Unscrupulousness?

I have always been very diligent about my cars’ maintenance needs. I prefer German cars over Japanese because you only to send them to service workshops once a year.

My C class in Kuala Lumpur is about 7 years old, but it has clocked up less than 60,000 km. After the warranty period was over, I decided to do the yearly maintenance outside. German Motors in Petaling Jaya appears professional, I did the first two there. The last was done a year ago and the mileage recorded was around 53,000 km then. The service job included a full inspection. The car was given a clean bill of health.

Since it was time to do another service, I duly booked another appointment and sent it to the workshop for a routine job yesterday.

What happened next was most unwelcome.

The workshop sent me a WhatsApp message and said that a number of parts needed to be replaced because they had been “badly” damaged. The quotation came to about MYR 16,500, not excluding the service job of about MYR 1,200 which they had already done.

Madness!

I was away for about seven months of last year and the car had clocked up less than 7,000 km since the last job. How could things have fallen apart so badly when it had always been used in city conditions? And there was nothing to indicate that the car was in need of any repair. No unusual sound and the ride was smooth.

I asked German Motors not to proceed. I also told them my opinion. The supervisor had no answer, save to say that he had been informed by his shopfloor colleagues that the replacements were necessary. And he went on to say that he might have misused the term “badly damaged”, which it should be “worn out”.

I thought he lacked credibility and took the car back.