Best Of

The E400 is 8 years old (50k miles) and MrsD100s GLK is 10 years old (30000 miles).
I was thinking they just need an oil change this year so I might try an indie garage which worked quite well with the Florida car. Then I thought, the MB dealer is closer, they want me as a customer so they get me in asap if I have a problem, maybe they will give me more for them as trade-ins one day if we have all our servicing done by the dealer. Their service has always been reasonable, and the coffee, soup and sandwiches are good...plus wi-fi etc.
I made the appointments, and they mentioned they would need the car for most of the day because there was a free major software update they wanted to do on the E400.
So, my question is....if I had gone to the indie garage, would they have told me about the update, and would they have done the update or would I miss getting it done? Also, it is nice that since it is a long visit they will shuttle me home and back.

One of my coworkers also drives for a Mercedes dealer and he tells us about the incredible service bills he hands to customers when he delivers a car. The dealership will provide pick up and loner services as well as nice snacks but boy oh boy do you pay for it.

Couldn’t you just call them once a year and ask if they have any free software updates? Don’t you have any friends who would give you a ride? My indie shop doesn’t even have coffee.

All of our MBs have given us good service and there is something special about them...they are a pleasure to drive. They have not needed a lot of repairs. If we maintain them well, they may last longer and that will make economic sense too. I did have a flat tire that needed a patch on a long weekend...they said it would take 4 days to get the car into the shop. I told them if they want to sell me another car they should try to get it done sooner....they said they'd squeeze it in that day....no one else wanted to do a $50 patch when they could sell $1200 worth of tires. Of course at MB the $50 patch was $100

————————————————
That’s the upcharge for squeezing you in. I hope you got them for an extra bowl of their delicious soup.

jmonroe

Had to call a locksmith today. Last night I couldn't open the door to the garage from the laundry room.
It's the door we use the most.
Bolt was stuck and I couldn't get it to move.
Only one of the door hinges was the drop in pin type and I couldn't figure out how detach the other two.
Damage was $40 for service call, $65 new door handle, $120 to open the door, plus tax.
The new bolt did fit with the old handle but was very notchy, so I had him install what he had with him.
It operates smoothly.

————————————————
Are you saying you spent over $200 for this door handle problem. Why didn’t you remove the entire door handle. There are 2 screws that should be accessible from inside the laundry room. Once you removed the inside handle you would have been able to push the handle on the garage side out. That would have allowed you to finagle the latch and thereby open the door. I’m pretty sure that is what your locksmith did.

As for not being able to remove the hinge pins, you can thank the building codes for that. It seems there is national code that prohibits a door leading into the house from the garage not to be self closing and the 2 hinge pins you couldn’t remove are the self close hinges. The code reasoning is if there is a fire in the garage the fire couldn’t easily spread through an open door into the house. The same reasoning applies to exhaust gases entering the house if a car is left running. There is a good bit of spring tension on these 2 hinges (usually adjustable) so the hinge is made without a removable pin. If you could remove the pin it would definitely allow to spring to unwind and you could end up with a hole somewhere in your body. Of course the down side of this code didn’t think about the inconvenience of not allowing the door to remain open when you’re unloading groceries from your car.

Don’t get me started on codes especially electrical codes because I’d be posting all day about those.

jmonroe