Flanker

As I just came back from our ED trip, I thought I'd share some details and answer questions, if any.

Getting to Stuttgart:
If not flying directly into Stuttgart, you can easily get there by train from, either Frankfurt am Main (FRA) or Munich (MUC). Frankfurt is easier, as you can catch the train straight from the airport - takes about 1:30 to get to stuttgart
Due to prior arrangements, we flew into Munich, had to take the train into the city (40 minutes) and then transfer to the train to Stuttgart (2:15)
When arriving in Stuttgart, note a huge rotating Mercedes star on top of the train station - you have arrived

Hotel:
We stayed at Graf Zeppelin. It's directly across the street from the train station (if walking off the train platform, exit through the right side of the station building. Hotel is wonderful, rooms are in excellent shape and beautifully appointed. Even though we had 2 windows facing a busy intersection, soundproofing was amazing. Breakfast buffet was one of the best I've seen. Staff was very helpful (they acknowledged us as Mercedes customers and seemed to be excited about us picking the new car). They also helped to make sure that the taxi in front of the hotel accepted the voucher.

Getting to Sindelfingen:
We checked out, left our luggage at the hotel and started going at ~9am on a Tuesday. City had a bit of traffic, with even more traffic on the highway (due to some minor construction), so it took us ~45 minutes to get to the Customer Center in Sindelfingen.

At the Customer Center:
There's a Welcome desk to the left as you walk in. We stopped by and told the young lady that we are picking up the car. She immediately escorted us to one of the 6 booths in the back, where we were greeted by a very professional woman, who spoke perfect English. She asked for a confirmation of order paper and my passport. All the paperwork was ready in a small white folder. She explained every piece of paper (registration, insurance, german tax papers, etc). She inquired if we were interested in the Factory tour (which we were) and gave us 2 cards for the 10:30 tour. I also had to remind her to give us tickets to Mercedes Museum in Stuttgart. This all took about 15 minutes. She told us that there's not enough time to deliver the car before the tour, so they would schedule it for 1:00 (after we did the tour and had lunch). The delivery center is in the right wing of the building and we could see about 20 cars parked on the floor. At that time, our car was not there yet.
Looked like we were the only ones from overseas getting our car, the rest of them had German license plates.
The left side of the building has a gift shop (fairly expensive), a small museum with couple small movie auditoriums and a "Daimler" restaurant with the "lounge area". You need to hang out by the museum/movie theaters area by 10:30, as there's no loud announcement for the tour - we just saw a bunch of people starting to walk towards one of the movie theaters and joined them.

Factory Tour:
The Tour started with a 10-minute video overview of the history and the plant. Then they distributed the safety goggles and we walked outside and got onto a bus, which took us through the plant. We visited 2 areas - final assembly line for S-class/Maybach (where most of the work is done by hand) and a Body welding line for E-class (where almost everything is done by robots). The tour guide was very knowledgeable and enthusiastic and answered a lot of questions. I'm not going into details, so that I don't spoil the experience for you. Overall a great tour. Took ~1:35.

Delivery:
Got back to the Customer Center and we didn't feel hungry yet (or were too excited), so we went to the right side of the building and saw our car parked in the front row. Asked the attendant if we can get delivery right away (instead of 1:00) and he said yes, he just needed to find an english-speaking person. 5 minutes later, a young gentleman named Oscar arrived with our papers, greeted us and took us to the car. He affixed a "D" sticker to the rear window (showing that the car is registered in Germany - as the tourist plates don't show that), went over basic setup and functions (which, as the current MB owner, I was all familiar with) and in 20 minutes we were done. There was a warning sticker label on the central console, which he couldn't peel off, so he told us he would take the car in the prep room and have them remove the sticker while we had lunch.

Lunch:
Lunch is served at the Daimler restaurant in the far left corner of the building.
it's a high-end restaurant. We had 2 appetizers, 2 entries, water, 2 glasses of wine and a coffee. Total bill came to 68 euro (so we had to pay 3 euro, as 65e is covered by the voucher). Oscar from the delivery center came to the restaurant and brought us our key, saying that the sticker was removed and we were good to go. As soon as we finished lunch, we went back to the delivery room to find our car parked on the side, got in and drove out.

