Fabulous service from my MB main dealer!

[nickwilcock]

Well, it's going in to MB of Kidlington, Oxford for a B-service in a couple of weeks time. The dealership gave me a quote of £299 over the phone yesterday, including loan car insurance for the day.

'Dave' will be my point of contact - watch this space for news of the actual bill! Any non-service items are covered by a Tier 1 extended warranty, so there shouldn't be any suprises.....

 

[219]

Holy thread resurrection !

It is nice and refreshing , though , to hear good reports as good service is so often taken for granted and only complaints are made conspicuous .

 

[discodom]

We have used MB of Oxford for around 7 years; and they have always been extremely efficient, curteous and a provider of great service; have never been able to fault them. The sales staff are friendly, never pushy. We have bought five cars off them over this period. Plus they were kind enough to send me an invitation to a Mercedes Track Day at Silverstone which I attended last week! As you can imagine - that was an amazing day!

 

[nickwilcock]

Well.....

I took the car in today and they gave me an E320 CGI as a loan car, which was nice.

Then came the phone call "It's overdue an air and fuel filter change and long overdue a spark plug change. And the ball joints seem a little worn...."

The air filters weren't in stock, so they suggested delaying them until the next service. The ball joints will be re-assessed when it has to go in for an MoT in a couple of months time.

But the '£299 all-in' quote ended up being £727.70. At least they used the correct grade of oil this time though - £111.92 worth of Mobile 1.

So that's a potential sale they've lost - having paid that much for a service I won't be in any hurry to sell the car for at least another 2-4 years....

Nice looking SLS in the showroom though - far better looking than it does in photos. And it lacks the horrid angular look which most current M-Bs have.

 

[BTB 500]

Well I posted in another thread about the good service I got last week, but it's worth mentioning again here.

The Vito needed a new windscreen, and ended up with a non-MB one After which the auto lights didn't work (they came on all the time with the knob on 'auto'). Windscreen company said "book it in to a dealer - needs calibrating on STAR. We will reimburse you".

Booked it in to Rossetts Commercial in Aldershot, and while it was there I gave them a list of other minor things that I wanted sorted under warranty (slight rattle from driver's window, whine from Audio 20 head unit, false readings from front NS Parktronic when wet).

Got the phone call at about 4PM saying they had sorted everything apart from the windscreen - they were going to have to fit a new sensor module and they couldn't get one till next day. I said that really we needed the vehicle back, so they said "no problem we will send a tech. over to your house to fit it later in the week". We're not exactly local either.

Tech. duly came at a convenient time, and all sorted. Best of all - no charge, for any of it. So no faffing about reclaiming the money for the lights from the windscreen company, even though I'd explained about the replacement screen.

Rossetts have been M-B Commercial Dealer of the Year 3(?) times running - I can see why. We didn't get the van from them - in fact they've had nothing from us so far. It's been there twice for recalls, and once for a service (under service contract).

 

[markjay]

Going back to the original post...

Regardless of whose fault/incompetence it was, they clearly lost money if they put in 16 hours labour. But dealers don't loose money overall, or they will be out of business... so now you know why an oil-service (£35 at KwikFit) cost £200+ at MB... to subsidise those other jobs where they loose money. It is a bit like insurance premiums - every time some else makes a claim your premium goes up

 

[markjay]

The Vauxhall dealership I used while I had Vauxhalls (happy days...) always quoted over the phone for servicing more then they ultimately charged... I suspected at the time that this was an intended tactics meant to keep customers happy, and it worked - it is always nice to see a bill that is less than you expected.

 

[killwilly]

Lets not get confused over the difference between an "estimate" and a "quote". An estimate is exactly that. I would never pay any more than the figure in a quotation. OK the estimate may work out cheaper, if you are lucky, but not very often.