Servicing Problems: Important.

[Alex M Grieve]

Servicing problems

Hi Chas,
I believe the ASSYST system on your car will notify you of a service being required at around 15-17,000 miles or 2 years, whichever comes first, all else being equal. The recommended lubricants are synthetic oils (more expensive) and will easily cope with that schedule.
It seems to be only more recent cars (and certainly 2007 cars) which have been "promoted" to annual servicing, even at low mileages, e.g. 6,000 miles in my case.
Paradoxically, the franchised dealer says he can not compete with specialists on price because he can not buy synthetic oils for the price the specialist is charging for an A service. So the oils are better, the cars are better designed and built, the metallurgy is better, yet the service interval has been reduced from 2 yearly to yearly.
I suggested that he might report to MB that he was having reaction from customers - he left me in no doubt that he would be reporting the customer reaction! He seemed as fed up at the damage to his business as I was about the apparent illogicality of the problem.

 

[Chas]

Thanks Alex. My cars ASSYST is set to 10,000 miles for every service, and it has synthetic oil.
I will speak to MB dealer soon when I go in to get brakes done.

thanks

Chas

 

[Rory]

Paradoxically, the franchised dealer says he can not compete with specialists on price because he can not buy synthetic oils for the price the specialist is charging for an A service.

The dealer should buy his oil from Costco then - it's cheap enough there, and I'm struggling to believe that a dealer buying it in bulk would pay more. Most MB dealers seem happy for you to supply your own oil too.

My local dealer (MB Chester) will do an A service on most models for £199 and a B for £329, those prices including fully synth oil. OK, it's still not cheap for what is basically an oil change and, in the case of a B service, some other bits and bobs, but those prices compare well with other makes. Mitsubishi wanted £200 to do the 1st year service an daughter's Colt a few wks ago.

 

[Alex M Grieve]

Rory makes an excellent point. There are too many inconsistencies and internal contradictions in this whole story.
Unhappily for MB the "punters" in this case are not just skeptical - they also understand.

 

[Alex M Grieve]

Servicing problems, important

Thanks Alex. My cars ASSYST is set to 10,000 miles for every service, and it has synthetic oil.
I will speak to MB dealer soon when I go in to get brakes done.

thanks

Chas

The note from Chas got me thinking. Like Chas, I have an S 320 CDI (W220), although slightly younger (December 04).
So I reviewed the service history:
1st service (B) after 16 months and 14800 miles
2nd service (B) after a further 18 months and 14200 miles
The car has now done 33200 miles and ASSYST tells me it will require a B service in a further 6700 miles (which will be 11000 since last service, but currently only doing local running, so that's OK).
Mobil Super oil throughout. It seems to prefer B services which, through my local independant specialist cost £217.38.
This looks like an ASSYST system doing what it was designed to do and it is one happy car with a contented owner.

 

[littlebrooklyn]

Our car will be a year old at the end of June, does anyone know when it should start to count down to a service? At the moment it is still saying A Service due in 14,000 miles.

We still don't have the handbook or the service book, even though we bought the car back in March. Numerous phone calls to the dealership and to Mercedes themselves have not proved to be successful, they just keep promising us that the books are on order and will be with us soon

 

[television]

Our car will be a year old at the end of June, does anyone know when it should start to count down to a service? At the moment it is still saying A Service due in 14,000 miles.

We still don't have the handbook or the service book, even though we bought the car back in March. Numerous phone calls to the dealership and to Mercedes themselves have not proved to be successful, they just keep promising us that the books are on order and will be with us soon

MB Waford are not good at doing these things, I would stage a sit in

 

[littlebrooklyn]

MB Waford are not good at doing these things, I would stage a sit in

We haven't even bothered going to MB Watford Malcolm as we have only ever heard bad things about them.

We bought the car from MB at Chichester and they have been very good regarding everything other than sorting out our paperwork

If the service needs doing and we have no service book does that mean it can't be serviced

 

[koithot]

I have had my car serviced by an independant mechanic and he used the best synthetic oil. I was impressed, the economy was better. never service with MB dealer. waste of money. help you local independant garage.

