Ebay, Dronsfields and other

First of all, just to say that I am delighted to be an active part of this forum and that so many posters love it as much as I do. To me, it's been a welcome change compared with my other role as the administrator of the GWOA e-mailing list, where I had in the past to endure the abuse of some incoherent members who would give me their e-mail address - to keep them informed, I would assume- just to accuse me afterwards of sending them spasm mail and to ask me to remove them from the list. The beauty of this forum is that by the time you've reached this, you have somehow expressed your interest in reading it so you cannot blame the author for being too boring or for writing about something for which you have no interest whatsoever!

Well, to the point: A few weeks ago I backed on to my neighbour's Defender front bumper with my C-180 T and screwed the N/S rear lamp. It wasn't too badly damaged, but enough for such a hopeless perfectionist as myself to want to replace it as soon as possible. Trouble is that being a Finance Director, I wasn't very keen os spending £ 120 in a new unit from MB so it was dutifully included in the list of "to do" jobs. At about the same time I started to navigate into the realm of internet auctions, after I learnt of such happy adventures from the King of Ebay (aka Greeney), but being on the prudent side, I never dared to bid for any article, just went there to gauge the prices and stuff.

This, until I saw a brand new N/S rear lamp for a W202 estate in Ebay with two hours to go, no bidders and a reserve of just £20. I obviously had to bid for that, I did and won the item, which was delivered to my door for just £6 extra.

After such a happy experience, I decided to become more active in my Ebay endeavours. I was after a better steering wheel for my W463 because the one fitted to the car was a bit worn out at the top. I went to ebay saw this beautiful leather airbag-style steering wheel from a late 190E and spent a few days bidding for it, but there was a bidder clearly much more experienced than I in these matters who eventually won the item (though I believe that I made him pay dearly for it, since it went for £ 50 + p&p).

At this stage, I wasn't to be deterred of having a steering wheel sinilar to the one in the pic. This is the latest non-airbag steering wheel fitted to a G-Wagen and to me it is the best looking of them all. Trouble is that it was fitted to just a few G-Wagens in 1993 and a few more W201 (190's) and W124 (older E-class) and it's not that easy to find in good nick - least in leather as I wanted. In any event, I decide to give it a try with Dronsfields Mercedes Benz http://www.dronsfields.co.uk/, company that the GWOA has endorsed for a number of years, though I've never dealt with before.

And hey, presto, after I had sent an e-mail inquiring for the availability of the part (with the picture above attached to avoid misundesrtandings) I received an e-mail confirming that they had "a very nice leather steering wheel from a 190/124 for £ 50.00 all in (including VAT and next day delivery). I rang them to accept the offer, pay with credit card and said that I was e-mailing them with my full postal adress, which I did, requesting them to confirm that everything was OK and that the item was being despatched that same day. Shortly after I rang Ian Dronsfield (the boss apparently, who had taken my order before) and asked him to confirm that the steering wheel was the leather one, which he did over the phone. That was last Monday.

From the begining things did not go as expected: they never confirmed receiving the e-mail and when I rang them to check I had to chase them for three or four calls which they never returned. Then I spent most of Wednesday and Thursday chasing them to find out why had I not received the wheel and whether there was a problem with the address they had sent the item to.

Many, many calls later in which I was delightfully called "love" by the lady at their telephone switchboard and where I did not understand anything spoken in that northernly accent, I managed to speak with Ian once again, who assured me that there wasn't a problem with my postal address since they had taken it from the my e-mail. A few more calls later (this was Friday afternoon) I was given the TNT telephone and reference numbers and I rang this company, only to find out that the address thay had been given was incorrect! After a protracted negotiation with the TNT guy, he assured me that I'd receive the item on Saturday morning "before 12 noon".

At that point I was incensed with Dronsfields. Not because They'd made a mistake - which is human to make- but because they so arrogantly declined to consider that the address they had given to TNT could be wrong. I wrote an e-mail to Ian Dronsfield complaining about the poor service -well within office hours on Friday afternoon- but I never got any reply to this one.

Finally, the wheel arrived at 10 AM on Saturday and I was -briefly- over the moon, like a child with new shoes as we say in Spain. I said briefly, because as I opened the wrapping I realised that the steering wheel, albeit of the same desgin as the one ordered was finished in plastic! I was fuming..... but then remembered another traditional Spanish saying which goes along the lines of "a bad deal is better than the best of lawsuits"....

All of a sudden that "Del Boy" part in me woke up and I resolved to write to Dronsfields telling them about my dissapointment for not having received the right leather steering wheel despite having insisted on that. I however reckoned that it would cost them at least £30 in postage alone for me to return the plastic wheel and for them to send the leather one and said that I would be happy to accept a discount of £25 instead to keep the plastic one. Which they have accepted.

I am sure that my (at least initially) poor impression of Dronsfields service has to be an example of bad luck. Such a reknowned company must have based its growth over these years in sterling customer service and I am sure that I shall use them in the future.

I have just fitted the wheel to my G and apart from looking fantastic it's got smaller diameter and it's thicker and much nicer to use. And at the end of the day, I reckon that I'll be better off with the plastic version, since I am into cycling and off-road driving and some other activities which lead to dirty hands and it would be a shame to soil such a beautiful item.

All this is just to communicate that I am enjoying running an older car and doing it, if not cheaply in absolute terms, in more economically convenient terms than otherwise. Slowly but surely, I am improving my G without spending a bunch of cash.