I was convinced on buying a new E320 cdi estate but now.....

[NeilMKTFC]

Having read the many stories and mucho evidence of all I detest and hate with a venegence ie Dealers and Customer Service who sell and forget when you are spending huge (small ones would also count!) wedges with them then....

I am going to buy either a new Jag or Audi - I would normally buy a BMW but they seem to have done a job lot deal with the original designer from Citroen after he'd sharpened his crayon on the Porsche 4x4 first.

Many thanks for the peeps who kindly responded to my enquiry & especially to the guy who offered to show me around his 320 cdi.

I cannot even consider spending £45K on a car when there are so many MB customers so unhappy with reliability and cretinous after sales customer service. I am absolutely amazed especially after pretty good initial delaings with MB in Kettering - but then again the guy Lee had just joined MB a few days before from Land Rover and perhaps hadn't had the MB Customer 'Service' induction training.

Cheerio MB xxxx

 

[maddog]

I found Audi customer service worse than MB. Three times i have gone in my local dealership to buy a car and three times they have managed to p*ss me off enough so i walked out. I was all set to buy a 2.7 A6 before buying the E320

They are linked with the VW dealership in my area and they are worse again, they didnt even have a windscreen wiper in stock when one fell off my wifes new beetle!!!

Dont have any experience of Jaguar but it seems a lot of money for a Ford and the residual values are pretty awful and i think the local dealership are of the Lancaster group who i will never deal with again after buying a Land Rover from them

Agree with what you said about BMW!!! What are they thinking!!!

I really cant think of a really good dealership of any make TBH i fear they are all becoming the same as they is no money in customer service

 

[NeilMKTFC]

There's only one thing for it............

I'm going to work on my Yamaha 1000 instead - brilliant reliable bike & great customer service from local dealer Riverside in Northampton.

Seems that they are able to afford decent customer service when selling products which are a fraction of the price of a lux car.

The question is that Car dealer surely cannot afford to have crap Customer Service as peep's simply won't buy their cars.

I'm seriously disallusioned with buying a new car - Mondeo ST220 Estate seems the likely choice now.

Thanks for your comments!

 

[maddog]

I've had many problems with bike dealers as well. How many satisfied customers did Carnells/Motorcycle city/Riossi leave???

Suzuki dealerships never did sort out the dire problems with Hayabusa's and TL1000's, Honda seem to ignore the electrical faults on some bikes, the list goes on!!

The mondeo is a nice car though

 

[JimmyTD]

Don't talk to me about MB of Kettering, I live a mile away but will not deal with them anymore. Evans of Leicester are better and worth the journey. Neither are as good as the local Renault, Nissan, Honda, Vauxhall dealers, but they offer better service than the Ford garage.

 

[Geoff_Slade]

I've got limited experience of MB dealers but if you're looking for good customer service you'll have to buy Japanese. My local (Nottingham)Toyota dealer (Inchcape) is excellent and they also sell Lexus and Jaguar. It's one of the reasons that Toyota and Lexus come top of the JD Power survey, they've got dealers who are interested in their customers (and it helps that their cars are ultra reliable). But I still love my Merc the experience of driving it is like nothing else so if I have to use the main dealer I'll just have to hope that my local one is better than the ones quoted all too frequently on these pages.

 

[DaveS]

Geoff has hit the nail on the head!

When I visited my Tamworth dealership You are really made to feel like a punter - i.e. let's milk him for as much cash as possible! On the occassions when I've gone in and the Upfront guys are otherwise occupied you are left hanging about even there are people in the glass boxes.
The trouble is that us boys like our toys and we are all image conscious. On top of that I think that my MB is the best car I've owned.
So these guys at MB simply don't have to bother. They earn a good pay, any more and Mr Brown would make it not worth their while.
I went to pick up my new car from Stuttgart (recommended) but when I got back I had to give up my car for a whole day whilst they did what? 2 weeks later I noticed that they had put the wrong reg number on!!!
I'm seriously thinking of going to an Independant. I did this with my Porsche and was treated so differently, as was the car.

 

[OlafMaxwell]

I think Geoff has summed it up very well.

In fact now I think the answer is buy a Lexus....dont even buy a new one because a 5 year old will be more reliable than a new Merc...and with some left over buy a classic Merc that can be lovingly maintained by an independent dealer who will treat you with respect. He will charge you for his expertise but you will get it. And instead of feeling stressed out every time you get in your car.....when you take your classic out you will feel destressed instead.

