Hi all,
I thought maybe this would be the place to go to see what can be done about my mom’s situation. For context, last year, in Nov 2022, my mom bought a used, 2018 Smart ForTwo EQ for around 20k. Just a week or two ago, she calls me to tell me her car won’t start, so I ask her to show me what it says, she video calls, and I see something similar to a High Voltage battery error. So we get it towed to her house, and she makes an appt with the Mercedes dealership she bought it from. FF to today, they tell her that it’ll be 23k to replace the battery. Anyone here who might be able to help me figure out what her next steps are? She doesn’t have anywhere near that kind of money on hand, and neither do I.
Just remember that the dealership makes a lot of its money on service, and their techs might not even be that fluent in EV repair. I’d get a second and maybe a third opinion from an independent shop you know is qualified to do the work.
I agree with that. My buddy is a BMW mechanic at the largest BMW dealer in the United States and he is the only mechanic at the dealership who is officially trained on how to work on a EV high voltage battery. This applies to opening it up and fixing coolant lines etc. He said half the techs there can’t even do half the maintenance and trouble shooting for ordinary repairs because they frequently hire techs that haven’t even been to any BMW training classes. Car repairs get backed up at the dealer because of this. He said Penske is bunch of cheapskates that continually cut back on flag hours on a repair. So, he makes 35% less than he did 10 years ago. Pretty sad. Mercedes is in the same boat with their techs.
Yeah that’ll be the next option if Mercedes tells her to kick dirt.
Waaaaaayyyyyyy too many people at the Mercedes dealerships are dumb as rocks about EVs.
I showed them I was even dumber by buying (not leasing) an E250, even after they repeatedly tried to sell me a “lifetime oil change” package.
NEVER trust the word of a Mercedes dealer on EVs
Dealerships pretend and do whatever they can to line their pockets.
I can easily say they are right after realtors in the race of “should be killed by the internet, buttttttt, I’m still waiting….”
I have heard of the lifetime oil change quote at other dealerships when buying an EV. It’s typically the salesmen who say this because they typically know less about all the cars they sell than the average consumer. Dealerships do not properly train their people either. So, half the folks are a box of rocks when it comes to knowledge about the vehicles they sell and service.