway the car was running smoother so I thought it's probably worth it.
But few days later my car won't open, I changed the battery in the key but nothing happening, so opened the door with the manual key which set the alarm off, but it switched off as I put the key in the ignition.
I though ok maybe a little glitch, but this started to happen every couple of days, I called the garage and they said to bring it in for check up, they wanted to charge me £99+vat to check it out, I though it probably needed resetting, but got a call from Graham Taylor to say they think they need to change the rear SAM and then will test again and see if there are other problems, the cost of that would be around £500, this did not guarantee that they had found the problem......
I was not happy about this and said to return the car and I'll think about what I am going to do with this, as I think they had introduced the problem somehow.
From my experince they have nearly always created a problem when they fix something, this can be either a difficult product to maintain or they are incompetent or that they see it as a good way to make money.
I have since talked to couple of people who have used the same garage and they have had similir problems with service.
So my questions are;
Am I being paranoid or is there a pattern here, i.e I have problems with my car only after it has been for a service?
And what do I do, I don't really want to take the car back to Romford, are there trustworthy Mercedes service centres out there, or do they work on same policies?
Am I having problems because I have one of the 1st batch?
Should I just sell the car and buy a BMW 5 series, I was thinking about changing to a new E Class, but don't need the hassle?
I have had my E220 CDI since 2002 the car ran perfectly for couple of years until it needed it's first service, this is when the trouble started.....
I took it to my local dealer for service (the sales side was crap so dont buy the car there) they did the service all fine for few days, then little problems started to surface, took it back and forth for few weeks and things settled down for a while, as it was under warranty I didnt bother much.
Anyway all fine for quite a while...
Then there were a bunch of recalls to be done, so took it in for those to be done, after which more problems, this time the SATNAV and radio would switch off, sometimes the AIRCON would get stuck etc.
Back to the service centre again for another round of back and forth for weeks, until I got fed up and wrote to customer services, which prompted them to change the satnav system and problems went away.
Year or so go by and my car decided that it needs B service, again I took it in to Romford service and got a large bill of about £1200, anyway the car was running smoother so I thought it's probably worth it.
But few days later my car won't open, I changed the battery in the key but nothing happening, so opened the door with the manual key which set the alarm off, but it switched off as I put the key in the ignition.
I though ok maybe a little glitch, but this started to happen every couple of days, I called the garage and they said to bring it in for check up, they wanted to charge me £99+vat to check it out, I though it probably needed resetting, but got a call from Graham Taylor to say they think they need to change the rear SAM and then will test again and see if there are other problems, the cost of that would be around £500, this did not guarantee that they had found the problem......
I was not happy about this and said to return the car and I'll think about what I am going to do with this, as I think they had introduced the problem somehow.
From my experince they have nearly always created a problem when they fix something, this can be either a difficult product to maintain or they are incompetent or that they see it as a good way to make money.
I have since talked to couple of people who have used the same garage and they have had similir problems with service.
So my questions are;
Am I being paranoid or is there a pattern here, i.e I have problems with my car only after it has been for a service?
And what do I do, I don't really want to take the car back to Romford, are there trustworthy Mercedes service centres out there, or do they work on same policies?
Am I having problems because I have one of the 1st batch?
Should I just sell the car and buy a BMW 5 series, I was thinking about changing to a new E Class, but don't need the hassle?
