Fun to find metadata in those clips. I was able to find the dealership where this took place via the lat/long then following that same route back to Mercedes-Benz Mississauga outside of Toronto. But then I realized I could have found that info my looking at the YouTube site. Still, fun!
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Why would you expect non-dealership service to be any more honest?
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They actually discuss this (more or less) at the six minute mark.
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I have been very lucky. I encountered my mechanic under circumstances where he had everything to gain by being dishonest. Instead, he took a financial hit to make things right. So I had gone into his garage ready for a huge fight and instead wound up with a guy who will fix my car until the day he finally retires.
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Maybe they’ll sue for invasion of privacy and slander? /s
Because doing so actually gets me a better trade-in value?
Mine came with a 5/60 warranty, and I bargained for 5 (instead of the 3 that came with it) years of oil changes on top of the bumper to bumper. The dealership is convenient for me (which is why I bought the car there. I’m not brand loyal.). I’m in year 8, have just over 65K on it now, and I get offers from my dealer for $10K-$11K trade-in monthly. They know my car is in very good shape, and they can turn it around easily for $13-15K because it’s low mileage, mechanically sound, and they have every record on it.
Blue book for it? $7500-8500. If it gets totaled, that’s about what insurance will pay out. That’s what any other dealership will pay for it, too. Thus, it’s in my best interest to stick with the dealership, and it’s in the dealership’s best interest to not screw me over, since I’ll just be right back.
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I get those offers from my dealership too. My car is in incredible demand right now, the dealership has more buyers than cars!
Combined with the sales event incentives and premier customer pricing on a new car, I will actually be saving mo’ money by spending mo’ money!
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My company owned service truck is a Mercedes. No heated seats though.
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The price of the car is basically irrelevant to the story, but it’s the first piece of information in this video. The uploader’s little brag backfired with me. I guess I’m supposed to think “how could they rip off this important man?”, but I’m just thinking “eh, he can afford it”.
$160,000 car could pay for the rent for over a decade on a much, much better place than where I’m currently living (that probably applies to the mechanics, too). And isn’t capitalism all about getting as much as you can for the least effort?
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No, I’m not talking about the marketing. I don’t intend to trade my car, but I do some snoop shopping from time to time (Audis have mushy suspension, like a 1980s Big 3 luxury car. Ick.) and every time I bring mine in for oil change, I get a sales person at my elbow. I’m willing to indulge because the time they waste with me, while I’m wasting time waiting for them, is time they’re not spending on somebody getting a cold call.
I ask for numbers first. The conversation stops if they’re not willing to give me hard numbers. I don’t finance through the dealership; I pay cash, but I’m willing to let them give me their financing numbers first. I play the reverse bait and switch that they do to most customers.
I’m waiting for a small pickup truck; until then, my small crossover does 95% of what I want and is paid off. But if someone drops a small pickup on the market, I want to have my negotiating skills sharp enough to get it. And by practicing negotiation when it matters not at all to me helps me get clients through other forms of negotiation scripts.
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Other people drive Mercedes because they survived horrible crashes while driving one, and will now own nothing else.
They can be really nice cars. But you should learn how to work on them, unless you are some sort of tycoon.
These guys could easily pass for unionized aerospace mechanics.
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Somebody’s boat payment is due.
I tried to change the oil on my M.I.L.’s Mercedes. No can do. They put all kinds of mechanisms in place to make sure only the dealership can work on it.
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I think Roberto doesn’t want any ice cream because he doesn’t trust you a-holes.
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I have never seen any warranty that requires service at the dealer. But they sure do imply that. I speak as someone who naively had my first car serviced at the dealer because I bought their pitch.
As long as you document that you follow the manufacturers recommended service at an independent shop you should be good.
I still get my oil changes at the Toyota dealer because they almost always have a coupon for a free multi point inspection which covers all the manufacturers recommended services. So for the price of an oil change I get everything the dealer normally charges a hundred or more bucks for if you just bring it in and say do the recommended service. And I get the convenience of not needing another trip for recall services. But for anything else (brakes, flushes, 50k services, alignment, repairs) I go to an independent garage.
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I had a similar stupid story with a dealership. I don’t have a dash cam but I always have trip logging enabled in my cars’ GPS units. My basically brand new car was dropped of at the dealer to have clear chip protect applied (which they subbed out).
When the car came back it had way more miles on it than I expected and the radio was cranked up on a station I don’t listen to. I pulled up the trip log in the GPS and found that the person drove the car for nearly 20 miles making several stops along the way before arriving at their shop to do the work, and several more stops on the way back to the dealership. Oh, and they were driving well above the speed limit in most cases.
Some of the stops were quick and in odd locations (gas stations, back behind a pawn shop, and a 7-11 which means they probably had food in the car) which makes me wonder if they were doing drug deals or something. It was all very sketchy.
Anyway, when presenting this to the dealer they banned the guy from the dealership and put the sub on notice.
I would have loved to have a dash cam in place to be a fly on the wall when this all happened.
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I hit my neighbor’s pickup years ago and told her to send me the bill. It cost me $1,300.00 (at a time where I was making around $20,000/year) to pull a four inch dent out of a twenty-year-old, piece-of-crap Toyota pickup. They actually removed the whole panel, sanded it down and repainted it. It cost $200 just for the little black stripe of vinyl detail. I still get angry when I think about it and can’t trust mechanics.
Now I take my car to the dealership where my cousin works. He changes the oil, runs diagnostics, tells me what’s wrong and then I google how to fix it.
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I’m not really suprised. There are plenty of mechanics who try to take advantage of anyone they think is too ignorant to know much about cars. I’ve lost count of how many times a mechanic’s handed me a long list of estimated repairs and told me, “believe me, you really need this done.” At that point, I excuse myself and call someone I trust (often my uncle, who was an auto mechanic years ago) and double check if it sounds reasonable. And if it’s not, I take back my keys and go somewhere else. The last time, it was a new worker at a previously-trusted shop who swore my car needed $1600 worth of work. It didn’t sound right, so I wound up driving a couple cities over to a better shop, who fixed the only necessary repair for $250. A good, trustworthy mechanic is a rare gem. It’s good to see the con artists called out for their sins.
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