Rant alert - Utter intelligence insulting rubbish from Mercedes Benz?

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if it was a press car and any prep it may have had..

Might that, the possibility of 'prep' (whether you asked directly or not) have contributed to the stonewalling?
 
Merc are a pain in the ****, pretty much everyone else has shared UK recall information except them.
 
It was put slightly more succinctly to me by someone in a Surrey dealership that they weren't in the business of providing information to help people sell cars outside of the network (and it wasn't Guildford).

That mentally is extremely short sighted, I have been a MB owner for 16 years with 3 different cars and always used them for servicing etc. For the sake of a tiny bit of non DPA sensitive info they could have lost me as a MB owner all together! I hear Audi have a dedicated service to provide exactly what I was asking for and MB play it in exactly the opposite direction! Poor attitude and poor business sense in my opinion. Keep your customers happy and they will keep returning..............
 
That mentally is extremely short sighted, I have been a MB owner for 16 years with 3 different cars and always used them for servicing etc. For the sake of a tiny bit of non DPA sensitive info they could have lost me as a MB owner all together! I hear Audi have a dedicated service to provide exactly what I was asking for and MB play it in exactly the opposite direction! Poor attitude and poor business sense in my opinion. Keep your customers happy and they will keep returning..............

The unfortunate truth is that these days, they know new customers will come through the door every day. Loyalty goes out the window as a lot of the sales men and women will only care about their commission. :mad:
 
Just had a further response to my enquiry from Mercedes Customer Service.

However, they have inadvertently given me its previous (maybe first) Reg. No. M5 MAE!

"Thank you for contacting Mercedes-Benz Customer Service.

We are sorry that you find our response unhelpful, though due to Data Protection laws and internal process' Mercedes-Benz adhere to we are neither able to confirm nor deny any of these details to you.

We would never divulge any details of a previous owner to another entity or person(s).
You may be able to obtain the relevant information you are seeking via the National Vehicle Registry authorities.

Should you have any further requirements please do not hesitate to contact me or any of my colleagues.

So we can be as responsive as possible, be so kind as to approve your contact details at https://www.mbcac.net/go/Customer/CustomerServices/V1/CustomerServicesOptIN.aspx?id=And please let us know how we’re doing so we can continue to improve how we serve you: www.dccac.net/qm/ukencsw (reference number: ........................................)


Yours sincerely

Mark Devine
Customer Service UK"
 
Yet another example of how lacking in customer service these call centre jockeys really are.Total lack of understanding of your enquiry. How can they better "serve" you? Try some customer service! Also lacks perception when making a complaint that you get the "thank you for..." routine.
 
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The unfortunate truth is that these days, they know new customers will come through the door every day. Loyalty goes out the window as a lot of the sales men and women will only care about their commission. :mad:

I have sold cars for a number of brands and I understand what you are saying, but to be fair that has nothing to do with the inquiry I made. The aftersales team or the central MB hub are not on commision, they are there to serve new and and existing customers.
 
If it was a press car it probably has loads of pictures in the motoring press from its day of registration. I know it heaps work on you but may be worth a shot. An Autocar from that era may help.

Also try googling the original reg, I did this after being told a Skoda Superb 4x4 V6 Estate I bought used was originally a press car, sure enough I found it on a segment of 5th gear footage!
 
It's a workaround

You were fobbed off my a clerk with too many other things to do. (Boyfriend, Facebook, weekly status report, Instagram, customer complaints, job applications, hangover, daily stats report, Tesco order, coffee for her boss etcetera etcetera).

With only 170 E36's registered in the UK (www.howmanyleft.co.uk), and just over a third left, it'll be easy to do some detective work:

Google launch and press reviews.

Google images.

Hunt down sales descriptions.

Chase the registration number.

Follow up on any special features like the colour.

Try ringing dealers who have serviced it, and see if you get lucky. TBH, I'd try them twice - say a month later, you might get lucky with a second person.


If nothing else, it'll tell you more about the car in general.
 
The Data Protection Act is a double edged sword. It is designed to protect us yet it is often used against us.

I remember a case where someone had their mail redirected by scammers, and when he asked the Post Office where his mail was being redirected to, was told that they couldn't divulge this information because of breaching the rights of the criminals. Yeah right.

At work, we used to have a list of names and how many holidays they had left before the end of the holiday year, so we could use them before they ran out, but not any more. According to the compliance manager, this breaches DPA rules on personal data. Since when has a simple number been personal data? If someone has three days left, is this really personal to them, or are there millions of workers in the country with three days left of their holiday entitlement? More waffle.

I find it ironic that even though I have elected not to be on the public register, these companies can still get my details from other sources. I was recently contacted by scammers posing as claims managers for the third party I was in a collision with two years back. Turns out that her insurer has sold on our information to third parties, some of who are not bona fide.

So, in conclusion, the DPA which is supposed to protect our information is actually used by organisations often as a shield to deny us access to information which isn't sensitive, such as whether a specific vehicle was ever a Press Release car.

The DPA, by its own merits, is a solid system of data protection that is designed to ensure that the general population is protected from data abuse. The main reason it fails is that it is not actively policed. If a breach happens, it is our responsibility to bring the culprits to task, using the legal system. There is no real authority that will investigate for us.
 
The Data Protection Act like most modern legislation is open to interpretation particularly in respect of what constitutes "personal an sensitive data" which is what the act is supposed to be protecting. When I had to write an internal procedure to comply with the data protection act, I of course looked at documents produced by similar organisations. The interpretations were all so different from each other it was a waste of time. I'm not sure it's always deliberate awkwardness that makes people write all encompassing interpretations, it's just the easy way out that requires no professional judgement.

After reading the legislation the bottom line for me was if release of the data wouldn't cause significant embarrassment then it doesn't fall under the Data Protection Act.
 

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