Mercedes Replacement Glass - Huge Bill

[Tomgc61]

Rear window on my 2014 E class estate shattered while parked at home. No obvious reason! Rung Autoglass as directed by insurance company. No technician available for two weeks to fix it so insurance company approved Mercedes doing the work, upped the cover to £500 and said send them bill for the replacement. Picked the car up today and was presented with a bill for £850 including the VAT. Insurance company say they will honour the £500 minus my excess and will not deal with the VAT so I have about half that to pay.

Apparantely Autoglass charge the insurance company £200 for the same job which is odd as the part alone was shown on the Mercedes bill as being £400 plus VAT plus £50 worth of adhesive plus wiper arm for some reason. Plus labour @ £270

Worth arguing with anybody about this?

Edited by Tomgc61 on Thursday 21st May 17:32

[Tomgc61]

Yes I think you are right. I have to say when they told me it was £200 cost from Autoglass I assumed that Mercedes couldn't be much more than twice that.

[Tomgc61]

Limpet said:

If it shattered for no reason, shouldn't Mercedes be investigating / picking up the bill?

Good point but I'd have to prove that that happened - which it did.

[Tomgc61]

750turbo said:

Bloody Hell! Is this the rear door drop glass?

Don't suppose you have the Part Number to hand....?

The line on the invoice is MA212 740 13 00 and 040218/ (022) Its the rear door in tinted privacy glass, heated.

[Tomgc61]

Thanks for the replies. It's all a bit of a nightmare. I was a bit surprised that Autoglass quoted me close to two weeks. They had the glass but no fitter available. Mercedes refused to use the Autoglass part as they said it was not up to standard and couldn't guarantee it. Not sure why they had to replace the wiper arm and blade but that was not a huge cost and maybe they thought good practice with a new piece of glass.

It was pouring with rain while I was dealing with this and I really needed the car and so I feel slightly to blame. Ironically my other car is a one year old Defender and my wife took that into town while I was sorting this out. She rung me to say she couldn't start it half an hour later. That is now in Land Rover awaiting a complete new alarm module which is on back order.

Not really been my week.

[Tomgc61]

Sheepshanks said:

It sounds like you sorted all this out for yourself, but I'd be having a go at the insurance company. They're supposed to take the drama out of a crisis, not turn it into a nightmare. Especially one which costs you hundreds of pounds.

I think what I have a bit surprising is that the insurance company claim to have absolutely no knowledge of the prices the manufacturers charge for the glass. I would have thought that if you are dealing with many hundreds of claims on a weekly basis then you would have constructed some kind of a database of information. This would have allowed them to say - "we are happy to increase our limit to £500 as you are forced to use a main dealer for your repair but that based on our previous experience this will not be sufficient to cover the costs. We advise you to discuss this with the garage and obtain a quotation ahead of the repairs".

There will be a reason why they don't bother I don't doubt.

[Tomgc61]

IATM said:

You do know the vast majority of the time autoglass don't use genuine oem parts? They are essentially aftermarket parts?

As for the quality of aftermarket screens/windows that has discussed quite a bit online.

Write it off to experience.

Interesting to know what the difference in actual quality is. massive price differential.

As you correctly say, log this one to experience and move on!!

[Tomgc61]

RenOHH said:

Yet somehow the general population seem to have been brainwashed to believe that they are "tanks", "bulletproof" etc. I can't fathom it. They are all very average, with the exception of Porsche.

Yes and as I discovered while in conversation with the dealer who took the opportunity to sell me a new car, it has devalued in 18 months and 14,000 miles by exactly 50%

[Tomgc61]

Sheepshanks said:

Blimey! What was that?

What was what?