Marque
Active Member
I took my car in to Hughes of Beaconsfield for its first MOT last week. This was obviously just before its 3-year warranty ran out. Earlier that day, I had another occurrence of a problem that I had noticed previously but had not reported.
I reported it to the Service Manager when I booked the car in, and he wrote it on the job card. Unfortunately, they didn't really have the time to check it out properly, so they sent me away saying that they would need to have the car booked in for a whole day 'if' it happened again. (Clearly, it was bound to happen again because they hadn't actually done anything.)
At this point, I should explain the problem. My car's windscreen wipers have an automatic setting instead of an intermittent wipe setting. I imagine this is a feature on most Mercedes-Benzes, so you'll know what I'm talking about. The automatic setting works fairly well, most of the time. However, on my car, the wipers sometimes just stop and won't restart until I turn them off and on again.
This happened to me while driving in heavy traffic on the M1 in constant light rain/spray, and it was a while before I realised they had stopped. So I tried pressing the washer button to clear the screen, but this didn't work either! By the time I managed to get them working, I had probably driven 400m without being able to see anything. Very dangerous.
Going back to the story, the problem did happen the very next time I was driving when it was raining, just a few days later, so I booked it in as a warranty claim. To cut to the chase, MB refused to fix this under warranty, but offered to pay 60% as 'goodwill'. I complained to the Service Manager and he talked them into increasing their offer to 80%. (The full price would have been over £500.)
Whilst I appreciate the efforts made by the dealer, and the fact that MB have come a long way to meet the cost, it still doesn't seem right that a warranty claim can be denied because the dealer was too busy to check the problem out. The claim date is surely the date that I first took the car to the dealer with the problem.
Please let me know:
1. Whether you think this should really be fixed under warranty.
2. Whether you think I am just being an ungracious prat.
3. To whom I should write if I want to complain to MBUK.
I reported it to the Service Manager when I booked the car in, and he wrote it on the job card. Unfortunately, they didn't really have the time to check it out properly, so they sent me away saying that they would need to have the car booked in for a whole day 'if' it happened again. (Clearly, it was bound to happen again because they hadn't actually done anything.)
At this point, I should explain the problem. My car's windscreen wipers have an automatic setting instead of an intermittent wipe setting. I imagine this is a feature on most Mercedes-Benzes, so you'll know what I'm talking about. The automatic setting works fairly well, most of the time. However, on my car, the wipers sometimes just stop and won't restart until I turn them off and on again.
This happened to me while driving in heavy traffic on the M1 in constant light rain/spray, and it was a while before I realised they had stopped. So I tried pressing the washer button to clear the screen, but this didn't work either! By the time I managed to get them working, I had probably driven 400m without being able to see anything. Very dangerous.
Going back to the story, the problem did happen the very next time I was driving when it was raining, just a few days later, so I booked it in as a warranty claim. To cut to the chase, MB refused to fix this under warranty, but offered to pay 60% as 'goodwill'. I complained to the Service Manager and he talked them into increasing their offer to 80%. (The full price would have been over £500.)
Whilst I appreciate the efforts made by the dealer, and the fact that MB have come a long way to meet the cost, it still doesn't seem right that a warranty claim can be denied because the dealer was too busy to check the problem out. The claim date is surely the date that I first took the car to the dealer with the problem.
Please let me know:
1. Whether you think this should really be fixed under warranty.
2. Whether you think I am just being an ungracious prat.
3. To whom I should write if I want to complain to MBUK.
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