jonquiljo

We have had a 2005 E-320 for about 4 years now. It came with the standard DVD navigation system. For the first few years, it worked wonderfully - no problems - none whatsoever. About 6 months ago the nav system started to make mistakes - a left when it should have been a right, no warning to turn off on freeway exits, turning out of a parking lot, it cannot find the street even though you are in the middle of it, etc. The unit seems to have gotten senile.

OK ... I bring the car to my local Mercedes dealership and tell them the problem and the look it over for a day. They can't retrieve any error codes, so there is no problem in their minds. I am not imagining the ever increasing mistakes so I call MBUSA and complain - they connect me with tech service people who agree it is wierd problem, and they will "push" the dealer to look further. First they give me a 2008 update disk to try - no difference. I then bring it in for a second try - they have it for 5 days. The dealership says that the routes that I have taken and reported as incorrect, do not route them incorrectly. Frankly, I believe them, the problem is erratic and mostly irreproducable.

The very nature of the problem is that the Nav unit is toally unreliable, and therefore useless. My wife is disabled and I do not want her driving around with a disability and the ability to get sent in the middle of nowhere at a moments notice. The dealership confides in me that they do not get paid by MBUSA for warranty work, unless they find a bona-fide reproducable problem. So we are all stuck between rocks and a hard place. I know it is erratic and undependable - and have no reason to keep bringing it back other than to get it fixed. Of course MBUSA won't take my word for it, so nothing ever happens.

I'm going to give them one more shot at it (I found another route that it cannot navigate to - a really basic mistake). If they cannot reproduce the problem and/or replace the unit, I will pay them cash to do it anyway. I am at wits end.

Has anyone heard about these problems in any other vehicle? How have they been resolved? Any ideas as how I might proceed. I am losing my patience with these people. Thanks.

Polar Bear

Can you describe exactly what it is doing in more detail? You said "it cannot find the street even though you are in the middle of it, etc." Does this mean that when you are in Map view that it is showing you off road?

I would think that it would be the GPS antenna at first glance.

The logic in the navigation should not change - it's a computer program, so I would think the input values the navigation unit is receiving is what's off.

konigstiger

Dealer was correct in replacing map DVD to current version as a first step. This would solve illogical or incorrect navigation routing errors due to highway HOV lanes per DTB P-B-82.85/602b. However, your error(s) are a bit more complex and therefore I suggest you instruct/request your dealer open an EDAC case and record case # on your invoice for future reference. MBUSA will now approve the replacement of parts for precaution even if it comes down to process of elimination (unlikely) and monitor all related repairs.

Aside, while they have the vehicle request a COMAND headunit/AGW update referencing P-B-82.60/382b utilizing service disc (special tool) W211589142200. This will improve reliability, add ETA and telephone signal strength to display, and mute navigation voice with mute button.

PM your email address if you want DTB copies to support your claim.

jonquiljo

konigstiger: I have sent you a PM.

Polar Bear: The best I can say is that it is erratic. It seems as if the antenna is OK - and it has been checked out.

A few days ago, I had an instance where it insisted to take me to the wrong address - or rather the wrong way down the correct street. My Porsche nav, a Garmin nuvi, Mapquest, and Google Maps all gave correct directions.

It has to be the way the nav unit is interpreting the data. I am guessing a minor component failure that does not cause the system to "crash" and therfore does not spit out fault codes to the dealership. But the dealership is so clueless that they cannot get beyond the fact that they have no fault codes.

This unit worked wonderfully for the first three years - and now it is totally unreliable. It has done left instead of right kind of mistakes more often than not lately. But since the dealer will not get paid by Mercedes unless it fixes a problem, they are reluctant to spend any time troubleshooting the issue.

Untertürkheim

Even though it should never come to this, have you tried bringing a video camera to record the nav failure?

Polar Bear

When it is malfunctioning, does it show your vehicle off-road, or just the routing intelligence is flawed?

