M-B Dealer service costs

[Skiday]

M-B Dealer service costs

My new (to me) C240 is due for it's first service under my ownership. It's an 'A' minor service which is (evidently) Oil & filter, and about an hour and a quarter of checks. For this my M-B dealer wants £250. My trusted local garage (large concern, not a bloke in a shed) wants £97-50.

Apart from loosing Mobo-life cover can anyone tell me why on earth I should pay this premium? I now have £150 to get AA or RAC membership and a fistful of change. When the 'B' service come up the difference will be even greater I assume.

I was skiing in Austria when the service came due. M-B Kufstein wanted 5-600 euro, I thought that really was taking the wee-wee.

Pic of my car in Austria

Skiday

M-B C240 Est (nice), Fiat Coupe 20v Turbo (fast), Vauxhall Calibra 16v (practical)

 

[television]

You only have to have the car serviced by MB at a later date to restore it.

I agree it is taking the pee the prices that are charged for what is done and who does the job

 

[Skiday]

That's interesting, cheers for that info.

 

[hawk20]

My £235 A service on an S320cdi only included 1 hour of labour at £100 inc vat. The rest was Mobil 1 oil (which retails at over £15/16 per litre and you need about 8 litres --so over £120 of the cost is the synthetic oil).

Nobody can service your car for under £100 and use all MB parts and top grade synthetic oil.

All MB dealers I know will let you supply your own Mobil1 oil and you can, of course, buy it much cheaper in bulk at Halfords and others. £10 per litre is not difficult to get.

The one hour of labour charged by an MB dealer wouldn't evn pay the cost of my joining the AA let alone wife as well. They quoted £150 for top cover and still wanted another £100 to equal the Mercedes Euro cover.

Servicing at an MB dealer to keep FMBSH will only cost you about 2p per mile. The small change of motoring. Other jobs/repairs etc can be done at an 'indie'.

 

[Skiday]

Good point! Whats done is now done. I'll have to check what oil was used.

 

[hawk20]

Good point! Whats done is now done. I'll have to check what oil was used.

BTW if your car has the ASSYST progamme which tells you when services are due, this is important: -
If you use ordinary oil the car needs to be told that (the dealer does it) and then you will only get 10k between services
But if you use the proper synthetic oils as recommended by MB they adjust settings so the car knows that. And then it will choose the interval till the next service, based on how you drive, the types of trip you do, whether you top up the oil between services and so on. I get about 15k miles between services in mixed motoring. Some get up to 18k miles. So it pays to use the proper synthetic oils and use a dealer who knows to adjust settings to show this.

 

[jberks]

A final point is that dealers commonly offer sunstantial discounts for cars over 3 years old. 25-40% is not unusual. If yours doesn't offer this, tell them you'll not use them - they normally come around. With improved reliability, block exemption and competition, the dealer service depts are having to get competitive these days.

Finally, there are 3 levels of garage - dealers, indies and plain old mechanics. Whilst many of the latter are good, they don't know all the quirks and foibles on mercs, don't have all the proper kit and commonly don't use proper MB parts - so personally I use a dealer or an indie.

 

[Kevin Gardiner]

I work for an independent mercedes specialist and we offer A services for £150 - £200 (including parts, labour and vat) and B services from £250 - £300. Services include Mobil 1 - 0W40 oil

 

[Dinnie]

Kevin - Which independent specialist do you work for and where are they based?

 

[Kevin Gardiner]

I work for Pro-tech and we're based in Kingsclere, just outside Basingstoke

See website: www.pro-tech.org.uk