While I agree with the Jaguar comment about upmarket Ford...like door handles inside the XK8 that are straight from Mondeo it does have some advantages when motors get older. And the new V6 diesel engine is not Ford but Peugeot. I think this is an underestimated combination.

I have left my problems with Merc, whether the cars are replaced with Merc or Lexus depends on whether they sort out the problems I had. The warranty manager in Ireland is 'unable' to telephone a dealer to sort them out. Maybe Viagra is needed. Contrast that with the extreme courtesy and efficency at Coventry when the car died on the M6 last August. Car repaired, MB UK met part of the cost as the car was out of warranty, everything sorted and a nice note left for me when I collected the car after hours.

I must say my problems have sold quite a few Lexus motors. Why are 60% of Mercedes sales diesel? Because the petrol drivers are getting out to get simple courtesy. I for one have never judged a car badly for an occasional fault, its the follow up thats the problem.

 

[OlafMaxwell]

Maddogs comment about no money in customer service is interesting.

I have a Peugeot 405GTX of 1995 vintage, from new. The Peugeot garage was previously a Fiat/Alfa outlet and they changed some time back. I have been dealing with them for almost 30 years. In 2000 we aquired a W210 estate. The only reason I ended up with the Merc was because I could not get an automatic diesel estate or MPV from Peugeot. The Peugeot dealers quote one time to me was that "we look after our customers because they keep coming back for service. We keep their cars going well because then they are happy to keep their car which needs the garage more as it gets older". He was adamant that they make money from both service and parts..they also encourage a good parts trade for the diy service market. This also means he is good with slightly older cars. You don't get the service department look down on you as you bring in a 3 or 6 year old car for service. He also said that this service created a demand for his used car lot because they were known to be good cars. He does do something right because you walk into the showroom and you can walk straight into either the owners or the service managers office. A sure sign of a man not having to hide from angry customers.

Why cannot MB subscribe to this philosophy?

 

[mjtray]

I know that this may be a rarity but there are some good MB dealers out there.......Tony Purslow's being one of them. They have dealerships in Basingstoke, Guildford and somewhere else. They have won dealership of the year for a couple of years running.

They actively encourage owners of older Mercs to bring them in for servicing (40% off labour if car is more than 8 years old). The people are nice to deal with and happy to talk to you. You can get a mechanic to come out in the car with you if you want to demonstrate a problem etc etc.

When I ran my E220 cdi, they would come all the way over from Basingstoke to Reading and pick my car up and deliver it back later that day.

We have bought a couple of cars from them and I like to drive a hard bargin........no other dealership was able to touch them in terms of price/package, and to cap it all they gave my wife a nice bottle of Champers and flowers when we went to pick up her 2nd hand A Class and we were treated exactly the same as the guy who was picking up his SL55 AMG which would have cost 6 times as much as our A class.

By way of contrast my local dealer in Reading who are only a mile away from me are Sh*te....previously Rivervale and now part of Greenoakes.

Sadly it appears that there are too many average/crap dealers out there and if I was MB I would be taking these issues seriously as bad customer service is inexcusable in any walk of life.

 

[maddog]

I was a rivervale customer. I bought the car from them but it seems the workshop is awful at Rivervale (now greenoaks) they mucked me about regarding getting my car in for a service.

I've no plans to return and will probably take your suggestion of using the Basingstoke dealer as i currently use my local one at Newbury but their sales side is poor.

 

[kkmfo]

bad PR

I have recently posted my thoughts on MB dealers' dire customer service, and am not seeking to change opinion by posting this contribution.
However, I believe that it is an accepted fact that people are much more likely to actively complain about poor service, than they are to actively praise good service.
Does this go some way to explaining the fact that this forum seems to paint such a negative picture of the current MB range? Or are they really that bad?? If they are, why isn't MBUK doing something about it?

I have a 7 year old merc, and love it, but I don't think I would choose a new car from the current range because of the feedback given on the forum.
Everyone seems so miserable!!

And this is not surprising when one is asked to fork out anything from £25K to £100K plus for a new merc, and then are treated with disdain by the dealer if things go wrong.

It is astonishing that a multinational business that devotes so much resource to developing its product cannot invest a little more in making sure that the customers are happy. This is a fault directly attributable to senior management.