You said it tells you to turn wrong directions - what does it do if you follow the turn it indicates? Does it ask you to make a U-turn, or does it make you take a long route to the destination? Does it get you there at all?

jonquiljo

It shows me on road - but will do things like tell me to take a left turn in the middle of a freeway overpass - or tell me to go the wrong way down the right street. I will leave the parking lot of a hotel and go into the main road - and the unit will just sit there - it won't tell me to turn left or right. I finally choose the direction, and after a few hundred yards the navigation will kick in with the directions. Sometimes it tell me to get onto one freeway, then realizes it is the wrong one and tells me to get off the freeway, turn around and go back the way I came. At that point, I broke out the portable, because the Mercedes Nav is clearly messed up and I didn't have time to experiment any longer.

Polar Bear

Not sure what to tell you on that - it does seem the navigation processor is having problems. Since the COMAND is merely a display for the navigation processor in the trunk, I would bet the navigation processor has went bad. I would follow konigstiger's advice and get MBUSA to open up a case on it.

Like you said, you would not be wasting your time going to the dealer if there was no problem. They should eventually just start replacing parts to try to rectify the situation if you are persistent enough with them and MBUSA.

jonquiljo

Well, I am getting a call back from some specialist at MBUSA tomorrow. But given that my dealer seems intent in figuring out why the unit is acting like garbage rather than taking my word for it and trying to diagnose and fix it - I'm not going to hold my breath.

With my latest problem, the dealer says that the new 2008 maps give a wider range of house numbers to look for - so it goes to the beginning of the range and tells you are there. Now, in this case its bringing you the wrong way away from your real destination - 3 blocks!

This seems a bit antiquated for a Mercedes to call state-of-the art. You can take the cheapest Garmin portable and it will accept a house number and not make you select a range, but rather it brings you pretty damn close to your destination. My Porsche will do the same thing as will every other navigation unit I have ever seen.

Why do the Mercedes systems only bring you to a "range" of addresses? It seems terribly inaccurate and outdated is putting it mildly?

Now I still believe my unit is failing. But if I am going to spend three or more thousand dollars to replace all the components (Mercedes does not want to admit any problem - they think I am a freak) - it seems ludicrous if all the Mercedes navigation can come up with is a range of house numbers when everyone else can come up with a closer approximation. I guess the saying is "throwing good money after bad."

Is this a function of a 2005 unit? Is it perhaps a bit different on 2006, 7, or 8? The 2009 is a totally different system - I read somewhere that was designed by Apple Computer - perhaps because the current Mercedes systems were garbage by today's standards.

So I am now sitting contemplating how to make a nice car that has many many more years left on it, have anything but a totally piece of junk for a navigation unit. There seem to be no aftermarket solutions - so we are left with what Mercedes gives us - which now seems to be a joke - unless you buy a 2009 vehicle.

Any ideas? It seems that putting a portable Garmin unit on the dash is looking better and better as an option - not because of the price, but because Mercedes can't make anything electronic that won't be "has-been" garbage after a few years.

Polar Bear

My unit will allow a house number and gets extremely close at guessing the location of the number.

Mine has never failed to do what it was designed to do - to get me to my location. I have compared it to removable navigation devices and personally found the MB navigation much better suited for the job.

If you are persistent I feel sure they will eventually address the problem.

Barry45RPM

Part of the reason they want to find out what is causing your problem rather that simply R&R your drive is to see if there is some incompatability with DVD/Drive or some other recent change which needs to be addressed in the design area. Its cheaper for them to R&R, but it may not solve a systemic problem. Bear with them.

cyclrder

I purchased the 08 dvd for my car...

it turned out to not even work on my system.. they replaced either the DVD reader or possibly the whole NAV system.... I still have an issue with the system not booting up.

Polar Bear

Which version did you upgrade from?

cyclrder

it was an 06 DVD ... can't remember what version

jonquiljo

Well, they replaced the trunk unit and all is very much better. I even forgot how many things that the nav system used to do that it stopped doing. It now announces turns before they occur, etc. The whole thing is very very different.

Its funny - I complained and complained to MB and the dealer about the problem and everyone insisted that the nav unit checked out correctly. After many weeks and days in the shop, they reluctantly put in a new nav (trunk) unit - expecting to have to take it out when it didn't change the problem. Not true!

