r100rsman

Hi,

I am close on a real nice 08 CLK550 Conv. 24k mile with 7 months of factory warranty still left. It's a CPO car so it has an additional 12 months of warranty, with a total of 19 months. I have estimated that a comparable car would be about $1500-2000 less so my question is, is the extra 12 months of CPO worth it. What do you think??

Mka77

Absolutely. The additional cost of a CPO far out weigh the savings of a grand or two. IMHO Do the deal and know you are covered.

Rudeney

I agree. The only alternative is to buy a car w/o CPO, then apply the extra $2K to an aftermarket warranty. The advantage there is you can get a longer warranty, so the "dollars per month" will be less. The advantage of CPO is that there is no arguing and monkey business - since it;s through MBZ, the dealer must honor it and the terms are very clear.

Klinh

Yes. My 2010 C350 came with CPO i bought an additional 2 yrs for $3800. The car now under CPO warranty for 4/125k miles. My 09 Slk55 does not have warranty but I bought an aftermarket warranty for $4000 that cover 4/115K miles. As you can see, you instantly save $$$$ and is the best warranty because, it coverages by Mercedes.

Mka77

Well, that settles that.....

r100rsman

Hey Guys,

I pulled the trigger this afternoon and am now the proud owner of an 08 CLK550 conv. I bought the CPO car and it has 19 months of warranty. I am trilled and the wife loves it. I spent about $600 more than i wanted to but who cares itd such a great car. Thanks everyone for their help.

PS Plus the satellite radio is sill activated.

Schmitty63

congrats! where are the pics?

Yidney

I bought my '08 just about a year ago and keep waiting for the sat radio to stop, but it hasn't yet.

Klinh

The Sat radio on my slk55 is care still active but I didn't really are for it. What's the big deal about Sat radio?

eddieo45

I've had 5 MBs and I don't think I spent $2000 on all of them, other than stuff that wouldn't have been covered: brakes, tires, MAFs, and filters. Granted, each one had near a year of warranty when purchased, and I got a tranny adjustment and a handful of nonsense covered but the cars were good cars. I wanna hear the stories of comped repairs in excess of the CPO differential/warranty cost. If I thought a $1500 warranty was needed I'd buy an Audi.

Rudeney

Congrats on the CLK! And the Sirius radio in my CLK is still going, too. Having been a long-time Sirius subscriber (I think we have 4 or 5 subscribed radios in the family now) I can tell you that Sirius is not very diligent in managing their subscriptions. Unlike Dish/DirecTV satellite TV that require a very frequent "activation" signal to keep working, Sirius radio does not. Instead, it stays active until it specifically gets a kill signal. When you call to cancel a subscription, they send a kill signal, but that's it. If the radio is off when they kill it, it doesn't get the signal and it keeps working when switched on later. They do some periodic housekeeping, but their bandwidth is limited to how many "kills per hour" they can send. So, it becomes a crapshoot - if your radio is on when they send the kill signal for its serial number it dies, otherwise, it keeps going and going. FYI, they seem to like to do housekeeping during popular listening hours - rush hour drive time, sporting events, etc.

eddieo45

That Sat radio info is great Rudeney. My E350 was a former lease car that I bought in 2010, and Sat radio is still active.

Mka77

Congrats on the purchase. Hope the wife enjoys it.

Since I was 16

They took my CPO away in negotiations---which i was too dang tired to notice until i was too dang tired to do anything about it. I still have 12,000 miles on the original warranty and keep asking myself is it worth it to get the extra coverage? I'm in a 350 CLK---thoughts?
and R--congrats! I'm almost 4 weeks in on my ride and L O V E IT!!

Yidney

How many miles will you likely drive it during the the time you have the warranty? Those warraties are so darned expensive that you have to have something pretty major go wrong to make it worhtwhile. I'd like to know the percentage of extended warranties where the owner makes out better than the dealer. You know it's less than 50% right out of the gate or they would not offer them. I'm sure it's waaaay less.

r100rsman

Well I can't speak for anyone else but the extra 12 months or warranty was worth the $1300-1600 more to my wife and me. My factory warranty expires 8/12 and the CPO adds an addtion 12 months from 8/12.

