PerrinSLC

Hello all -

Just put an order in for a 2020 C63S for ED pickup next April. Thanks to a lot of the feedback from this forum, we finalized our build and are on our way. The input and feedback from these forums got us a 9% discount on the final sale, and exactly the car we wanted. I can't thank everyone enough for their time and knowledge sharing.

As we finish the process we have a couple more questions and concerns that we're hoping others can help with:

1. We just received the paperwork from MBUSA which states it could be up to 19 weeks from drop off before we get the car back. I am curious what others are seeing in their ED deliveries? Based on our experience with BMW ED, 19 weeks seems like a really long time. But maybe the paperwork just states that to cover themselves in the case of extenuating circumstances? We are located in SLC, Utah.

2. We have been thinking about buying a maintenance package along with the car, but we're not sure if they're worth it? Having never owned a MB I am not sure how much maintenance costs are, although as Han said I can imagine a lot.. We are planning on owning the car for at least 4 years, so are thinking about the "Mercedes Benz Premier Service 4 year package" which includes a 10,000 mile service interval, and then 4 factory maintenance services. Based on a cost of $2850, I am wondering if it really saves any money to purchase it instead of just paying for those services over the course of the 4 years? Does anyone know the details behind each of the services noted in this package so we understand better what we are getting if we buy the package?

3. When we did our BMW ED we negotiated the price of the maintenance package. Does anyone know if MB maintenance packages are negotiable? If so, I am curious what kind of discount makes sense to ask for?

Thanks in advance for any help and feedback.

MTrauman

RE your question about how long the shipping of the car takes back to the states and redelivery—November of 2018 (almost a year ago) I dropped my ‘19 S63 AMG off at the port in Bremerhaven Germany on 11/23/18. Bremerhaven is the port where your car will get on the ship back to the US. It arrived at the port in Baltimore about 12/15/18. I received it at my dealership in Pittsburgh PA on 12/31/18. It took 38 days from drop off at the port in Germany to my hands back in the states. I quickened up the time by driving the car from southern Germany to northern Germany (Bremerhaven). That made my shipping time very quick. You will need to add atleast a couple of more weeks simply because it will be going to a west coast port. But it should not take 19 weeks. Clearly that is the worst case scenario.

MTrauman

You should also see if you can get a Center of Excellence Delivery—ask your dealer about this. AMGs qualify for this special delivery. It is an awesome experience.

You should also considering driving from Sindelfingen/Stuttgart and get a tour of the AMG facilities in Affalterbach. Your dealership can arrange this. Again an absolutely wonderful experience. I spent about 4 hours (longer than normal) with a tour guide at the AMG facilities—just awesome experience.

ted_jane

1) It took approx. 8 weeks for my car to arrive at the dealership in Portland, Or. My speculation is the 19 weeks comes from new models that sometime get held up in customs or if there are repairs that need to occur under the ED insurance.

2) Search the forums for infor on prepaid maintenance discounts, there are long threads on the subject.

3) Yes the maintenance packages are negotiable, search the forum for discussions on maintenance pricing discounts. You can purchase the maintenance package from any dealer. There is a dealer/sales associate on these forums that offers discounts. Sorry I don't remember his name or contact info. But once you get the info from your search you can send him an email for a quote.

PerrinSLC

Hi ted_jane -

Thanks for the response. 8 weeks is not bad at all, and based on past experience what I would expect. I am curious where you dropped your car off in Germany? I know that impacts the overall time too, but I hear dropping it off in Bremerhaven can close the timeline a little.

That's great information on negotiating the packages. I will do a search and see if I can't find those posts. I'd love to get one if the price makes it worthwhile.

If you don't mind, I am curious how your ED went? Any highlights, or advice you have for us. Other have offered things like pick up the car from the Center of Excellence, and of course go to Affalterbach for a tour of the AMG facility. All of which we now have planned. But I am always looking to maximize our experience, so would be curious if you think there is something we must do, but isn't very obvious?

Anyway, thanks again for responding. I appreciate the feedback.

PerrinSLC

Thanks MTrauman for your great posts. Lots of good stuff in there. So we have moved forward with signing up for delivery at the COE, and have a tour scheduled now at the AMG facility in Affalterbach. Not gonna lie, I am pretty excited about both

A few people have now said that Bremerhaven might be the fastest port to get it back to us quicker. But after a few responses and reading other similar threads, it doesn't seem anyone is really seeing a 19 week turn around, so maybe we're just being paranoid. I think the excitement of the whole thing can sometimes preclude seeing anything but the worse case scenario. Based on some other ED threads where people encountered the car not even being ready, I will just be happy to see our car ready to go once we get there.

I am curious how you got a 4 hour tour at the AMG facility? Sounds like that was a great time?

MTrauman

The four hours occurred because the tour guide and I really hit it off and her next tour was at the end of the four hours (of course I can talk for hours about cars so that is part of the four hours and the guide was very engaging in conversation). Since it was a one on one tour the guide and I spent from 10am until 2pm walking all around the Affalterbach facility and ending up in the AMG private lounge for a soda and a snack. It was absolutely awesome. I also had a one on one tour of the S Class assembly in Sindelfingen. A couple of years ago my family and I had a group tour of the S Class assembly. The one on one tour was so much better than the group tour. You are going to have a blast at the AMG facility in Affalterbach. Just absolutely awesome. Can’t wait to do my next Euro Delivery to go back to Affalterbach.

