Mercedes Benz Main Dealer Issues

[giannipesiri]

Hello People, nice wee site.

 

Now, last month, whilst driving my 54 Plate Smart Fortwo Coupe Pure 700cc the fuel filter snapped off causing the engine to stall [obviously], luckily enough my car insurance provides free roadside recovery. The guy fixed the car but recommended to take it to the garage for checking as he recognised that the fixing ring was a little bit damaged.

 

The car was due for service anyway so I decided to make a booking at my local Mercedes Benz garage, you know kinda expecting the high standard associated with the brand.

 

I must admit that the Customer Services staff where really nice and after a warm welcome, handed the keys and did make it clear that the fuel filter needed to be checked and replaced if required as we had this incident mentioned above. Later that day I received a call telling me that the car was ready to be collected, once there I've asked if the fuel fileter was checked and the guy in a patronising way replied that because this was requested earlier, it was checked and nothing was wrong with it.

It happen that yesterday after a really bad day in the office, the car stalled at 70mph on the motorway , the car develop the same fault, this really made my day,again and many thanks to the RAC guys for such a good response. After a quick fixing, I received the same diagnosed, fuel filter connector faulty, will need to be replaced.

 

Here's the big question as I want them to cover the cost of this repair, it was their poor diagnose system that missed the faulty component anyway.

 

Do you think I have a case here?

 

 

Many Thanks

[Conniff]

Take your paperwork from the RAC to them and ask that they now fix it free of charge.

[gbjadyy]

im sure they will fix for you but also when they had car in workshop it was put down as no fault found and would be because no fault present at that time so there not technically in the wrong, also yopu mention great service for brand???? it doesent work like that, it comes down to the garage and what there like and not the brand of car, i could get far better service on my focus at the local jo bloggs workshop than i could down at the porsche dealers !!! you see hat im saying here???, good trusted garages and not just because its a merc,jag, porsche or whatever, i sometimes do wonder why people think they should get better service based on a brand though, maybe you can answer that??,

[j66]

You requested the garage to look at the fuel filter, they as likely gave it a visual inspection and checked it for leaks. Finding nothing wrong they reported it as OK.

 

Now it transpires that the fuel filter connector is faulty, often there is a ridge on the filter pipe and the fuel hose has an integral snap on connector. It seems to me that the faulty part is the fuel hose. What part did the RAC say was faulty on their report?, or did they just note the symptoms of the breakdown, not the cause.

 

It could have been a poor description of the problem that led them to look at the wrong component and they just followed your instructions.

[giannipesiri]

Thanks for your reply gbjadyy, I had a chat with the garage manager and he said that 4 weeks ago the component was checked and didn't look damaged, the car drove ok and no fault was detected , [Not sure if this was just a visual check or what]

Really difficult to argue with that.

They suggested me to take the car in for further checking to see what they can do, not sure if the will try to charge me for that or not. Lets see

 

I'd agree with you, in general,people do tend to associate quality with certain brands and that's purely based on image and branding. But when you talk about cars is a complete different matter,in my opinion is better to take your car to the porsche garage as is more likely that they are far better equipped than your local. That's the sort of quality I was talking about, not about "the" brand.

 

Anyway many thanks for your response, I believe that there's no point on pursuing any further and I'll try to get this fixed at my local [ not joking ]if the merc guys come too deer.Its a fair simple job!

 

Cheers

[giannipesiri]

Thanks for your response, I did ask expressly to check the connectors and the filter itself, the issue with this car, and hence the reason why I took it to the main dealer, is that is quite specific, for instance, to check the fuel filter is not like open the bonnet and that's it,you'd need to dismount the underfloor tray and the rear right arch liner panel, which in normal conditions will take you about 20 minutes[for off and on], if they did that there's no way that this was going to be a non fee job ,that is the reason for my complain, the component wasn't checked properly!. I spoke to the manager and he said that it was ok by that time - not true- but difficult to probe.Or maybe they did and it was ok

I believe that its quite hard to have an argument here, what do you think?

[gbjadyy]

just a quick point going back to the porsche thing ! i work for an independant and we do plenty of work for dealerships including diagnosis and this is because some dealerships either arnt knowledgable in certain areas or lack good tech staff for diagnosis, this is not the case with all dealers of course but are some out there that regularly farm out work to independant so in theory sometimes you pay the dealer price but really the car is sorted by a cheaper more knowledgable garage so always consider that and as i said before a good reputation and good service is worth far more than any branded stamp on an invoice or service book

[giannipesiri]

good point...

[giannipesiri]

Sorted,

Hello again, back to my Merc Dealer Issues.

As mentioned,took the car in last Monday, and after explaining to the engineers exactly which panels to remove and how to find the faulty component, they accepted this as their miss.

I've got offered the cost of the labor for free, which I accepted. Had to pay for the full fuel line though, albeit not being cheap, all came much more cheaper,a friend advised that for this car, it would be around 4 hours to complete the job as the pipe lien is packed down within the already compact engine.

Fairly good outcome after all.

 

Many Thanks again for this site and for the replies.

 

Gio