I realize that the PDF you attached was not your build, but a sample pulled from MB USA inventory. Thanks for attaching the sample. I have asked my sales rep if he can print a build sheet in the same format as the one you provided.

The build sheet that the sales reps printed out for me is 1 page in length. The sample build sheet that you attached is two and a half pages. Did your sale rep give you a two-and-a-half-page build sheet?

Due to the difference in the number of line items, my build sheet has far less codes. I had some questions on the winter package because it was included on my one-page build sheet in May but is missing from the one-page build sheet in October. I am guessing that someone at MB USA changed the codes that appear on the report, but that the winter package is still a standard item. I'd rather not guess. My sales rep replied today saying that the winter package is still standard and doesn't show on the build sheet he gave me. The winter package shows on the sample build sheet you attached.

I can't trust the E53 information out on the MB USA website right now, so I would like to see more of the configuration details for my order. It sounds like you are seeing more of the build details than I am seeing.

 

Yup. Mine is 2.5 pages long with everything itemized just like the other two I shared. Only difference is as I stated earlier, and mine has no VIN just a PO# for now and my dealer's info along with their region and VPC.

 

The dealer is correct, one won't see the head's up display when looking straight on with polarized sunglasses. I wear polarized sunglasses and that is true for me, though polarization changes as you change the angle of your head. So I can see the heads up display when wearing my sunglasses with just a little tilt of my head. For me it is really no big deal. And since I don't wear my sunglasses at night or when there is heavy cloud cover I can, of course, see the heads up display just fine during those drives. I like it a lot and would miss it if I did not have it.

 

also it can be turned off if you really don’t want it on.

 

I wrote to MB customer support and they said:

I recommend reaching out directly to the sales department at the dealership where you purchased your vehicle. They are in the best position to submit a refund or goodwill request to Mercedes-Benz USA on your behalf, as these types of adjustments must be initiated at the dealership level.

 

I also contacted MBUSA and got a kind, vague and generally useless response. I wonder how much actual escalation they do.

 

I have contacted Mercedes customer service three times from May until this week. I have mentioned it to my sales rep from May up until last Friday. I mentioned at least one configuration question to the sales manager, but I don't recall if I mentioned the sunshade configuration issue to him. If it hasn't been escalated and changed in five months, I don't hold out much hope for it being updated in the next five months. One thing I have not done is meet with the dealership general manager and ask him to contact Mercedes USA marketing. This issue needs to get to the person in marketing who sets pricing and configuration items, and it doesn't seem to be getting there.

I get the impression that Mercedes customer service reps are measured on how quickly they can close the case instead of if the case was resolved or not. After I emailed customer service in May, they left a voice mail saying that they had contacted the dealer and the dealer would call me about an arrangement. The dealer never called me. I didn't want an "arrangement." I just wanted Mercedes-Benz USA to change the "Sun Protection Package" to the "Rear window sunshades" on the E53 wagon before October. When the mbusa.com site went live with the E53 wagon configurator, it showed "Rear window sunshades" instead of the sun protection package, so I wrongly assumed that it was updated on the dealer configurator as well.

Last week I had a pleasant conversation with a customer service rep who said that she would bring the configuration pricing discrepancies to the attention of her management who could then contact a person "in Georgia." That made me optimistic that it would go to the right person in sales or marketing at Mercedes-Benz USA headquarters. Only sales or marketing in the USA headquarters can update pricing. The customer service agent closed the case after writing an email to her management. There's not much more she can do.

Wednesday, I called customer service, and the customer service rep insisted on calling my dealer sales representative. Since she transferred the issue over to the dealer, she was able to close the case.

There are now three closed customer support cases without the underlying issue being corrected.

My sales representative has the price of sunshades and headliners for E53 wagons around number 200 on his list of things to be done. His primary focus is selling more cars. I did speak with my sales representative at the end of last week. He said he would "call the factory."

Expect the rear sunshades on the E53 wagon to remain at $800.

The good news is it did save me money I was going to spend on the headliner and sunshades. I have reached the end of my attempts to bring the issue to the attention of Mercedes. My car's configuration will lock-in soon. My wife was the person most interested in the sunshades and she said she is fine without them. I just hope the heated steering wheel that dropped out of the build sheet from May to October is still standard equipment.

 

If customer service passes the issue back to the dealer they can close the case, which is good for metrics.