I guess they need to listen to their customers first and then their ridiculous test equipment.

What I don't understand is that their electronics technician drove the car when it wasn't working correctly for over 2 hours and didn't notice obvious things like it rarely, if ever announced turns before they were to happen, etc.- and sometimes when it was too late to turn. What was he doing during all that driving? In hindsight, it now seems like a totally different system - when it really is just working as it should have.

The bottom line is that a piece of electronic equipment in a car can fail even if it doesn't give a fault code when diagnostics are run. Diagnostics only show very major errors. The dealers should know better by now.

Polar Bear

I had something very similar happen on my car in which I had to diagnose it and replace/remove parts myself to get to the bottom of it. I finally did. It can be frustrating but I am glad you got your problem resolved.

Diesel Benz

Very good that the problem got solved even if it took too much time.

There are multiple cases when diagnosis does not throw fault codes, these are always a bit difficult, perhaps even more difficult when sometimes the fault codes point to wrong direction.

Anyway a pity that the actual issue with the Navi unit was found. In my opinion the likely candidates are a faulty DVD drive that fails reading the DVD at times. Another could be failed gyros. The latter you could have diagnosed yourself (instructions were given) but of course the workshop should have done it. I don't know if there is a way to test either one with Star.

jonquiljo

Well, I could tell it was not the gyros or the even possibly a failed DVD read. I think the problem was simple.

1.) The tech at the dealer lied about what he really did when he checked the vehicle out.

2.) We had a very esoteric problem with the nav unit. What I haven't described was the way, over time, it stopped giving detailed directions. I said that it was getting senile - basically forgetting to talk to you and tell you of upcoming turns, etc. Since this had happened over the better part of a year - I didn't even notice.

The local dealer put a new unit in with the intentions of taking it out when they showed that it did nothing to improve the problem. Well, they were wrong! Almost immediately the navigation system was blabby again. It told me of upcoming turns, twice or more times - like it used to. When the turn came up, it gave you plenty of advance notice. The whole thing was like night and day.

The big thing that I brough to the dealer's attention when I told them how it had improved - that if the techician drove this car for over two hours (and it was a tech that specialized in the vehicle electronics) - why wasn't the problem with the system nto talking to you, notifying you of turns, etc. - totally obvious to him? It seems to me that if I worked with these things day after day, I would immediately say "this unit isn't speaking very many commands and turn notifications".

I will never go back to this dealer again. They treated me like crap even though I was right all along - and they were most stupidly wrong. I don't think they ever paid attention to me at all. I kept telling them that (regarless of the lack of fault codes) why would I make up this story of a broken nav system? What did I possibly have to gain?

Well, I can conclude now that Porsche gives A+ service (on my 911 Carrerra) - they treat you like an adult. Mercedes gets a B- for half-assed trying and not taking the customer seriously. Mercedes makes nice cars - and cars that last. But they really just want you to keep on buying new ones and aren't very interested in customer satisfaction.

Polar Bear

It seems that many of us know our cars better than the dealers do - we are in them every day. A dealer is in and out of a different model MB on a daily basis and is only in it long enough service it and try to duplicate complaints. I went through the exact same thing with my car when I asked to get my summer opening feature fixed. The dealers said there was nothing wrong with the car when you had to hold the key about two to three inches away from the IR transmitter to roll down the window, when others clearly worked 10 feet away. They argued with me and said it was a safety feature to prevent a child from getting trapped in the glass - assuming that it you were 10 feet away you were not close enough see if a child was in the car with their arm out the window, etc.

After the 4th visit they finally fixed it and replaced the IR sensor. Every other time they said it was working fine and only replaced the batteries in the SmartKey.

konigstiger

Dealership personnel groomed by franchise management to increase their bottom line over customer satisfaction are the weak link nationwide not MBUSA. When a situation such as this occurs, alert MBUSA (not CAC, but rather area rep) ASAP to circumvent wasted time, energy, and aggravation. If not satisfied escalate to regional.