Scheduled tune-up turns into joyride for Mercedes-Benz owner

By Adrian Ghobrial

Ever wonder what might be happening to your car when you take it in for service? One Mercedes-Benz owner’s dash camera footage tells a head-turning tale — showing two service centre employees taking his car for a spin.

The footage shows the 2010 Mercedes-Benz S-63 AMG with the hood popped, up on a hoist, for 11 minutes, according to the video’s timestamp. A raw copy of the video was provided to CityNews by the car’s owner, Daniel Sheikhan. He brought his vehicle in to Mercedes-Benz Mississauaga on Mavis Road for a transmission flush.

The footage shows the car leaving the garage, with the driver and a passenger pausing to take his coworkers’ ice cream orders. The car pulls out of the dealership, and shortly after, it makes a stop at a Wendy’s drive through for Frosties. That’s when someone calls the workers from back at the dealership.

A person in the car picks up the phone, and the caller at the dealership reminds the worker that the parts for the service call are in the trunk. Sheikhan had purchased the parts himself.

“Nobody said anything,” says one worker. The other worker tells him that it’s written on the service order, saying, “I read that when I hit print, I started the car for you.”

“How much did this guy save by buying the parts himself?” asks the other service worker.

The first worker later adds, “Thing is, it’s an S-63, you’d think this guy has f-ing money.”

“The f-ing richer they are, the cheaper they are,” says the other worker.

Watch a condensed version of events from Daniel Sheikhan’s dash cam below

Sheikhan says that when he took the car for service back in June 2015, he didn’t set out to film what happened, but decided to check his dash cam after he found residue in his cup holders.

“I took it into the service department and asked if they could clean it up and do something about it,” he says. “They refused the first time. When I got home that day, I said, ‘wait a minute I have a dash camera in the car, let’s see if I got anything.’”

Sheikhan isn’t sure if his service work was properly completed. The dealership handed him a bill for 1.60 hours of work, and he was charged $236.80 before taxes on labour alone. He posted his video on Twitter and did receive a response from Mercedes-Benz’s headquarters in Germany.

They asked him to contact Mercedes-Benz Canada to resolve the situation. Sheikhan says that after he asked them to call him, he never heard back. That’s why Sheikhan says he’s now going public with his story — more than two years after the incident.

Mercedes-Benz Canada did respond to CityNews’s request for comment, saying, “In no way do we condone or tolerate the unacceptable behaviour shown in the video. We investigated this incident when it was originally brought to our attention in 2015 and appropriate actions were taken.”

But Sheikhan says that’s not enough. He says that when he first took the video into the dealership, management asked him if his intention was for someone to lose their jobs. He said it wasn’t.

His hope is to receive a detailed answer about the steps Mercedes is taking to ensure someone doesn’t end up with a similar service experience.

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