W211 E320 CDI Service C Costs

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Hawk, it seems you've had a much better experience with genuine MB than I have. I've been speaking to a number of dealers around here, 3 of which belong to the same (Sytner) group, and all differ on price of service, price of extras, and worst of all, seem to disagree on what is required.

Dont get me wrong some indie's I wouldnt touch with a barge pole - for example, one I spoke to earlier that told me they do "major and minor" service, which he described, and it was clearly nothing specific to an MB, just general servicing - this is definitely not what I want!

I think what I need to do is go to MB local to me (one of the 3 Sytner's) and just deal with them face to face. If they can come up with a reasonable explanation of why they said what they did (ie, telling me I needed a B service plus all the extras, where I saw for myself from the MB link Rory posted, that it's an A service, with a list of extras some of which were done at the last service) - then I might reconsider.

When I had the Brabus EcoXtra chip fitted back in Nov, the car broke down 2 weeks later with a disconnected fuel line. Related to the chip fitting? Who knows. All I know is (and I know this may appear trivial) I'd spent 22k+ on the car, another 1500 on the chip, and after the repair was done, I never got the towing eye back for the car. MB insisted the recovery lot had it, but they pointed out they drop the car off the lorry, and dont do anything else - why would they remove it from the car? Either way, IMO having spent almost £25k on the car, I dont think it was expecting too much for MB to replace the towing eye.

As things stand however, my faith in MB dealer servicing is minimal. As a colleague told me earlier, apparently in the states they are called stealers, not dealers ;-)
 

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Mr Hawk, with all due respect you speak from a priveleged postion, I take it every merc you bought was new, so to stick with mercs dealers and there high costs is good for you and them.

The vast majority of people that come on these forums are not so lucky, they aspire to owning a nice car, can never afford to buy it new and bulk at the cost of servicing parts etc.

I personaly fall between the two, I took my s class in a while ago to get a quote for a job, yes sir £115 per hour, "no thanks said I" and went indi.

Its all horses for courses, if I was more wealthy, I would buy new keep it till the warrenty expired, then buy new again, but as said for the lucky few only!

And the worst aspect of it all is that the actual guy doing the service will be the youngest lowest payed guy in the team, and does not have the experience of knowing what to look for on all of the models.

The indie that serviced my SL showed me all of the weak points and those that would need attention in the future
 

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Hawk, it seems you've had a much better experience with genuine MB than I have. I've been speaking to a number of dealers around here, 3 of which belong to the same (Sytner) group, and all differ on price of service, price of extras, and worst of all, seem to disagree on what is required.

Dont get me wrong some indie's I wouldnt touch with a barge pole - for example, one I spoke to earlier that told me they do "major and minor" service, which he described, and it was clearly nothing specific to an MB, just general servicing - this is definitely not what I want!

I think what I need to do is go to MB local to me (one of the 3 Sytner's) and just deal with them face to face. If they can come up with a reasonable explanation of why they said what they did (ie, telling me I needed a B service plus all the extras, where I saw for myself from the MB link Rory posted, that it's an A service, with a list of extras some of which were done at the last service) - then I might reconsider.

When I had the Brabus EcoXtra chip fitted back in Nov, the car broke down 2 weeks later with a disconnected fuel line. Related to the chip fitting? Who knows. All I know is (and I know this may appear trivial) I'd spent 22k+ on the car, another 1500 on the chip, and after the repair was done, I never got the towing eye back for the car. MB insisted the recovery lot had it, but they pointed out they drop the car off the lorry, and dont do anything else - why would they remove it from the car? Either way, IMO having spent almost £25k on the car, I dont think it was expecting too much for MB to replace the towing eye.

As things stand however, my faith in MB dealer servicing is minimal. As a colleague told me earlier, apparently in the states they are called stealers, not dealers ;-)

You and I can only speak as we find.

But you ignore my main point. The MB approved used warranty requires you to use MB servicing.

So may the finance deal if you have one.

And you must distinguish between the basic service costs (which are a very small part of the costs of running a car) when asking for quotes, and other jobs which may need doing but which are not part of the basic service.
 

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And the worst aspect of it all is that the actual guy doing the service will be the youngest lowest payed guy in the team, and does not have the experience of knowing what to look for on all of the models.

The indie that serviced my SL showed me all of the weak points and those that would need attention in the future

I quite agree Malcolm. I had a B service on the S Class today. Indy rang me up to discuss a couple of points and report progress. I had mentioned that the brake pads might need to be changed (advisory at the previous service). The comment today - "they are too good to change"! (44,000 miles). There is nothing to beat a competent honest person, in my view.
 

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I quite agree Malcolm. I had a B service on the S Class today. Indy rang me up to discuss a couple of points and report progress. I had mentioned that the brake pads might need to be changed (advisory at the previous service). The comment today - "they are too good to change"! (44,000 miles). There is nothing to beat a competent honest person, in my view.

I agree. Just so happens I get that at my local MB dealer. And all the updates, service campaigns and so on done free. Most people who use indies never get these done.

Read this thread to see how many updates there are on the S class alone: -

http://forum.mbworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=163014

Would you want to buy a car that hadn't had them done?
 

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I quite agree Malcolm. I had a B service on the S Class today. Indy rang me up to discuss a couple of points and report progress. I had mentioned that the brake pads might need to be changed (advisory at the previous service). The comment today - "they are too good to change"! (44,000 miles). There is nothing to beat a competent honest person, in my view.


