Warranty help

[napa 1]

Any body have any experience with fighting to have a defect covered under warranty? I have a 2005 Mercedes c230 Kompressor sedan. I've had it since new, and it has only 14K and I rarely have anybody in the back seat. Recently the stitching on the back seat began to unravel so that the pieces of leather are coming apart. I took the car into my local dealer for repair of a couple of other items that were covered under warranty, and they returned the car unwilling to cover the repair of the back seat. The service manager felt that the seat was coming unstitched due to something we did, like they thought perhaps there were signs that one of my kids must have spilled a drink back there. Well unless, Maggie was drinking sulfuric acid, I'm at a loss to see how that would cause the stitching to unravel. I'd assume that every person who has a car and young kids has had something spilled in the back seat, and I've never heard of it causing the seat to come apart.
Anyway, I called MB customer service and they stated that their policy is to back the service manager's opinion. End of story. No other method of recourse.
Anybody have any suggestions or experience that might help me get this resolved? I am really finding it hard to believe that MB won't take responsibility for something that is clearly a manufacturing defect.

 

[Ken Ellis]

Perhaps a quick note to those high up in the "customer experience" chain, providing a link to a "soon-to-go-live" website detailing the history of the issue, along with the list of car and "high-end livin'" websites to be linked to it, would soften their position. Since the back seat is basically unused, your lawyer could make a pretty good case for defect in material and workmanship. Or, skip the lawyer, and go straight to small claims. Serve Mercedes corporate, and they likely won't even show up to defend your $2000 claim. With that, hopefully, you can get a new cover, get it installed, and have at least some change left over. Maybe.

Of course, I'm not a lawyer, and this non-legal advice is worth exactly what you paid for it...

Good luck!
Ken

 

[Jim E]

From my dealings with Audi... arrgggggg.... raise a sh!t fit in the show room and if that does not work forget it and go have it fixed.

 

[Nickodell]

Have you contacted a "Lemon-Law" lawyer, or the Lemon-Law department in your state government? Or your local congressman's office? Often just a letter threatening legal action from the lawyer will suffice. Mercedes has been rated "poor" in reliability in the last two or three years, way down the list of makes (interestingly, Korean cars rate high, with Hyundai at the top. How things have changed!)

The key is not to give up at the local and even regional level. The dealer doesn't want to be bothered if he can fob you off, and the regional office has no reason to go in to bat for you.

Ten years ago the paint on my son's 3-year-old GMC Jimmy began to flake and peel. I got the same response as you did at the dealer and regional offices. By contacting GMC's head office, we got a complete repaint for nothing. The next best part was the sh*t-eating look on the dealer's face when we picked it up after the job: "That's a $1,500 paint job you got there."

 

[tfctpa]

Believe it or not, the Better Business Bureau has helped me in the past. They collect data on manufactures and pressure them to do the right thing. I had a Chevy Silverado P/U with 56K miles on it when the transmission went out. The truck was close to two years out of warranty. The local transmission shop told me to call the BBB, which I did, and they soon had GM authorize the local shop to rebuild the automatic. I could not believe the quick response from GM.

As far as MB, my brother in-law had one, still under warranty, which the local dealer refused to repair. He parked the car across the street with "This car is a lemon!" and his phone number written on the windshield in shoe polish. It only took 2 days for the dealer to fix the problem.

Good luck,