At the end of December 2022, the Mercedes-Benz group has disconnected the Russian service stations from its branded service programs and officially notified the repairers. A little later, at the beginning of January 2023, a number of publications reported that Volkswagen followed the path of the colleagues from Stuttgart. It was expected that the lack of communication with brand servers in Germany would seriously complicate the diagnosis and repair of the Russian Volts and Mercs. But in reality everything turned out very differently.
Portal “AvtoVzglyad” decided to personally check the state of maintenance of cars of German brands. To do this, we pretended to be the owners of popular models and turned to several official dealers with our “technical problems”.
As for Volkswagen, we repaired a 2021 Tiguan with a 2-liter engine and a DSG robot. We came up with two problems for him. The first was the spontaneous shifting of the gearbox to emergency mode, which is indeed a common problem on branded crossovers. The second – for some reason the engine lost power, the car “stopped moving”. Our other virtually broken car, a 2021 Mercedes-Benz E-Class, also had two sores.
First, it was no longer removed from the “handbrake” (a common “glitch” of ABS electronics). And secondly, the touch buttons on the right side of the steering wheel have been completely omitted – adjusting the sound volume of the audio system and operating the hands-free. By the way, this is also a well-known accident of “yes”.
It turned out that somewhere you can call the repair zone literally tomorrow, and somewhere the queue of customers stretched for a couple of weeks. Questions about possible problems with the software during troubleshooting caused some surprise among the chief inspectors of Volkswagen dealers. Like, everything works as always, come and fix it. All spare parts are in stock or can be ordered – the right one will be delivered within a month.
Mercedes-Benz dealers have the same thing: no problems with diagnosis. If the required part is not in stock, it does not matter: it will be delivered from abroad within 60 days. Only in response to a question about warranty repairs, employees of the premium brand service station began to mutter and mumble: “Well, you understand, the Germans behave like this …”.
Our experiment showed that after Russia was disconnected from the proprietary software of Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen, no “end of the world” happened. Yes, everything is noticeably more expensive and longer than last year. But it is possible in our country to repair and maintain cars of both brands as before. At least for now.
At the end of December 2022, the Mercedes-Benz Group has disconnected Russian service stations from its branded service programs and has officially notified repairers. A little later, at the beginning of January 2023, a number of publications reported that Volkswagen followed the path of the colleagues from Stuttgart. It was expected that the lack of communication with brand servers in Germany would seriously complicate the diagnosis and repair of the Russian Volts and Mercs. But in reality everything turned out very differently.
The AvtoVzglyad portal decided to personally check the state of maintenance of German cars. To do this, we pretended to be the owners of popular models and turned to several official dealers with our “technical problems”.
As for Volkswagen, we repaired a 2021 Tiguan with a 2-liter engine and a DSG robot. We came up with two problems for him. The first was the spontaneous shifting of the gearbox to emergency mode, which is indeed a common problem on branded crossovers. The second – for some reason the engine lost power, the car “stopped moving”. Our other virtually broken car, a 2021 Mercedes-Benz E-Class, also had two sores.
First, it was no longer removed from the “handbrake” (a common “glitch” of ABS electronics). And secondly, the touch buttons on the right side of the steering wheel have been completely omitted – adjusting the sound volume of the audio system and operating the hands-free. By the way, this is also a well-known accident of “yes”.
It turned out that somewhere you can call the repair zone literally tomorrow, and somewhere the queue of customers stretched for a couple of weeks. Questions about possible problems with the software during troubleshooting caused some surprise among the chief inspectors of Volkswagen dealers. Like, everything works as always, come and fix it. All spare parts are in stock or can be ordered – the right one will be delivered within a month.
Mercedes-Benz dealers have the same thing: no problems with diagnosis. If the required part is not in stock, it does not matter: it will be delivered from abroad within 60 days. Only in response to a question about warranty repairs, employees of the premium brand service station began to mutter and mumble: “Well, you understand, the Germans behave like this …”.
Our experiment showed that after Russia was disconnected from the proprietary software of Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen, no “end of the world” happened. Yes, everything is noticeably more expensive and longer than last year. But it is possible in our country to repair and maintain cars of both brands as before. At least for now.
Source: Avto Vzglyad
Donald Salinas is an experienced automobile journalist and writer for Div Bracket. He brings his readers the latest news and developments from the world of automobiles, offering a unique and knowledgeable perspective on the latest trends and innovations in the automotive industry.