Yeah, I figured it was worth a shot. The dealership said that they could not do a better deal than what they already offered. I had the car towed to a shop that could do it for $800 that I have used before for Mercedes work. They have the Star System and such so it should not be any problem.

 

I waited 3 weeks for myne at respectable dealer. They had somebody from headoffice after the fix to program EIS & keys, they replaced the EIS, but in the end it was the ESL-lock(Dates on statement) & I must provide proof of identity and ownership as well as proof of puchase and on top of it, I bought the car new from them. So if they don't fiddle with the EIS, all this is probably not necassary. It was probably the 1st one they dealt with at that stage(still under guarantee).
Do not how this is done by your country, and what may happen if programming becomes necassary.

 

I did have to provide my Drivers License, Insurance, Registration as well as Title for the car to get the parts from the dealership so that the shop could start the work.

 

there are tutorials online that show you how to pull out the part(s) and there are services online that do the fix for a fraction of the cost that you can find on ebay with reviews on services rendered. if your electronic steering lock is the culprit then you should also repair/fix the electronic ignition system. if one fails then the other is not far behind. i paid for mine to get fixed (1900) then kicked myself in the butt because they did a crappy job by not properly programing the esl. So the car turns on but none of the driving security features work like esp because of this. not only is it easy to remove but you also get the satisfaction of knowing what was actually done to your car.

 

A bit of an update.

The car was finished this morning and I picked it up without problems. Everything is working like normal again. The total cost was $844. It was done at a service shop outside of the Mercedes dealership but the guy that runs it is a former Mercedes technican and has the computer systems to work on Mercedes vehicles.

 

Hi, ask him if the quality of the replacement parts are better than the originals, just curious to know if I can forget of myne.

 

The parts were purchased from my local Mercedes Dealership. I had to provide them a bunch of paperwork before they would give him the parts. Title, Registration, Ect.