2008 Mercedes-Benz C300: Service and Wine

Sounds pretty unpleasant.

And they discriminate against lower end model's owners huh, that's nice to know.

I want a Mercedes Benz more then ever!

When will Mercedes Long Beach clean up its act? Also, has anyone else heard about Mercedes-Benz not allowing its signage to appear in the slum scenes of Slumdog Millionaire because it would tarnish their highly cultivated image?

Not my kind of dealership, not my kind of auto manufacturer.

prndlol, that whole issue surrounding "Slumdog Millionaire" was blown way out of proportion in the blogosphere, I heard about it too. In reality the movie was low budget and the director was asking that Mercedes loan them the car for the scene. The company refused partly for image reasons and partly for financial reasons. The director then looked to other luxury brands including Jaguar and BMW but was denied by all. He ended up renting a Benz for the movie and taking the logos off of it. It should be noted that Coke also refused to have its product shown in the movie. Does it reflect highly on these big corporations? No, but that is the way things work.

@prndlol the mercedes in question (there were multiple) were all owned by mob bosses in the movie. Would you really donate your car to be used like that? Mercedesfan draws a good parallel to Coke, as nobody really wants to be associated with the negatives of a powerful movie.

Just my .02, I can't knock your opinion of the dealers because I absolutely hate mine (and nearly every other one in the city that I've tried). Never have they shown as much attention as a Lexus dealer, let alone my Honda dealer. Say what you will about Lexuses as cars, the dealer service is second to none.

So will you guys be attending the little soiree on the 11th?

"Say what you will about Lexuses as cars, the dealer service is second to none."

The only thing one can say about Lexus is that the cars hardly ever go to the dealer, so one hardly ever gets to experience the L service. Its not a bad thing but when you get shitty service like the one mentioned above, you find yourself wishing- why didn't my Lexus break down?

"Rather than pull our car around the valet points behind him and says, "Your car is right back there, sir."

I guess the valets there only drives the higher-end Benzes (S, SL, GL).

I've always had excellent service at the local BMW dealership, but i've never dealt with MB. At the local VW dealership, a 10 minute wait for keys seems like a short one! I wonder if the Audi owners wait this long...

My experiences have been mixed with our C's going to the local dealer. Our biggest problem has been with service coordinators, two were great and one really pushed our tolerance. For the most part it has been good and the prices for parts and labor were actually comparable to non-dealer repair shops. Overall I get the feeling that they want to keep us happy as we would be more likely to step up to a larger or newer Benz (which we would like to do one day for at least one of our cars). Now that we have dealt with several people there we know who to speak to when we call to keep from having problems in the future. Better than the service we had with our previous domestics at least, more professional overall and they haven't created more problems than they fixed.

Mercedesfan- +1 to your first post. I'm growing a little sick of the GT-R and R8 praise posts. Since I will likely acquire a pre-owned luxury car in the near future, I'd like to read more on them. C300 has 19k miles and CTS has 11k and yet we are getting posts about exotic door handles of the GT-R.

I've heard complaints from several sources that Mercedes service departments treat C-Class owners noticeably more poorly than other Merc owners. Never once heard a similar thing about BMW service departments and 3-Series owners, Lexus dealerships and IS owners, et cetera. What gives?

I think I'd find a service department that discriminated against me based on my preference for compact sedans even *more* offensive than a service department that treated everyone equally bad. Am I alone here?

What I want to know is why Mercedes can no longer build a car whose parts don't creak or fall off before the first year is out. The foglight and alignment are arguably not quality issues, but the rest is really not forgivable. The genuinely frustrating thing is that Mercedes used to know how to build cars that lasted, and it's sad to see a car I'd really like to own, but cross it off my shopping list because I know it won't be reliable, and when it inevitably breaks, the dealer will treat me badly.

With first-hand knowledge of the service departments of Lexus and Mercedes. I generally agree about the treatment received by Edmunds at Long Beach Mercedes. However, I'm not sure how anyone would be happy with the level of service I received from Tustin Lexus or Newport Lexus, in the 2 years and 13,000 miles I had my IS250, now thankfully gone, it was serviced or attended to either routinely or otherwise, 7 times. The level of service I received from both of those dealerships was average at best and ridiculous at worse. Probably the best treatment I had was when a valet scraped the air-damn and they pulled one off of a new car to replace mine. But otherwise, they wouldn't fully fix the numerous issues (electronic and faulty assembly) the car had and I would have to return a second time to have them repair or replace the random trouble spots. Even Lexus isn't apparently immune to the common statement of, "oh, they all do that..."

smartascii- Mercedes hasn't lost its way as much as you might think. Perhaps the lower priced C-Class still has a ways to go before it becomes the quality leader it once was, but that isn't true across the board. I have a 2007 S550 that I purchased in mid-2006 that now has over 50,000 miles on it. It has been completely problem free and friends still comment on how the car looks, feels, and sounds brand new. My wife's 2008 E63 AMG wagon has only 10,000 miles on it but so far it remains tight as a drum as well. It is just going to take a little time for that quality to trickle its way back down.

On a side note, while I have heard of bad Mercedes service departments my experiences at Mercedes-Benz of Portland in Oregon and Smythe European in San Jose, CA have been extremely professional, timely, and done with genuine courtesy and care.

mbfan, have you used Beshoff?

E63 wagon? You need to invite me over for dinner. lol

bimmerjay no I haven't been to Beshoff, although it is a gorgeous dealership and I have driven by it many times. Smythe is just more convenient for me and over time I have gotten to know the guys over there, I like that they know me and they know my cars.