Friday 14/12/2007 - I drove to work and my headlights were fine. On the way home I stopped to collect Mark and all his accumulated junk as he's finished the first semester at Uni and over the break they wanted the students rooms. So all his stuff into the back of hatchback. I noticed that the n/s/f headlight was on but pointing at the ground 10 feet in front of the car and not up the road as it should. A quick poke around and decided to phone my local franchise dealer to see if they could fit me in on Saturday morning. Success.
Today - Saturday. Up bright and early to drop car off as they were going to "fit it in" to their busy morning schedule. Went back at 13:00 to collect. "Sorry Mr Cooper, it needs a new headlight and we've not got one in stock, but, I can get you one in for Wednesday"
OK! Now I really do need a car for Thursday for a trip to Norwich - can you get me a price for the job?
So off he goes and comes back nearly 10 minutes later....
"That'll be £852 + VAT for the headlight, including today and then fitting the total will be £1187.00". I've paid less than that for a f**k**g car!
The car is.... a Mercedes C220 CDi Sport Coupe (their equivalent to the BMW Compact / VW Golf) and the problem is that it has Xenon headlights.
The really anoying bit about it is that the headlight works on both dip and main beam, but Xenon headlights "dip" down and pop back up when switch on (I'm told its something do with pre-heating them) - and the n/s/f is stuck in the dipped down position - hence lighting the road for all of 10 feet.
Think I'll sell the car, trade it in for an Astra diesel, coz I ain't paying that sort of money on a headlight. No way Jose!
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