konigstiger

Check your PM.

glojo

This was a previous Mercedes-Benz that we owned. It had a terrible vibration that no ammount of remedial work could cure. Technicians from Mercedes-Benz UK were involved and the outcome was the vehicle was replaced, and I was compensated for all the inconvienance.

I have never had reason to fault the atitude of Mercedes-Benz dealerships, (our old one has closed and the new one is an hours travelling)

Even if you buy a top of the range Cadillac, Rolls Royce or Bentley, they will no doubt need 'unscheduled' visits to the dealership. That is something that we have to accept.

The most important issue I feel is how you are treated. If they are flippant and could not really care about whether there is a courtesy car available, or treat the customer in a less than polite manner, then I'm afraid they would not see me buying another vehicle from them.

Regards
John
Rainy Torquay

TorontoW210

I am glad that everything is fine with your previous benz glojo and that they had replaced your vehicle.

Definitely, MB still has top notch services and professionalism... also in terms of parts, it is relatively fair price to those of BMW and Audi.. heck, some Toyota parts are sometimes more expensive than MB parts here in Canada.

I agree totally that no matter what car you get.. even the JD power recognized most reliable car.. like a Honda Civic or what ever and cars that are very simple and shouldn't have much problems .. still could end up breaking down and being tow back to the dealership..
but my concern is the % of these occurances.. it seems that problems with MB are on the rise in terms of these % of defects in relation to other competitors such as Lexus and BMW

there was actually an article on Forbes a few months back talking about the decline in quality of mercedes and how they are faced with a major problem.

The good news is that I read that JD Power reliability rating of MB is back in the top ten after many years of falling even behine some GM cars such as Oldsmobile which had just been discontinued.

abhansali

The issue here in my opinion is not that your 7-G tranny went bad or not, things do break regardless of what kind of car they are in....I had to have my whole transmission replaced in my Honda Odyssey a few months ago (under warranty), and it is a systemic defect in the Honda transmissions since they also extended every owners warranty on the transmission to 7/100K.

The issue here is the service. To replace the whole tranny took Honda 2 days and he got me a loaner since it was a defect issue.

Conversely, the alignment on my MB was out since day one, and it took them 4 visits and a total of 20 days to fix it, and even then they never got it 100% and now after rotating my tires, the pull is back strong.

Tranny...Honda....2 days
Alignment...MB....20 days

This is the problem, and I think it boils down to good-ol-fashion supply and demand in a lot of cases. In Austin, we had only 1 MB dealer until recently, so what's the incentive for quality, but there are 3-4 Honda dealers. I think in places where there are more dealership, the service will be better, since they have to "fight" to keep your business...

If MB does not have the volume to justify more dealerships in a locale, why not setup MB service centers in cities like Austin, I'm sure plenty of people would pay MB to get that business and quality would go up dramatically.

HELL ONA HARLEY

LOL.... You sure know how to hurt a guy...

Anyway....I feel the internet it self is part of the reason for more reports of problems with MB and other car makers as well....
I mean because of this new form of communication you are able to report more info to alot of people in forums like this one... Chances are that there has always been a large amount of problems, but before the web you just did'nt hear about it... I also feel you have more people complaining about problems on site's like this one rather than reporting positive things about their car..... I'm not sure of the percentage of MB owners represented here or on the web in general, but I'm sure not many... B.T.W.... Did I tell you all how much I love my benz....

P.S.... I'm not a Mercedes owner that is blinded by the star nor a hardcore fanatic that will defend the brand to the end. I'm just a blue collar worker that has always longed for a Mercedes and bought a great one (so far is been perfect)... The feeling I get driving it "almost" compares to riding my hog and that says alot...So I will defend my expeirience's with MB and with my car...

RJC

Until the tranny fails LOL

HELL ONA HARLEY

OUCH....LOL... You'll be the first to know

Good or bad, I'll tell it as it is......

RJC

Hope you (and all us loyal MB owners) only have smooth sailing

Dema

I feel the same. If I need to repair a brand new just after few thousand miles, I can consider the car new anymore. So, I quit, and I will consider different make for next car, Jag, Audi, BMW.

glojo

Nooooooo....... Sat on top of two thumping great vibrating pistons compares to a Mercedes-Benz????????????


are you mad????? Kinky????? Insane????


The silky smooth ride of the Mercedes-Benz must surely compare to a Honda Pan European????