Absolutely Alex, the other thing is that most indies still have contacts within the MB network and updates can and are still done with an indie
 
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Hawk,

Sorry, I did reply to your point about the warranty and finance - but somehow I'd gotten cross threaded, and posted elsewhere ;-)

Anyway, my view is I have about 4 months of warranty left, 1 of which Im out of the country for. And for the 2-3000 miles I'm likely to do over the other 3 months, in my case it's probably worth the gamble.

As for the MGFV on the finance - I agree, I suspect I may take a bit of a hit. However, at a guesstimate the loss would be outweighed by the saving over a number of services.

There *is* a risk I guess that I might be in breach of the T's and C's of the finance, which I will of course check before getting the indy service (otherwise it could be a very EXPENSIVE "saving"!!) - but I'd like to think that, with the various options on PCP finance (including keeping the car at the end of the agreement), and as long as I keep making the payments etc, it shouldnt be an issue - but I'll definitely check.

(Hopefully this reply will go to the right thread!)
 

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Absolutely Alex, the other thing is that most indies still have contacts within the MB network and updates can and are still done with an indie

That is extraordinarily misleading and rarely true.
 
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Hawk,

The other thing that occurs - where did you say your dealer was? Maybe it'd be worth the trip!
 

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Hawk,

The other thing that occurs - where did you say your dealer was? Maybe it'd be worth the trip!

Southampton. Only yards off junction 5 of the M27.
 

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That is extraordinarily misleading and rarely true.

Now I know what I said was true, why do you think that it is untrue
 
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Well, my brother lives down that way - probably ought to visit the old sod sometime ;-) I'll give them a ring later, see what they have to say....
 

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Now I know what I said was true, why do you think that it is untrue

1. Because the cars that come back to servicing at my local dealer have loads of updates not done.
2. Becuase I've asked loads of indies over the years if they have access to the service campaigns and they say: no. You have to get from MB.
3. Indies are not paid by MB to do updates/service campaigns free or supplied with the parts free. But MB dealers are.
4. What Car tested large samples of cars and found that a most extraordinary number hadn't even had the recalls done -let alone the updates and service campaigns- because so many people use indies to save money.

I accept that after 4 years the case for main dealer servicing is greatly diminshed (unless you are lucky with a good one as we are). Updates do go on up to about the 6th year according to MB staff but get pretty few and far between after the fourth year.
 
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Well there are good and bad with the indies, just as there are with the dealers.
Do not read too much into some reports like "what car" many will print things just to get a good circulation. If the article was not backed up with names and addresses, then just a circulation ploy.

If any recall was a safety issue then MB contact the cars owners.

Most recalls are openly published in the USA under the "lemon car act" these are all available free via the USA forums of which I am a member of the 3 biggest, though you must remember that not all recalls are to the customers advantage
 

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Well there are good and bad with the indies, just as there are with the dealers.
Do not read too much into some reports like "what car" many will print things just to get a good circulation. If the article was not backed up with names and addresses, then just a circulation ploy.

If any recall was a safety issue then MB contact the cars owners.

Most recalls are openly published in the USA under the "lemon car act" these are all available free via the USA forums of which I am a member of the 3 biggest, though you must remember that not all recalls are to the customers advantage

What Car were responsibly trying to get people to get recalls done.

Yes MB contact owners BUT many owners move, don't leave forwarding addresses, or sell the car to someone else who does not use MB dealers and contact is lost. And some just don't bother to respond.

And that still leaves updates and service campaigns, which only MB dealers are paid to do, and these far outnumber safety recalls. See the S class link I put up. Hardly any recalls on the S class. Loads of updates and service campaigns. Continual improvement. But only for those who go in to get these things done.
 

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What Car were responsibly trying to get people to get recalls done.

Were they, how do you know that, I was heavily involved with the trade press some years back and I know how they work, if no names were given then it was not worth much

Yes MB contact owners BUT many owners move, don't leave forwarding addresses, or sell the car to someone else who does not use MB dealers and contact is lost. And some just don't bother to respond.

Any car owner can be found via the V5 and that is used

And that still leaves updates and service campaigns, which only MB dealers are paid to do, and these far outnumber safety recalls. See the S class link I put up. Hardly any recalls on the S class. Loads of updates and service campaigns. Continual improvement. But only for those who go in to get these things done.

That info is around, any good indie can get the info and probably does not charge for it anyway

Well as from next year all of the info will be online to anyone indie or otherwise that. subscribes to STAR and the car can be plugged in on line.

How come we are flooded with dealer complaints, and we do not get any indie complaints other than the odd one
 

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And that still leaves updates and service campaigns, which only MB dealers are paid to do, and these far outnumber safety recalls. See the S class link I put up. Hardly any recalls on the S class. Loads of updates and service campaigns. Continual improvement. But only for those who go in to get these things done.

We've discussed the S Class list before - many, many of those issues listed are responses for when a customer raises a particular concern. It's more of "snag" list than anything else. The updates are not routinely done - for one thing, like Windows software updates that go wrong, it's better to leave things alone if they're working OK.
 
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Oh hang on Rory - as much as we might gripe about MB service.... Is it really fair to mention MB maintenance in the same breath as Microsoft maintenance?!? ;-)
 

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We've discussed the S Class list before - many, many of those issues listed are responses for when a customer raises a particular concern. It's more of "snag" list than anything else. The updates are not routinely done - for one thing, like Windows software updates that go wrong, it's better to leave things alone if they're working OK.

That is incorrect. Many of the updates are done by the dealer when the car next comes in for service. Read the list carefully and you can see that. It is true that some are only done if the fault is reported by the customer. For example, some 7 speed boxes gave jerky changes when slowing down, often only under 30-40 mph. But many did not have that fault. If the customer told the dealer, it was updated at the next service - or if it was picked up when being road-tested.
 

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