In the goodwill request I would make these arguments:

1. Mercedes wagons do not have the automated electrically controlled rear window sunshade that the sedan has. Therefore, the $380 price which appears on mbusa.com and is on the E450 wagon is the correct price, not the $800 price for the sedan shades. (The shades are probably $20 in parts cost.) The Sun Protection Package which includes the rear window shade is the appropriate option on the E53 sedan, but not the E53 wagon.
2. When Mercedes has a "package," the package has more than one item. There is only one item in the wagon sun protection package which is the manual rear sunshades.
3. The Mercedes website shows the option as $380. When I asked my sales rep to add the rear shades, it was under the assumption that mbusa.com was showing the correct price. There's more of a claim if you believed you were going to receive the $380 price. If you were expecting $800 as shown on the build sheet, then you can still claim the obvious build sheet error but can't clam an unexpected price.

Good luck. Mercedes wagon buyers are repeat customers. There's a decent chance that Mercedes wants to keep you coming back for more. Since Mercedes is showing a different price on MBUSA, I bet there is more of a chance that Mercedes gives you some good will dollars than that Mercedes actually fixes the dealer configurator.

 

Marketing.

How do you like the dash cam? Someone else posted that it doesn't record to the rear. On the X5, the cameras record front back and sides and will save if there is an accident or if you hold down the camera button. It sounds like the Mercedes dash cam is more limited.

 

IMO the BMW electronics are generations ahead of Mercedes. That being said, Mercedes has a much superior interior design. I considered BMW 5 series for my next purchase, but until they have monochrome Merino or Nappa leather seats I'll stay away from BMW.

 

the X5 camera in my experience is worse since you need to tell it when to record. The MB one at least is always recording.

 

At this time I'm not going to bother my out of state dealer with $420. No guarantee it's gonna work and not worth the fight. I will just treat it as the money I should have paid for the Pinnacle trim package listed online.

Appreciate your arguments listed - they are all true! Too bad no one at MBUSA cares.

 

And this is precisely the point. Someone made a mistake, it's impossible to find the person via customer facing channels and dealers just don't care enough to drive this.

I work in tech and it's the same everywhere. Our customer base is 4B+ users. We very seldom can listen to them directly. And even for me, an internal user it's close to impossible to find "Bob" or "Jane" who actually owns that part of the system that is broken and compell them to fix it.

Everyone who orders a car knows the build sheet and the pricing. Nobody orders a E53 Wagon without signing the order sheet. The argument of ignorance (I didn't know) is false.

I think it's more of a matter of principle than money for most people, but I've never seen anyone argue to raise the price of the Pinnacle package on the order sheet as that is also incorrect.

Maybe people buying $100k+ cars are the cheapest *******s on Earth....

 

After reading this, I had my friend open a case with MBUSA. Sharing the response he received, which is (shockingly) somewhat helpful:

"Regarding the pricing discrepancies you’ve noted between the online configurator and the actual MSRP, thank you for bringing this to my attention. We are aware of the discussions within the community and are actively investigating the matter internally. Pricing accuracy is a priority for us, and we remain committed to ensuring transparency and consistency across all platforms.Should any adjustments or corrections be made to the pricing structure, we will evaluate the appropriate steps to address any impact on affected customers."

 

hey all it takes to move the needle is to have someone you know working at MBUSA internally :-)

appreciate this!

 

I went to mbusa.com and the Dynamica headliner price is now $1600. Everything else is still incorrect. Also I dunno if it's just me, but the inventory search tool is now broken.

 

yep the tool is busted

 

The X5 camera is always recording, it isn't always saving. When you press and hold the camera button it will save what it recorded in the past. I forget the timing and am too lazy to look it up, but I think it goes back 30 seconds.

I used it once coming back from JFK when I guy flew by me at 100 MPH followed by a massive pile up 3 seconds behind me. I pressed the camera button on the X5 after the accident and it saved footage from before the accident, the guy going by and then the accident in the rear camera.

 

How is something that requires user action better than something that doesn't? The camera recording should be out of mind background activity that I can call up later if needed. Same as my home cameras. They record 24/7 and I can recall them later as needed. Having to push a button within 30 seconds is just silly and useless.

 

completely agree. The number of people who would remember to do this is miniscule.

 

Ok. I removed the $1,750 in options that I don't want due to the price on the dealer configurator versus the customer website. I'm good with the build price now. My car is going to build soon and this whole discussion won't really matter to me.

You assume that everyone buys cars the way that you do, but they don't. Dealers sell differently than your dealer. Buyers buy differently than you. You obviously had a very direct sales experience where you went to the dealership, got a build sheet and then signed something. Here's my experience.

