Amazing fast ED paperwork
 

Yesterday I went to dealership to order an E400 wagon for European delivery in May. Neither my salesman, nor his manager had done ED on the new system before, so everyone was surprised when after the specifications were entered, together with my passport # etc, the system immediately generated an order acceptance, with instructions to print out 19 pages of text. This included a "Confirmation of order for European Delivery and Invoice" form with a Tourist Order #; a welcome letter with ED information, a 60 Euro voucher for meals at the delivery center; and various forms. On the invoice there is a $100 credit for taxi's to get to the delivery center, and a $40 charge for 'Customer Ownership Training Charge". I sat next to the sales manager as he typed in the order, and noticed that a field appeared stating that the dealer already had an allocation for this vehicle that they could reconfigure with different options, so perhaps this was why they got immediate acceptance of the order. The car has the P3 package.

I went with Natural Grain Black Ash because (for an extra $150) I could get same finish for the center console in place of the default High Gloss Piano Black (plastic) console which multiple posts here complain about. Annoyingly, a matching finish center console is not available if you order the high gloss Burl Walnut or Brown Ash wood finishes, so you are stuck with the 'Natural Grain' finishes.

24 Hours later, I got a long email from MB with a huge amount of information, and more forms & instructions about the ED process. So, at least for me, this was an unbelievably fast process.

And a 6% price reduction?

I got the standard ED discount of 7% (also you don't have to pay the $950 delivery fee, as my order was optioned total was 8.24% ). Based on other posts here I tried hard to push for more of a discount, but got nowhere even after regional manager was consulted. Maybe easier in other parts of US. I'm in mid Atlantic.