 

[MB TECH WARRINGTON]

Hawk, my W211 is on fixed servicing which is better than the previous 211's although not as good as the A/B ASSYST servicing from my 210, that would go easily up to 18K miles between services.
However my fixed servicing appears to be always "B" services at 15K miles which is not great IMO. Have you found any info as to whether on fixed servicing it should alternate or will I always get a "B" on fixed interval servicing?

if you go over a certain mileage, due to driving style etc, then the a service changes to a b service, purely due to the distance/time between services,

 

[littlebrooklyn]

As I mentioned earlier our car is a year old later this month but is still not counting down to it's first service.

After phoning Mercedes Customer Relations the other day regarding another issue I did mention to them our confusion regarding the servicing intervals and this morning we received a phone call from the Sales Manager at the dealership we bought our car from back in March.

He told us that our car 'might' be on the 2yr/15,000 miles Assyt, but it depends on when the car was made and only by checking the chassis number will he be able to tell us which category our car falls into as apparently we are close to the crossover date from 2yr to 1yr service intervals.

He also offered to give us a free service at the end of the month if in fact our car does come up as needing one. Hopefully we should find out in the next few days what is going on.

 

[colechelle]

Have to agree with Hawk, we still doing service measures on 6 year old cars, nearly every service we have to do some update or replace something which has been upgraded, people say mb services are dear but your be so amazed to find out how many things are replace that you dont know about, cost mb millions!!!

 

[Chas]

Many thanks HAWK for this informative post.
I am still a bit confused ( not difficult !).
My car went in for an A service 2 days ago (S320 petrol W220 2001).
In 20 months since the last service I had done 8,000 miles.
The assyst has been showing 10,000 miles for the last two days and has not changed, despite doing 50 miles.
Does this mean it will only start the count down when it decides? Also should it have been set to a higher mileage since they used synthetic oil?
I would have asked when they finished the service, but they delivered the car to my home, and the driver was not a technical type. I phoned them up but the young chap at the service desk was clueless !

 

[jberks]

I think it counts down in 100 mile increments - hence no change
and yes I believe they can give you more than 10k.

 

[hawk20]

Many thanks HAWK for this informative post.
I am still a bit confused ( not difficult !).
My car went in for an A service 2 days ago (S320 petrol W220 2001).
In 20 months since the last service I had done 8,000 miles.
The assyst has been showing 10,000 miles for the last two days and has not changed, despite doing 50 miles.
Does this mean it will only start the count down when it decides? Also should it have been set to a higher mileage since they used synthetic oil?
I would have asked when they finished the service, but they delivered the car to my home, and the driver was not a technical type. I phoned them up but the young chap at the service desk was clueless !

If you go back to the original posting it looks as though they have not reset to say used Synthetic oil. Worth asking them to check it has been done. The setting for ordinary oil starts from 10,000 miles.

 

[Splatt]

As I mentioned earlier our car is a year old later this month but is still not counting down to it's first service.

He told us that our car 'might' be on the 2yr/15,000 miles Assyt, but it depends on when the car was made and only by checking the chassis number will he be able to tell us which category our car falls into as apparently we are close to the crossover date from 2yr to 1yr service intervals.

Our 2007 C180 is now 22 months old and is still not counting down to it`s first service. I expect it to start countdowm at the end of this month.

 

[littlebrooklyn]

Our 2007 C180 is now 22 months old and is still not counting down to it`s first service. I expect it to start countdowm at the end of this month.

According to the posts on this thread your car, like mine, should be on the annual service, irrespective of what the Assyst is telling you.

 

[Chas]

If you go back to the original posting it looks as though they have not reset to say used Synthetic oil. Worth asking them to check it has been done. The setting for ordinary oil starts from 10,000 miles.

Thanks Hawk,

I phoned them up today the service chap seems sure it was done via STAR >Synthetic oil - to show 10.000 miles.
He will check again with the chap who did it and get back to me!

Watch this space

 

[whitenemesis]

According to the posts on this thread your car, like mine, should be on the annual service, irrespective of what the Assyst is telling you.

I think the advice from other threads dealing with this topic is to always do as ASSYST indicates.

 

[littlebrooklyn]

I think the advice from other threads dealing with this topic is to always do as ASSYST indicates.

If we waited till the Assyt told us to service our car I think it would be about 3yrs old