Your assertion that "Everyone who orders a car knows the build sheet and the pricing. Nobody orders a E53 wagon without signing the order sheet" is absolutely false. First, for over five months after the dealer submitted my order the price of the E53 wagon was $7,777,777. Yet, you assume that I knew the price at the time my order was submitted. Mercedes didn't even know the price for the E53 wagon. Second, I didn't sign an order sheet. I'm not sure why you think everyone signs an order sheet. Around the time I ordered the car, Trump was saying that he was going to have 50% tariffs on autos from Europe. Auto magazines were estimating the E53 wagon was going to sell for $120,000 but I was making an assumption that it would sell pretty much where the base price ended up excluding tariffs. Was I ordering a $180,000 car or a $100,000 car? Not even the dealer knew the answer at the time my order was submitted. Even in normal times, the Mercedes and BMW dealers I have worked with don't have me sign an order sheet "unless you order a pink car that I can't sell to someone else." The only time I have signed a legally binding sales agreement is on the day of delivery. Is the sales order that you signed legally binding or are you saying you signed a non-binding agreement to acknowledge the expected price which is more likely?

Months after the order, when the car finally showed up on the official Mercedes Benz website, I looked at the website and sent my sales rep an email adding the headliner and windows shades to my order. My sale rep updated the order on his system and forgot to email me the updated build sheet. After not getting an update over multiple days, I went into the dealership personally to finally learn the price of the car with the official MSRP and the dealer discount. This was five months after my order that I was learning what price I would be paying. The MSRP came in just about where I expected which was a relief, and in fact good news considering tariffs. The dealer discount was slightly above expectation but slightly lower than expectation after netting the dealer doc fee. I could get a better deal by going farther out, but the out the door price which I did not know until 5 months into my order was close to what I was targeting. Doc fees around here range from $0 to $995. It wasn't until the next day when I reviewed the build sheet in detail at home that I realized that the headliner and window shades were priced differently than the prices on the website. Those two options totaled $1,750 more than I was expecting based on the Mercedes customer website. The $1,600 headliner is cool: it's just not worth $1,600 to me. I like the same headliner for $650 in my BMW though. For $450 I would like the headliner in the Mercedes.

When the dealership opened after the weekend, I went to the dealership to change the order, but my sales rep was out for the day and one of the other sales reps didn't want to change another guy's order. After speaking with my sales rep, he said that the build was going to lock soon and he might not be able to change the build. The next morning, the Mercedes ordering system for the dealership was down. He sent me a message saying that due to the system being down, he wasn't able to change the order but would try later in the day.. A day or two later, I went back to the dealership and was able to confirm that the sales rep was able to update the order.

As this was happening and my confidence in Mercedes configuration systems was waning, I realized that the cold weather package dropped off the new build sheet. I was starting to question taking delivery of a $100,000 car without a heated steering wheel and my mind started drifting to the BMW website configurator. Some postings from you on this website led me to conclude, hopefully correctly, because who knows at this point, that Mercedes decided to change the codes appearing on the report, but are still building E53's with heated steering wheels. They might even have heated windshield washers, but not trusting the information on the Mercedes customer website and having build sheet reports change randomly, it is very hard for me to know what features the car will have. I only noticed that the winter weather package dropped off the bulid sheet when I noticed that the selection of the dash cam had become unselected on the October build sheet. As mentioned in this forum, the dashcam can be ordered digitally after the car is delivered, but when the option dropped from my build, I started to question the integrity of the entire build specification.

I first spoke to customer service in May when I told them that I thought the sun protection package on the E53 wagon should be changed to the manual rear sunshades option. When the E53 appeared on the customer website, it had the manual rear sunshade option, and I assumed incorrectly that Mercedes had also updated the option in the dealer configurator. I also assumed incorrectly that the price for the microfiber headliner on the website at $450 was correct. Since my car will build with microfiber seats and microfiber on the steering wheel, I was happy with adding and additional $450 for the microfiber headliner to continue the theme.

After learning that the October build sheet and the customer website had different prices I spoke with Mercedes customer service. I told them that some items on the customer website were priced higher on the customer site and some prices were priced lower. The error netted out to being hundreds of dollars higher for me on the actual build. Hundreds of dollars extra on the car or even an extra $100,000 for the car isn't going to change my life trajectory, but I was making decisions based on Mercedes published pricing. While I pointed out that some of the errors were higher on the website, I don't feel any obligation to ask Mercedes to charge me more if they have decided the price is going to be less. I suspect that you aren't serious when you suggest that I ask Mercedes to raise the price on the Pinnacle package because the website has higher pricing.

I get the argument that this is a $100,000 car and Mercedes had a bunch of errors in both directions that netted out to less than $1,000. I don't care if the car costs $1,000 less or $1,000 more, but I would like to have more confidence in the build sheets and customer information on the website, both of which have errors. Do you think these errors are acceptable? If I was in Mercedes management, I would be embarrassed that this was my customer facing presence.

