HELP! Car Warranty Invalid If They Can’t Find The Issue?

Skuk

I bought my car from a used approved Mercedes Benz garage in January 2022. 

A message popped up on the car after a few weeks (it stated: Active Brake Assist. Functions limited). The car came with 1 year warranty so I booked it back into the same garage for them to look into it and repair. 

I got a call later on that day asking me to approve 2 additional hours for them to do their investigation as they don’t know what the issue is yet. He said I need to pay £130p/h and I explained that the car is under warranty and he stated that I still have to pay to investigate as the issue could be something not covered by the warranty or they could find evidence that i’d had an “bump” that affected a sensor and caused the message on screen. 

They wouldn’t share with me any terms and conditions of the warranty to explain what they class as a damage from an accident so I just went to get my car back as it didn’t make sense to me. 

They now won’t release my car back to me unless I pay Mercedes £130 for spending an hour “investigation” the issue, despite still being under warranty. 

I’m waiting to speak to someone more senior tomorrow but please could I check whether this is typical? 

I’ve had this car and others looked at under warranty’s so this is new to me! 

Thank you!

Herzlos

Unfortunately this is pretty standard. You need to pay the inspection costs and if it's a warranty issue they'll refund it.

It's worth noting that the dealer and the manufacturer are separate entities, so the dealer doesn't get the manufacturer to pay the bill for the warranty work then you'll need to pay it.

SaverRate

At VW and Audi they have said previously there would be a charge if its not a warranty item. They didnt charge for it though. I believe they would only charge after the investigation. They charged it once after investigating but they did the fix included in the diagnostics cost 

facade

You get messages like this when the front facing camera or radar module is obscured by dirt or not working, but you'd expect that to be the first thing they would check.

However from t'interweb

If your vehicle is not under warranty, the following tips will, in most cases, help fix the Active Brake Assist Functions Limited warning. 

1. Remove all dirt and snow from the front windshield, grill, and bumper. 
2. Activate transport mode and drive vehicle for approx 10 km. The DTC then switches to passive, and the sensor can be calibrated. The Active Brake Assist should recalibrate automatically, and the error clears on its own if the code was due to a dirt issue.
   

I've no idea what DTC is, or how to activate transport mode though.

chrisw

Yes it's typical. 

If you look at it from their side, they've spent an hour doing work on your car so they will want paying for it, especially if you've decided to take it away without having anything else done.

Skuk

facade said:

You get messages like this when the front facing camera or radar module is obscured by dirt or not working, but you'd expect that to be the first thing they would check.

However from t'interweb

If your vehicle is not under warranty, the following tips will, in most cases, help fix the Active Brake Assist Functions Limited warning. 

1. Remove all dirt and snow from the front windshield, grill, and bumper. 
2. Activate transport mode and drive vehicle for approx 10 km. The DTC then switches to passive, and the sensor can be calibrated. The Active Brake Assist should recalibrate automatically, and the error clears on its own if the code was due to a dirt issue.
   

I've no idea what DTC is, or how to activate transport mode though.

Thanks so much for looking into it. That’s exactly why I tried to get the car back to see if I could just clean it myself after having a google. 

Update: the manager of the service assistant I was dealing with has called to say that the assistant said he called me beforehand to approve costs and claimed I said yes which I obviously didn’t. So thankfully calls are recorded so they’re going to listen back to it to see if I approved costs although no such call exists. 

Hopefully I should get my car back without cost but no idea how long it will take.

Skuk

chrisw said:

Yes it's typical. 

If you look at it from their side, they've spent an hour doing work on your car so they will want paying for it, especially if you've decided to take it away without having anything else done.

Completely understand that the service needs to be paid for. My issue is that it’s not stated anywhere that investigating an issue isn’t covered under the warranty and nobody informed me that I would be liable. 

The only options I was given is 1. Pay the £130 to get my car back or 2. let them look at the car for 2 more hours and see if they find the issue but risk them still not finding the issue/deciding that the issue was caused by an accident that didn’t happen and pay £390 for 3 hours investigation. 

Please note, I’ve taken my car back when the apple car play wouldn’t work and they couldn’t figure that out either but they didn’t make me pay to investigate.

facade

The accident damage could be from the previous owner. Damage behind the front bumper to the sensor or its mountings could be the problem.

Again, I can't imagine why they wouldn't find that in the hour they've spent already, they just pull the fault codes and then look at what it thinks is faulty

Ibrahim5

I would phone up Mercedes UK and ask if there are any dealers that are competent in fixing Mercedes cars because your dealership is clueless.

Grey_Critic

And assuming that the additional hours asked for does not resolve the problem how many more hours should the OP be asked to approve - 5 - 10 - 20?

Seems to me there is a lack of competency on behalf of the dealership.

EssexExile

Mercedes dealers have a reputation to live down to.

More generally, that's the way things are going in many fields, now you have to pay first and argue later.