How to Obtain Lost Mercedes Service History?

efunc

Hi all,

there's a car I'm interested in but it has no history. It's a 2007 Mercedes C-Class Estate in very good condition, but the seller claims he's lost the service book, MOTs and every single document in a house move. He's only got the V5 which he had to reapply for. He's a private seller and I'm inclined to give him benefit of the doubt, but would like to recover as much info as possible first. It was put on a private plate when new but the car was registered in Northampton, Thursday 3rd May 2007 on the original plate. I called Mercedes in Northampton and they had no record of servicing it, on either original plate or current plate. This is a high spec car and well looked after, so I'm sure it would have been serviced somewhere by MB, in the early years at least. Is there anyone here that can obtain Service History from Mercedes Benz if I supply registration or VIN?

thanks!

Browntoa

Surely the seller can tell you where it was serviced

efunc

He's had it a less than a couple of years I think, and had it serviced locally. I can find out about that probably, but it's the original MB history I'm interested in. It may be minimal, it may be extensive. That's what I'd like to find out. But drawing a blank so far.

bigjl

Being High Spec is no guarantee of good ownership.

I personally thought Mercedes had a network wide ability to keep track of servicing.

Jaguar do for example. In fact for the last few years it is all on computer.

Plenty more fish in the sea especially for such a common car as a C Class.

efunc

Yes, Audi for example have a service history hotline where you can enquire about the recorded history of any Audi with just the number plate and they will send you an itemised email or print out of everything they have at each odometer reading. MB on the other hand don't seem to have anything similar. My only hope is to find out which branch it was serviced at and get them to tell me what local record they have. Or someone in the company can possibly access a more centralised record through MB. But it's not normally open to public enquiry.

s_b

service history unless its had manufacturer updates is pretty worthless in terms of what it will tell you
you are considering buying a 10 year old model + i believe so my advise is get a local garage conversant in this model to give it an inspection prior to sale and if it passes then have a full and proper service carried out ,this might all cost the best part of £600 but you will then own a car you know will perform infallibly until the rust shows through

efunc

Thanks, I appreciate your perspective, but I'd have to disagree with you on this. My current Audi TTS as well as the MB CDI I'm looking at have very sophisticated engines, high pressure fuel systems and s-tronic gear boxes. There are various known issues and system recalls with the cars which are fine if addressed early and if they follow the correct service regime, have the components examined and replaced. Failure to use the correct oils, filters and other service parts in a timely way can result in premature failure, diminishing performance or catastrophic leaks and contamination. Most of this will start becoming much more relevant over 100k miles and more. A correctly serviced car can hopefully return great driving experience right into the upper 400k miles and beyond. Certainly if I discover a car has missed important services or been using generic, non-specific engine, transmission oil, etc, it would have to be a case of walking away. But hopefully this is not always the case.

ess0two

Just take logbook into dealer they'll print it off providing whoever has completed service has access to STAR system be it dealer or independent.

efunc

Thanks. I haven't bought the car yet, so I'm trying to do this before making an offer on it. The V5 isn't in my possession. I think I'm a bit confused about the dealer network though. The car was registered in Northampton so I naturally thought enquiring with mercedes-benz in Northampton would hopefully reveal the first couple of services. They didn't have any service record for this car there unfortunately. But the service centre there is actually operated by Sytner, not MB, and they suggested I contact Mercedes instead. But the mercedes-benz uk website takes me back to Sytner and other retailers. So how do I contact Mercedes themselves?

Aletank

Check the MOT History for starters https://www.gov.uk/check-mot-history

bigjl

efunc wrote: »

Thanks. I haven't bought the car yet, so I'm trying to do this before making an offer on it. The V5 isn't in my possession. I think I'm a bit confused about the dealer network though. The car was registered in Northampton so I naturally thought enquiring with mercedes-benz in Northampton would hopefully reveal the first couple of services. They didn't have any service record for this car there unfortunately. But the service centre there is actually operated by Sytner, not MB, and they suggested I contact Mercedes instead. But the mercedes-benz uk website takes me back to Sytner and other retailers. So how do I contact Mercedes themselves?

Mercedes dealers like most dealers are Franchises.

They may own some large dealerships in high profile locations like the big one off the M4 in West London

But franchised or not makes no different they all use the same computerised system to record services.

I suspect if they couldn't find it on the Northampton computer system then it hasn't been serviced by Mercedes.

I don't know why you are so focussed on this particular Mercedes.

They are extremely common and nothing special. It's just a C Class diesel with n service history.

I don't care how nice it looks, no service history is no service history.

The 2.2 engine is not one of Mercs best either. They sound like a Taxi.

If it was a C270cdi estate I could understand the interest that a nice engine. Expensive to fix though.