Why do you think the customer should absorb the error but Mercedes, who made the error should make some extra money? Do you think I should absorb, hundreds of dollars in net pricing difference or $1,750 in the configuration if I had known the real prices? You don't think the money matters to me because I'm buying a $100,000 car but it matters to Mercedes who makes over $150 billion in revenue?

As for your comment, "Maybe people buying $100k+ cars are the cheapest *******s on Earth....," I get that anonymous ad hominem attacks on the internet can be fun and a form of fun schoolboy banter. I too laugh at your jest acknowledging the witticism that you can't be both cheap and spend $100k on a car at the same time. Perhaps you mean that worrying about $1,000 here or there is frivolity. Maybe it is. Maybe it's like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet discussing who's going to pick up the lunch tab. It is an interesting question. Maybe people buying $100k cars just want the people that are building $100k cars to look like they have some control over pricing and configuration. I know that Mercedes has no control over pricing. It makes me wonder if the errors extend to the bill-of-materials on the manufacturing side too.

 

I agree that it is silly to have to press the button when an accident is happening around you, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that it is useless. If your car is in an accident the BMW automatically saves the video. The BMW records 360 degrees after you push the button. My understanding from reading this forum is that the E53 only has a forward facing dashcam. In that case it would not have recorded the multi-car pile up happening behind me.

 

Thank you sir. After 5 months of mentioning various configuration issues with Mercedes customer service and my dealership as a customer, it looks like you may have gotten it to a person who understands there needs to be some corrections.

This is the appropriate response too. "Pricing accuracy is a priority to us, and we remain committed to ensuring transparency and consistency across all platforms" is a great summary of the problem.

 

I was hoping $450, not $1,600 was going to be the winner.

 

There is a lot to respond to, so I'll try to do my best and put the response with the appropriate comment.

Even if I spot you that you had no idea what the E53 wagon and its options would cost, the mere idea that it would or could be anywhere between $100,000 and $180,000 is ludicrous. You had anchor points in both the E53 sedan and in the E450 All-Terrain. Claiming otherwise is BS. And as I said before, you always had the option to walk and not buy the car. Is that an inconvenient option? Sure. Is it a legitimate one? absolutely. Let's face it, the options and their pricing are pretty much in line with the 2025 sedan pricing and the base price is precisely a few thousand more than the sedan which is well in line with historical price delta between the sedan and wagon counterparts. Again, you can chose to be an ignorant customer, an entitled one, or an educated one. But you can't be an ignorant entitled one for free, not in my eyes.

And the Pinnacle package was over a thousand dollar less than what you anticipated or could/should have anticipated based on empirical data. I don't hear you complaining about that.

Would you feel better if the Pinnacle trim would go up in price and the headliner and side shades came down in price? I mean to me it doesn't sound like you want true parity, you want the cheapest price, full stop.

And here you have your only valid point. For a luxury manufacturer to have such a poor online presence and configurator, is unacceptable. Also, to not care after it has been pointed out to them via numerous channels is equally revolting. This we can both agree on. I am certainly not going to be an apologist for MBUSA's (let's face it, this is an MBUSA specific issue, I priced and configured a vehicle on an European page and it worked significantly better with the constraints, can't vouch for pricing) but I'm also aware of what is and what isn't in my control. As I often say, the poor online experience is not a problem, it's a circumstance, as far as I am personally concerned. I emailed them, I let them know, for me to keep my sanity and move forward I accept it as is and move on with my life. Trying to die on this hill is not worth my time nor effort.

Again, you're arguing for yourself from a monetary perspective. It's neither here, nor there, you can take it or leave it. You can choose to be frustrated with it and complain about it on a message board or you can choose to accept it and move on.

Complaining about a few hundred dollars on a $100k+ car on a message board screams entitlement and is embarrassing. I wrote in the very same thought process that I understand that it's also about the principle, and that I can get on board with. In principle I would expect a company that is "The best or nothing" to have the best website with the most accurate information. But I'm also a software engineer and I fully understand how these mistakes can and do happen and accept that as part of life.

Again, you could change your order, you could get rid of options that you deemed were not worth the price for you after you received additional and more accurate pricing information. It doesn't sound like you ended up with something you didn't want or couldn't afford. It sounds like you're bitter that you couldn't have the dynamica headliner for $450 and to that I say, too bad..... Disclaimer: my order has both the Dynamica headliner for $1,600 and the rear side shades for $800 and I'll gladly enjoy both every time I'll get in the car.