munis

So this issue is really pissing me off right now. From the second day, I got my car. I had noticed a lot of condensation in the headlights, both of them. So I followed up immediately with my sales rep and he just told me it is normal and just wait for it to disappear. I also came here and opened a thread about it. You guys suggested to wait for it to go away as well.

But the condensation keeps coming back every now and then and last weekend it got so bad that the condensation entered the left headlight control assembly and I am getting all sorts of error codes now. The error messages were from both the headlights. And took pictures of all the warnings and the condensation.


Around a month ago I sent it to the dealership to have them look at it. According to repair procedure, they cannot just replace it. They have to put a desiccant gel inside the headlamp assembly and see if that takes care of it first. Fair enough, they did that. And this weekend the condensation came back again and wrecked havoc on the electronics this time.

So I sent the car to the dealership again, hoping this time they will change the frigging lamps, but no, they apparently found a rock chip on the headlight assembly, so they probably cannot warranty it. Like WHAT THE FUDGE! I have been complaining about this darn thing from the day I got the car! Rock chips happen as you drive the frigging car on the road! And it is so small by the looks of it in the picture that it is absolutely ridiculous to think it is passing any moisture. It does not even look like it goes to the other side. They said they will try but it does not look like Mercedes is going to honor the warranty. Even though I had the entire problem documented from the beginning. And each headlamp is like 3000 dollars! WOW!

What am I driving here? A Hyundai? Because even when I had my Sonata, I never had to deal with such utter crap! Really really frustrated right now. I have made several of my friends move over to Merc in the last couple of months. If I knew this was the quality of the service dept, I would have thought twice before recommending the C43 to my friends.

PS: Have been dealing with Mercedes London, Ontario. Seems to be better than MB Brampton but still causing me a lot of headaches.

RichardCranium3

Might be worth it to contact MB corporate since it's been an ongoing issue from the get-go. I've personally had great success going this route with my Tacoma in the past and have heard the same from other manufacturers. Toyota takes this kind of contact very seriously which in turn usually lights a fire under the dealership because complaints like this hurt their chances at fancy-dancy dealer awards.

Just be calm and concise with your experience and what you expect to be done about the situation and I bet you'll have success.

unr1

Which headlights do you have?

munis

adaptive projector ones. Like the one with 2 separate lenses.

mo11

This happened to me twice. First on my w211 w/ bixenon back in 2005. That happened within the first year. The dealer replaced it no questions asked. The second was on my w204 also with bixenon. That happened on the 3rd year. Still within warranty. I would let the condensation dry up. But, eventually the projector lens on both left and right had like a dried up tear maybe from the condensation all those years of rain and washing. The dealer pushed back on that, so i called mbusa corporate. They told me to talk to the service manager. They ended up replacing both headlights. I have to pay for the labor to install they said. I called corporate again and again they told me to go back to the service manager. In the end i paid 50% for the install, but got brand new headlights.
Btw, my headlights didn't have any chips or scratches.

Ali Shahini

Kinda off topic but on the single torch LED Headlights is the high beam Led too or is it halogen ?

munis

Both of them are projectors.

munis

Just following up. MB decided to honor the warranty in the end. Both the headlights will be replaced thank fully. I should mention though that my service adviser was really an angel to deal with, haha. He got this in line for me and got it fixed. Also I filled out a survey which apparently goes straight to the head office. That really got it escalated.