Motor industry customer care attitude

[Hillhater]

Down here we Ozzies are known for our straight talking..and no BS attitude
Fortunately we also have a few independent Auto industry reviewere who tell it like it is..and have a sense of humour "
This is a recent comment on Mercedes customer care attitude...
http://autoexpert.com.au/buying-a-car/mercedes-benz-bs-class

 

[Izits]

I've lived in Australia for many years, their politics are very similar to America's.

The author, Mr. John Cadogan acknowledges that the broken engine mount in question is well out of the industry standard warranty period.

This is for a 2011 S-Class that has traveled only 48,000km.

The average warranty in Australia is three years or 100,000 kilometres.

Yet Mr. Cadogan and the car owner both think the broken engine mount should be replaced at no cost.

However the rest of the article is not about Mercedes's repair policies, but about how he wants the government to be more active in dictating the behavior of Mercedes-Benz and all car companies and by extension all companies in Australia. Of course the article does nothing to recognize how much the Australian government does to retard competition in the automotive field.

This is a very typical pattern. The corporations leverage government power by persuading the government to inhibit competition in their industry. Consumer service levels fall, prices rise. Then the consumers who watched the government abuse it's power in the first place, call for even more government as though that's going to help. The government is the problem in this story, not the solution.

If Mr. Cadogan wrote an article about electric bicycles, it would include what regulations and government controls should be enacted "to protect the public". He isn't really our friend.

 

[Punx0r]

Kinda irritating to read: heavy on attitude and short on facts and information. I scanned through it several times and tried a keyword search but couldn't find mention of how old the complainant's car was. I'm guessing it was old enough to be out of the warranty period.

The author seems like a blowhard. It's disingenuous to bang on about the low mileage of the car while failing to mention it's 6 years old. The life of engine mounts, like many drivetrain components, can also be largely subject to driver use/abuse.

 

[spinningmagnets]

If MB was smart, they'd pay to have this fixed as a PR expense. Myself? I've made motor mounts from scratch. The article states that the "new" motor mounts were oil-filled doughnuts hat provide an amazingly smooth ride, but lately...many of them are springing leaks. They can be replaced with solid material mounts (urethane?). Maybe not as smooth as oil-filled $1500 repair, but should work well enough for me...

 

[PRW]

some people are missing the point here - there is a toothless government body in Australia which says "the car - or whatever else you buy - must be free from defects, durable, etc., according to the standards of a quote-unquote “reasonable consumer”. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has been very clear on this point for six years: This guarantee exists beyond the warranty period, for the “reasonable consumer” expectations of durability."

yes, it is out of the warranty period. This is acknowledged. So what? There is an additional law which the ACCC has no power to enforce. This is what the article is about, as well as the poor quality standards and short-sighted customer "service" of a supposedly upmarket manufacturer.

 

[cal3thousand]

It's a 2011 car and an engine mount is considered a wear part. If you can't afford to replace the parts after warranty, don't drive the car after expiration of said warranty.

Motor shaking from a busted mount by no means makes it un-driveable (<--is that a word?), so not being able to wait for a new mount is definitely first-world rich-boy problems that I have 0.000% sympathy for.