The Harley Davidson is a brilliant motor cycle with a cult following, and very worthy of its reputation

Regards,
John
Sunny Torquay

TorontoW210

Actually I was just talking to one of my clients the other day... he is thinking about the E500 and were debating between that and the 545i .... if I haven't gone onto this forum, I would not have learned about the problems with the 7 speed which attracted his interest initially.. he was actually leaning towards the E500 but after what I told him, he is now considering the bimmer,
under normal circumstances, I would back the benz,.. I don't think the bimmer is a good idea either since there probably be problems with initial production model and bimmer I am sure has their share of problems as well... but he needed the car soon and there is actually one he could pick up within 3 months

btw, how long is the wait for you guys with the E500 in the states??

HELL ONA HARLEY

Problems with the 7g??? Please enlighten me and tell me all about them so I can prepare.... I'm driving one and its by far the smoothest tranny I've ever driven.... My car has been absolutly flawless. Too bad your weak minded "client" was so easily swayed over to BMW from what he or she really wanted by your uninformed opinion. You definatly talked them out of the best car in its class hands down...

glojo

Hi Hell ona Moped
Me thinks that someone may be dangling a worm in the water??

We all know what a great car the E500 is and its 7G transmission. If someone wants to buy another brand of vehicle then good luck to them.

This is by far the best vehicle I have ever owned. (apart from the Triumph Bonneville )

Take care,
John
sunny Torquay

alewifebp

Well he should go on over to the BMW forums and see the massive problems that they still have with the 7 Series. Not to mention they don't even have sat radio yet. Remember they had a buyback not because of a nav retrofit, but because of extremely serious electrical problems.

So far, while not the smoothest or most responsive tranny I've driven, it is miles better than the old 5 speed. Knock on wood, but 10,000 miles and it is has run well. Considering it was a brand new tranny, the amount of problems we have seen so far has been limited.

GDawgC220

The 7G is better than the old 5-speed, much better. And in terms of problems, there haven't been that many at all for introducing a brand new tranny, condsidering it is fairly new, so props to MB.

MB's core engineering are designed to LAST, such as engine and tranny. That doesn't mean there won't be a problem here or there, every single car maker has a problem at least once on some component, no one is perfect. MB's engines and trannys could go on and on, it's really the electronics that go along with the core components that make stuff look bad...damn electronics

TorontoW210

Psychologically, anyone who purchased something they think are the best choice would definitely want to defend it till the end regardless whether that choice turns out to be good or bad... because if that decision turned out negatively, it would mean that the person not only made a bad decision but also says something about their ability to make good judgement. (i.e. being an idiot)

I am sure the 7 g tranny are amazing given the technology and everything. I am an open minded person, and I would love to have someone proof me wrong and tell me I am a 'moron' given that they provide me with factual comparison studies on the durability of the 7 g tranny relative to other transmission .. such as those from a bimmer.

Even within this forum, owners of the E500 seems to disagree on how great the 7 g is during driving.. some say they are the smoothest in any car and some say its not the smoothest but pretty good... so it just tells me that people have a different opinion in it, just like all things in life. And they shouldn't take it too seriously.

IF, you do feel strongly about the uncanny design and durability of the 7 g and challenge my assumption that it MAY not be a reliable transmission, then provide me with some hard data.
I didn't say the 7 g is a piece of crap and that the bimmer is better... what I told my client was to correct his initial assumption of MB being flawless and trouble free. I cited to him that there is ONE incident of a flaw in the transmission and one other person having some problem with the 7 g but not to the extend that the original person who started the thread which required a new trannny.

Anyway, like I said, I think everyone has freedom to express their own opinion on things, and if you really feel your stand is correct, you should defend it with facts.

Simply saying you are "uninformed" when basically I just presented the facts from this forum is somewhat puzzling...
Maybe my memo here was as elaborate as it should of been resulting in setting off some fuse from hard core MB fanatics...

basically, I told him I read from a forum one E500 needed a new transmission after only 4 months, and that you should know that MB are not bullet proof which he originally thinks.. that was why he was leaning towards MB as a whole as well, BECAUSE OF the innovative 7 g transmission which thinks will be VERY reliable, I also commented that Bimmer are not really reliable either and that he should do his own homework both on the MB and the bimmer... as you can see from my thread, I stated going with the bimmer is NOT a good idea either.