This, pretty much, concludes the delivery story. I'm not gonna go into describing the Mercedes Museum in Stuttgart. It's an awesome place and everyone should visit. There's also a Porsche museum nearby, but we were afraid of offending our new car, so we chose not to go

General notes:
Gasoline (petrol, benzin):
Usually, every gas station has 4 fuel brands (2 diesel, 95-octane and 98-octane). Oscar at the delivery center said we should use "Super" (95, green label). During or trip, the price was between 1.24e/litre (in Germany) and 1.68e/litre in Italy. So a full tank will run you about $100-120

Tolls:
Most of the highways in Europe are toll roads. In France, our credit cards didn't work in the toll machines, but they did in Italy. Having a stack of 10 and 20-euro bills worked like a charm

Money:
Credit cards (VS/MC) are accepted almost everywhere.
Make sure you get a credit card with no foreign transaction fee, otherwise you'll get charged an extra 3% for every transaction.

Same goes with your ATM/Bank card. There are banks, which don't charge extra conversion fee for taking cash out of ATM. Do your research (or ask questions). ATM is your best way of getting cash (not the currency exchange at the airport )


The attached pictures:

Vew of Stuttgart train station from the Graf Zeppelin hotel.
Room at the Graf Zeppelin hotel
Left side of the Customer center - mini museum
Right side (delivery room) of the Customer center
With my new car
Gas station in France, showing what's available

Gary From LA

Congratulation and THANK YOU!!! for excellent write up.

CliffJumper

Thanks! I can't wait for my delivery next week.

Congrats on the new car.

mdsbuc

Flanker, thanks for this very nice report. I'm just sick that I had to cancel my ED, so reading the report was a little difficult for me personally. Perhaps that will come at another time. Fortunately we have not cancelled our trip and our flight out leaves tomorrow. The car looks beautiful and I look forward to seeing some photos of your Euro vacation!

Btw, I forgot to say "Congrats!" Also, I think your report is the first "current" ED report on our new little forum. Congrats on that too!

mdsbuc

Btw, Flanker, since we will be driving quite a bit in France, I'm wondering if your cards are chipped. We had trouble with the tolls on our last trip to France, but at that time our cards were not chipped. We're hoping for better results now that they are.

Flanker

All of our cards are chipped. But they are still not accepted in France. I think French Toll systems don't accept credit cards (VS/MC/AX) period.
BTW, USA Financial institutions chose inferior "Chip and Signature" technology, which makes it impossible to use at unattended POS terminals. European banks use "Chip and PIN".

Best of luck on your trip and don't despair about your cancelled ED. There will be another time.

mdsbuc

We just went through the process of setting up pins for all of our chipped credit cards. We're keeping our fingers crossed that they might work, but will carry cash as you suggest. We're over there for three and a half weeks, but won't be in France until we're eleven days in. I hope to update this thread with the results we get with the chipped and pinned cards.

Thanks for your good wishes. We plan to enjoy ourselves on the trip and hope that you are right about the chance for an MB ED down the road.

CliffJumper

Are you sure that these are PINs for European card readers? I thought all American cards are chip & sigs and the PIN is simply so you can use your CC as an ATM card in emergencies.

If this is a different type of PIN, how are you doing it? I'd love to have a proper chip+PIN card.

Flanker

Supposedly, some of the Barclaycards support Chip+PIN:
https://www.barclaycardus.com/servic...rd?legacy=true

CliffJumper

Wow, that's great. Thanks for sharing.

mdsbuc

We're not sure, but will find out and let you know.

Flanker

For those of you, who plan to drop off the car outside of Sindelfingen, be prepared to wait.
Looks like my car is still sitting in the parking garage in Zurich. It's been a week already

mdsbuc

We've been back from our 3-1/2 week trip for a little over a week now. We used our chipped "and pinned" cards throughout the trip. We used the cards in Germany, Denmark, Sweden, France and Switzerland. We used them at the toll booths on French and Danish highways, at bank machines, parking lot machines, restaurants, museums, other attractions and the like. I think maybe once we were asked to enter a pin number, otherwise they just worked.

In restaurants and such, signatures were usually required. At machines and toll booths, signatures were not required. The one exception to all this was my Amex card, that occasionally did not work, and in those cases we just switched to another card. Overall we didn't have much in the way of problems, especially when compared to previous trips.

Flanker

mdsbuc, Thanks for the update ! Hope you had a wonderful trip

mdsbuc

Thank you, we did; with the exception of one hiccup. I hope to detail that one day next week.