2008 E550 (W211) Battery Replacement Questions
My grandmother has a 2008 MB E550 that, according to her, still has the original battery in it. The last time she took it in (about 2 months ago) they told her that she’d have to replace the batter soon. She’s been having work done on her house so she couldn’t drive it for a month… lo and behold, the battery is dead.
I’ve replaced batteries on cars before, but my grandmother is picky so she called the dealership to see what it would cost. Here’s what they said:
• Battery would be $250, labor would be about $200, so $450 altogether (I’m in California)
• You can’t get it done anywhere else because it needs to be “registered” to the car and the computer needs to be reset.
Uh… this sounds like a load of crap to me. First off, isn’t any 12v 100a battery able to be used in the car, like this one here? Also, is the claim that it has to be done at the dealership correct, or is this just scummy people trying to profit off an older person? Can a non-dealership mechanic or Pep Boys-type place do the same registration and re-programming, if that even exists?
Any info would be helpful… personally $450 for a battery replacement is highway robbery. But I dont know a whole lot about MB cars from 2008, so I could be wrong. Thanks guys!

Pepboys charges a fee to replace the battery but it's pretty straight forward to replace yourself, it's just kinda heavy at 61 pounds. I still have the original battery in my 2008 E-350. It's died on me a couple times but I've just used a charger to charger it up. Pre-pandemic, this charger was about $25, now $35. Interesting bit about removing the fuse to normalize the pano/sunroof, never did that, but did have to do the open/close bit for both the windows/sunroof otherwise you'd get weird problems.
https://pepboys.com/champion-agm-bat...roduct/2071679



Shop OE part # 0055411001 (12V/95AH) will also pull comparable aftermarket batteries. All you may need to do is perform basic programming. See attachments.