To put a final point on the Mercedes story. I contacted the owner of the Mercedes Dealership in Austin one last time. Harvey Dyer contended that they fixed my car the first time and although it wasn’t the fix that I brought the car in for, the fix needed to happen. And he claims that because they did the ‘second’ fix (the one I brought the car in for) at no charge, they were out a lot of money and he didn’t want my business.

“The original parts you took out were tested by another car dealership and found to be fine. What do you make of that?”
“I don’t understand,” said Dyer.
“Seems I didn’t need the original fix that you want me to pay for. How do you know I needed that fix and that it wasn’t a bogus solution?” I said.
“Because my guys told me it needed to be fixed and I believe them.”
“Well, the parts were tested, and found to be fine. So you’re asking me to pay for a repair that didn’t need to happen and that cost me $1000 more than the fix that was necessary, you left me with a car that broke down on a highway the day after you ‘fixed’ it, and now you’re telling me that you won’t discuss it and don’t want me as a customer. And I’m out the money.”

Right. And, full disclosure, there was one small part that needed to be replaced from the original fix, and I wanted to give Mercedes the $83 for the part and 2 hours of labor and I asked them to refund the $476 difference between the original ‘fix’ and the final repair. But they needed to be right.

Don’t buy a Mercedes. There is NO oversight. No customer service. And the Dealership is always right – not the customer. And you’ll get that same message from the folks in Germany AND the Customer Service office in NJ: we don’t mess with the Dealers. They are all their own businesses. Lexus’ and BMW are fine upper end cars. No need to buy a Mercedes. Unless it won’t ever need repairs.