smcs1723

All - I've read through the dozens of articles and posts on the issues with COMAND and the faults with it being at the heart of MBZ's slide in quality. Indeed, I have seen the press on the termination of the Bosch VP responsible for Telematics, etc etc.

Anyway, things seem to have been looking better, my brother's SL55 '04 COMAND is fine with only 2 trips to the dealer to replace the KeyLessGo antennas and transponder, a friend's E55 had only one trip to the dealer to fix COMAND issues.

But..I took delivery of my '04 E500 4Matic Wagon this week. Here we go again, sad to say.

Day 1: Tire Pressure Monitor, goes offline and requests "Reactivation". did that. Hangs forever, never re-inits. Reset entire COMAND. No joy. Did the drive around a few minutes as it asked.

DAY 1.5: Telephone. Hit "TEL" key, screen says "Searching for phone". Spinning clock icon. Forever... Power down COMAND, reboot. Fixed it. Happens intermittently.

Day 2: Start car: "No NAV DVD". Hmm. Stop car, let sit 10 min, start up. Fine now. Happens every 3rd start up. Uh-oh. Once in the No DVD mode, impossible to reset, must shut down entire car and re-start.

Day 2.5: Distronic - Protection zone, ie safety warning range, alarm won't bong when target range is violated. No big deal.

Day 2.5: KeyLessGo - touch door handle, system thinks I have held down "unlock" remote key fob button for 2 sec and rolls down all windows and opens sun roof. Cool ! Er, it was raining at the time.

I have the world's best service, the service only outpost branch of Smythe, named Park Avenue Motors, here in Palo Alto CA. They go the extra mile, as in printing out wiring diags for me, letting me paw through docs etc. I am sure we'll have many happy hours of firmware upgrades, but in vehicles of this complexity, sigh... FYI I have been an onwer for greater than 20 yrs of 8 Benz models and remain a staunch believer.

My question is this. I was at one time the CTO of a division of a Fortune 100 company. I can recall personally hacking code, hauling my backside on to planes in the middle of the night, TESTING, etc in order to solve Quality issues. Where is the MBZ CTO ? I know this is a figurative statement, but the mechanism vs the implementation is the issue here.

What have they told customers as to their actual plans for increased quality, are, as far as I can see, nothing but marcomm PR claptrap. Vague handwaving about "Better soon.." does not cut it.

I would be the _first_ in line to volunteer to help Beta Test, file bug reports,drive around in debug mode or similar actions to make the marque better.

My worry is that the feature vs test cycle is out of whack at MBZ, they can never get the debugging complete before a new raft of features is demanded by Marketing or a new chassis model pops out. Did you see the matrix of differing COMAND systems by model/region/chassis. yeGads ! Is that the fundamental problem ?

Do note however that ALL the safety, engine mgmt, brake, drivetrain and similar electronics are perfect. Let's ask MBZ to appply that level of QA to the COMAND and entertainment systems.

Here are my (hopefully helpful) suggestions to the folks at MBZ:

1. Publish firmware release schedules for your updates, by model,with features addressed, added etc. This would remove huge pressure from the SA's and TA's.

2. Establish a Customer Bug Reporting System, you're in the Software Business, like it or not. Why is the Bug Reporting loop not a closed loop ?

3. Have an online searchable Problem Report database, think if the customer could go to the dealer and say, it's exactly that problem as in doc 43.221.

Regards to all

Geoff

(and yes, I love my new car!)

W210

Interesting post, my 2004 E with COMAND has the occasional phone not recognized problem. What I have done is to unplug and plug it back in and it works.

No problem with the NAV, don't have distronic or keyless go.

nyca

just too many people reporting these same type of problems in a "cluster" of 2004s. sounds like they have some quality control problem with some component(s) in the electronics. or some pervasive software bug.

from a corporate philosophy point of view, MB is like MSFT. They are selling cars in record numbers, so why do they have to be responsive? what percentage of their customers or potential customers read this board? very few.

just speaking for myself, I am holding off on any order until I see some sense made regarding these problems for people posting here, and new posters with 2004s that have problems.

alewifebp

I only have two minor problems with the COMAND. One day, the Nav started showing strange street names in the MFD, continued for about a day, then went away. Has not reappeared since.

And the only other thing is that when I have a CD playing when I shut off the car, and start the car back up, it brings me back to the same song, but it will display the information for the first song on the disc. After the song finishes, it will then show the proper information for the next song.

Any COMAND issues seem to be sporadic, as the issues seemed to have been worked out for 2004.

Eddie Knopp

The CD issue is know (many prior posts - see E55 forum), it looks like that's here to stay.