Now to the car. I have put about 150 miles on it this week and the power of the 550 motor is unbelieveable. I traded in an 03 911 and i truly believe the 550 would smoke the 911 off the line in a straight line. I hit the gas hard the other night and the traction control kicked in at about 25 mph, love the power and sound. The rest of the car is quite nice, the convertable is the quietest rag top i have ever owned, but the motor is the star of the car. WOW!

Rudeney

Just wait 'til you wear some tread off the rear tires. You can activate ESP on the 1-2 shift, or just have some fun stepping the rear end out when you hammer it at 25mph with ESP off (maybe you can tell, it's about time for tires on mine ).

Since I was 16

Funny this should come up!
A couple months ago I took my car in...not to the dealer I bought it from..for the 40,000 mile check up. The guy says to me...oh it's a CPO so your good.n I was pretty stunned....as when I bought the car...as part of my "low price" deal, the sales guy AND Finance office both told me I had given up the CPO thru some slight of hand they pulled..and I was not about to give them one more dime and I was too damn tired to fight.
A couple of weeks later I got a survey about my experience and i *****ed about the CPO ...a few days later I got an offer from the same dealer to buy an extended warranty from them. I wrote him back saying it better be the best deal I have ever heard if because it was obvious he had not read my survey and seen how pissed I was.

Well I have no clue how it happened, but when I took my car in I had the guy double and triple check and he said there was no way they could take away the CPO feature once a car had that designation. So I am not sure who won the battle but I sure won the war. . I will say its a load off my mind to have the CPO and a year later I love the hell outta my Benz!

Rudeney

Things have changed a bit since I was involved in this, but it used to be that the car did not get the CPO designation until the customer paid for it. Back then, they could not even designate it as CPO without putting a customer name on the warranty. They would do the inspection, but the actual warranty did not get applied to that VIN until the sale took place. It's possible this has changed now and that CPO can (or must?) be applied to the vehicle before sale. If that is now the case, the dealer was an idiot for telling you it didn't have it - it means you might not bring it to their service department and they would lose that revenue covered by MBUSA. Note that CPO is transferable as long as the car is sold between individuals - if it goes through a dealer, then CPO is lost.

Since I was 16

I have always wondered about that.Rudney..if they could actually "take it away" once it had been marketed as and I was buying it as a CPO. It was literally the last moment that this came up. The sales man worded it oddly....and I was not sure what he meant until I got to finance and it had a big NO CPO on the folder in red. Maybe after my moaning they gave it back? Maybe they saw how far away I lived and would never come to them for service? Maybe it was just a ploy in th first place for me to fork over the extra 1 or 2 grand they wanted on the car? I will never know but I have never had a problem.

CLK550 $wagger

don't mean to hijack but Rudeney are you in second gear when you hammer the throttle to step the back end out?

Rudeney

LOL! Remember, we're talking about worn out tires here but cruising at 25mph, I'm probably in 3rd or maybe 4th, so hammering it would do an initial 2-gear downshift, and that's a lot of quick torque to the tires. And it only does it with ESP totally off (dyno mode). I only wish I could have had a little more fun on those worn out Pirellis, but I had a blowout on the front (due to a road hazard) and just replaced them all at once. I'm probably 10-12K miles away from wearing out the new Michelin Primacies, so hopefully then I can have a little fun.

Rudeney

Like I said, things may have changed, but when I was working for MBZ, the car could be marketed as CPO, but because there was a cost for that warranty, it could be sold as non-CPO if the customer negotiated it out of the price. Now, the retail price of CPO was usually quoted around $2K-$3K, but the actual dealer cost was about $700 (yeah, you gotta love that dealer markup!)