Mercedes-Benz is a trademark of Mercedes-Benz of North America, Mercedes-Benz USA LLC and other Mercedes-Benz corporations. The words Mercedes-Benz is solely used to identify a make of automobile. It does not imply or indicate any affiliation or relationship between Stephens Service Center and the manufacturer or their dealers.
This is a copy of dealer menu prices for the service "A", service "B", and other services. We also use genuine Mercedes-Benz parts and Mobil One synthetic motor oil, but we do the very same service for 40% less. What's conspicuous by its absence, is the 60,000 mile major maintenance service. For some inexplicable reason, they don't mention the most important service the car ever gets. We see owners every day that say they are sure they got the 60,000 mile service, but in fact, they haven't. It is extremely hard on the car when important fluids and filters are not changed. Most customers that see this menu would assume this is everything the car needs for routine maintenance. But unfortunately it's not.
If you read what they say is done on the service "B", you can see they do important sounding technical things like, "Function test the HVAC system". That means they pushed the blower button to see if the fan works. There is virtually no difference between the service "A" and service "B". Yet they charge a lot more. They don't change the engine's air filter, fuel filter, power steering oil, rear axle oil, suspension oil or filter, battery service, transfer case oil, transmission oil or filter, nor the spark plugs.
Some shops will make customers tell them every last thing that they want then to do. They think that lets them off the hook when there's a problem. We've never cared for playing that game and most customers don't like it either. You don't have to tell us to check for nails in your tires, loose door check strap bolts, cracked fan belts, spare tires with no air, or a missing exhaust hangers. We assume you don't want to have a flat tire on your way to work and find out there is no air in the spare tire. We've done this long enough to know what customer's expect and don't expect. One of the biggest things they don't expect, is to spend a lot of money for maintenance and then discover the money was wasted playing games.
_________________________________________________
In case you haven't noticed, we put this website together ourselves. We don't pay a marketing company or a Web Design company to do this. It's not that we're to cheap to pay someone, because we've tried. They just never seem to quite understand what we're trying to say. I'm not even sure I could describe the "feel" of the website, but it's a lot like when we remodeled our facility. We tried to explain it to various contractors, they didn't understand what we were looking for. So, like the website, we did it ourselves.
We don't want to "bad mouth" competitors. If it sounds that way, it's not meant to be cruel. You would think that after all these years, we would have heard it all. The stories customer's tell us, have worked out to be a pretty good way of getting the point across.
This page is meant to help customers save money on repairs and end up with a more reliable car.
Mercedes-Benz automobiles of the last 10 years are jammed with lots of complicated electronics. We see more customers trying to do what they think are simple repairs themselves, like replacing a dead battery. What they don't know, is there are important procedures to follow when you work on the electrical system. Voltage spikes occur when the battery terminals are connected or jumper cables in the case of jump starting. These voltage spikes can blow out control modules that are very expensive. We had a new customer just today, try to fix his own dead battery on a 2003 C320. When he towed the car in after he had given up, he said he was very careful and was sure he hadn't done any damage. He just needed us to figure out why the car didn't start with a new battery installed. After all, he said, it worked before the battery died. Once we got the electronic key to work, we had every warning light in the instrument cluster on. Plus, the odometer had only dashed lines. We determined that the instrument cluster was blown, $1000 for the part. The electronic transmission control module was blown, $900 for the part. The Supplementary Restraint System module was blown out, $1300 for the part. Plus we found a huge electrical draw that will cause the battery to go dead in 2 days. The electrical drain is caused by damaged control modules that won't power down when the engine is switched off. The seat modules are working, but they cause a electrical drain, $500 each for 2 seat modules. The Check Engine light is on, it appears that the transmission control module is causing the warning light, but we need to install the modules we know are bad so we can test it.
I don't think anyone really needs to have this mess added up, to know this is one, very expensive lesson about modern automotive electrical systems. Here is your money saving tip. "If you have a dead battery, tow it to the repair shop. And by all means, don't let the tow truck driver tell you he knows how to jump start the battery."
Whenever the battery is removed or any electrical work is done to the car, a special tool needs to be plugged in to the OBDII connector under the dash. The special tool has surge / overload protection to keep voltage spikes from damaging control units. The tool also has a specific voltage it sends into the electrical system to maintain the correct voltage to all the control modules while the main car battery is removed. We've seen many customers that thought they got away with changing the battery on their own. Only to find out that everything worked OK if the car was driven every day. But as soon as they let it set for a week, the battery would be dead. Modules can be damaged but still do their normal work. When the car is switched off, the modules all should power down. This is the feature that gets damaged. The modules will stay powered up and drain the battery. You wouldn't believe the repair bills we've seen customers drive in with, for this problem.
lnk