I posted here a month or so ago about the sudden lack of dash lights and tail lights on my 06. Believe it or not, I managed to confine my travels to daylight hours until this past Friday, when I finally took it to a dealership to let them look at it. What a service horror story!

Took the car in Friday; the guy called me and said a connector to the fuse block had shorted out. Replacement connector and computer reprogramming = $120. (My warranty is gone, but he said the warranty wouldn't have covered it anyway.) I spent the evening at a friend's house, relieved that I didn't have to rush home at sunset. When I got in the car around 8 that night, I noticed that I still had no dash lights. Got out and looked - still no tail lights either.

After several angry phone calls, the owner of the dealership called me at home and promised to fix it at no additional cost to me. No mention of the fact that his service tech LIED to me and charged me money without actually doing any work to the car! So I was supposed to take it back this morning, and lo and behold, their attempts to "rig" the connector caused the entire fuse block to go out. Rollback came to take the car in.

So I'm in a rental car until tomorrow, when the new fuse block is supposed to be here. They're eating the cost of the rental and the fuse block since this probably wouldn't have happened if the problem had been fixed in the first place. Or maybe the fuse block was causing the short and it would have eventually needed replacement, who knows?

Anyway, I thought I would post this in case anyone else has the same problem. I can't believe my year-old car had this kind of issue after 38,000 miles - makes me wonder if the carfax report was forged and it had been in a wreck. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be back in my (operational) HHR - the 07 Monte Carlo they let me drive totally sucks!

 

Wow...sounds like a nightmare to me. Really is irritating when you get charged for something and it's not done. Please keep us upadated on how things are when you pick it up again.

 

im a tech for mercedes an when i hear stories like this it makes me cringe. if i say i am charging you for a repair, i do the repair. those techs who pull that kind of crap should have the wrench tken away from them. if you a tech on here and good one who has all the ase's along with the maker certicicatation you know what im talking about.

 

Good luck hope everything works out for you

 

Thanks, guys, glad to know I'm not the only one who thought this was poor service.

I took the rental back today and didn't think I would ever get my car. There was only one girl at the rental place, so she couldn't leave to take me to the dealership, and the dealership said they were "too busy" to pick me up. The girl actually asked a random guy (he was in there asking about renting a car) if he could give me a ride! I called the dealership and told them they had better spare someone to pick me up, even if it meant driving MY car to do it! A guy finally showed up and took me the whopping 3 blocks, where there were probably 10 service techs sitting around talking. Too busy my foot!

I made one of the techs pull my car into one of the bays so the lights would be visible, and miraculously, they all work now. The work is guaranteed for a year - you wouldn't believe how indignant he looked when I asked. I guess I'm still a stupid girl who doesn't know anything in their eyes.

 

Sounds like you did great!