Service history

[Parrot of Doom]

More out of interest than anything else, I recently tried to get the service history for my car from the dealer at which it was serviced (until I bought it).

Thats 16 stamps of history that they will have on file, and almost certainly on computer. I'm interested to know what's in there just so I can see if there are any regularly failing components, any bodywork repair, rust, etc.

On ringing them I was told that in the year I bought it they migrated their computer systems to another system, and that my car's records were in the older system and no longer easily accessible.

Now I'm of the opinion that this is a load of bs and basically they can't be bothered to give/sell me the information I'd like.

Do Mercedes UK have any kind of policy or view on getting information like this for the customer?

 

[verytalldave]

If the information was truely "migrated" then it must be easily accessable. As you say, that is just a poor excuse not to give you the details you seek.

 

[jberks]

Not so sure. Available probably - easily ..mmmm
The dealerships don't train their staff on multiple systems or necessarily have access to those systems. There are some databases out there (I've built a fair few) that are there just to hold old data from old legacy systems that have been abandoned. Nobody expects to access the data so they are not prepared to build any decent front end applications. Any data they do extract is normally high level statistical. The detail is rarely looked at. As a result, whilst they may or may not be telling the truth, it is perfectly possible that they would need a programmer or admin to access your car's data. Worst case they may even have to recall tapes from storage and restore them. I've recovered old data this way but the bill wasn't pretty (to them anyway!).