Barry45RPM

I bet that most of the "problems" with the 7 speed, (and aside from an absolute failure, which I havent seen people clamoring about on ANY boards, I believe that after there is enough cumulative miles on them, with dealer feedback, there will be a software update for it to smooth out any less than perfect shifting one may have experienced, and there are darn few less than perfect shifts! It is a good tranny that delivers excellent gas mileage. My NY to Boston trip yesterday & the day before, gave me 25.6 MPG Hiway/Local combined over the 2 days, and Highway ONLY, over a 3 hour period @ 70 MPH, gave me 29.6 !!! )

The electronics in the car are well designed (using German logic), but somewhat quirky. If MB was selling the number of cars Toyota/lexus does around the world, the feedback on problems would be much more reproduceable, and statistically correct so that the solutions would come forth more quickly. Compared to Toyota/Lexus, MB sells much fewer cars, with country by country differences designed into them, so the feedback does not come back to them with such volume. Thats why I wish MB would regularly have someone regularly monitor this board. There are other MB boards, but none with so many posts, and none with such good information, so freely shared by the car's owners.

alewifebp

Toronto, I didn't want to come off as sounding too ****y about the reliability of the tranny, because we certainly can not provide any long term reliability data, since there is no long term to speak of. The relative advantages and disadvantages of each car can and will be argued till it is beaten to a bloody pulp (isn't that what the Internet is for). We can't argue about the long term data on the Bimmer either, since that is also just as new.

As I mentioned before, I was actually a little surprised that we have only seen a few people on this board complain about problems. I can not deny that I was not worried about this, and was thinking of getting a 2003 for a while to avoid this one issue. But so far so good.

I got to thinking about the decision process when you are thinking about a product or service. And unless one is biased about some brand, the typical process that I would take would to get as much varied information as possible. That would be information from owners that I know personally, or that I have gleaned from experiences on these and other boards. Then I look at critical reviews in mags such as Car and Driver, and other online sites that deal with this. Then finally, I look at the reliability stats for the brand and for the model, in places like Consumer Reports and JD Powers. Then you put all of that together and make a decision, and that is what I would suggest that your client do, as we should all do. Some people live and die by only one type of data, or even their own personal experiences (brands and products change), but that is the wrong thing to do, IMO.
My 1.999999 cents.

Barry45RPM

Did you ever notice that when Consumer Reports rates a car, the ratings are vastly different than the ratings the owners of the same vehicle give it? I have found that CR blasts a "Body Integrity" of a car, but when you look at the same characteristic as rated by the owners in October, the ratings are substantially better then the magazine gave it.

Also, they ALWAYS reccomend the smallest engine available for a particular car, citing its power as "adequate".

Who the hell chooses ANYTHING to purchase because it is ADEQUATE?

Consumer Reports may be OK to judge Vacuum Cleaners, blenders & washing machines...these things have no "soul", and are never greater than the sum of all their parts like a car is. How many times have you walked past your blender and flicked a piece of dirt off of it just because it was there, or stared at it from across the room admiring its good looks even when it is doing nothing? NEVER!

HELL ONA HARLEY

Yea I know, I bit hook line and sinker.... After reading the post again, I have to wonder what was the point. Like a give a **** what his "client" buys.... Now about that Bonneville.... That's one fine scoot. Was lucky enough to own one years ago (67) and was quite a ride, but long gone now.... A partner of mine just bought his ol lady one of them new one's for her birthday (650cc). Glad to see them making a come back and they still look great, a nice "retro" look to them and gets alot of attention in front of the harley shop.....

Roam

Well, I finally received my E500 back 3 days ago. The 7G transmission replacement took 19 days at the dealer. So far still no follow up call from MBUSA or from anyone. I had requested a new car. Of course, I was denied.

Everything appears to be functionings ok, but I think this newly replaced 7G tranny does not shift as smoothly as the origional one that came with the car. Jerky sometimes.

I have not made a final decision yet, but I most likely will trade in this E500. I have been a loyal Mercedes customer for many years and have purchased 3 Mercedes in the past 7 years. Perhaps it is time for a change????

Tomorrow I will meet with the sales manager, and see what the dealer is willing to do.

I will post updates.

Barry45RPM

The 7 speed may be a little jerky at very slow (parking lot) speeds. The reason it isnt as smooth as you failed one was at shifting is probably because your old one wasnt shifting, or skipping over a gear. Its a good tranny that could use a programming update down the road for low speed shifting. Don't forget, 1st is a VERY low gear. If you want to eliminate it change your setting from "S" to "C".
Now go and enjoy the car!

glojo

Have you noticed though that the modern Triumphs do not leak oil? Unfortunately it was a sad trait of ALL British motor cycles that little 'black' spots of oil on the driveway. How my parents used to tell me off, Happy days.

Keep cruising,
John
Sweltering Torquay

HELL ONA HARLEY

What???? They don't leak oil.... Their just marking there territory...

glojo

Why didn't I think of that???

Take care,
John
Already sweltering Torquay