PerrinSLC

Thanks again. Is that S class tour in Sindelfingen open to everyone, or only those buying an S class? We are trying to start planning all those things now. The car has been submitted, so we are now trying to get a hold of the person running the ED program for North America so we can book those dates when we are there. We aren't getting much help from the dealership at this point, so it appears we'll have to keep pushing them to get it done.

Anyway, thanks again for all your input. It's give us some great ideas, and made us even more excited.

MTrauman

If you are picking up a car with Center of Excellence Delivery, my understanding is they attempt to line you up with the tour of the type of car you are purchasing. So for me the goal was for me to get a one on one tour of the S Class assembly. If one ends up in the group tour at Sindelfingen instead of the one on one tour one might get say either the E Class assembly or S Class assembly tour. In my opinion your dealer is key to attempting to get you the best type of tour. My dealer was very familiar with the EDP program (they have done it numerous times and I talked to a number of the sales people and managers about their experiences) and they were very helpful in the understanding of the whole process and were very proactive. Has your dealer done many EDP deliveries? If not you are going to need to keep on top of them as certain things may slip through the cracks. You mentioned that “we are now trying to get a hold of the person running the ED program...”. My dealer salesperson was e-mailing back and forth to Germany to set up the dates since I was copied on the e-mails. The person at MBUSA that is in charge of EDP in the US is Annedoris Korallus. She is an expert and really knows her stuff. I am sure your dealer knows this is the contact but thought I would put that out there since if your dealer messes up somehow she is the person you want to contact as a direct contact. I put another forum member in contact with her once since that member had his car mistakenly sent to CA when it was supposed to be shipped to NY when a CA dealer screwed his shipping of his new car up and Annedoris helped out.

You are going to have an awesome time but keep on top of things since I am a bit concerned that your dealer may not be as proactive as they should be. My dealer was very proactive but I also have a 25 year relationship with the dealer so I know who to go to if my salesperson did not get things done—thankfully my salesperson was great and was on top of his game. But it would seem you need to be extra cautious if your dealership is not proactive at this stage to help you out.

PerrinSLC

Hi again -

Thanks for the great ideas. Based on your response, we started to push our dealer into getting this stuff planned. We were able to get in touch with Annedoris Korallus today, and have been trying to plan the following things based on feedback from you and others. If you have a chance, let me know what you think, and if you'd add anything else?

1. Get private delivery experience at the Center of Excellence in Sindelfingen
2. Get private factory tour in Sindelfingen. I am not sure where they build the C class, but if we could even see the S class line that'd be cool.
3. Get MB museum tour in Sindelfingen. I heard there was a smaller MB museum there?
3. Get private AMG tour in Affalterbach.
4. Get MB museum tour in Stuttgart.
5. Are there any other factory tours offered in the area. I'd love to see the C class factory since that's what we're picking up. But not sure if that's a realistic option based on what is built in that part of he country.

Thanks again to you, and others, for all the help. I really do appreciate it. I hope these questions and answers aren't just helping me in this process as this is a lot of good advice and information.

MTrauman

Overall looks good. I did not know there was a smaller MB museum in Sindelfingen.

If your C class is made in Germany (instead of Alabama in the US) it is assembled in Bremen in northern Germany. When I did my Euro Delivery a year ago for my ‘19 S63 AMG, I drove from southern Germany (Sindelfingen and Affalterbach) to Bremen before driving to Bremerhaven to drop the car off at the port in Bremerhaven. So if you wanted to go to the C class assembly you will have to drive about 400 miles from southern Germany to Bremen in northern Germany.

rroberts

Picked my 18' C63s coupe up in May. Did most of what you are planning, and can confirm the advice above is good.

The museum at Sindelfingen (first #3 in your list) is not a tour, just scheduled movies. It is easy to take it in between breakfast, the factory tour, lunch, car pick-up, shopping in the gift shop, etc. Affalterbach (second #3) is definitely worth it (smaller gift shop but more AMG related). I almost skipped (#4) the museum in Stuttgart but am very glad I did not. Did not do other area tours (#5), but have heard they are available. [Do not be bashful, lurk and post in the other mfgr's forums.]

Despite doing my best I violated a traffic camera in Stuttgart and got a bill by mail for some "road tax" two months later (30 euro). Be careful in the garage at the museum in Stuttgart, it is tight compared to U.S. clearances. There are a lot of cars to look at there too. It is an extension of the museum, with cars in glass boxes as well as various exotics driven by some of the other museum visitors.

I dropped off in Bremerhaven, on advice that it would shave 1-2 weeks off my U.S. delivery. But dealer delivery still took ~10 weeks due to my car needing repairs once it arrived in the U.S. A rock cracked my windshield in southern Sweden, and the Mercedes Vehicle Preparation Center (VPC) in SoCal then had to special order and air freight the replacement (I gather that the heads up display option complicates parts availability considerably).

As for "bad things," literally the day after I took delivery I got some curb rash on the driver's side wheels on a one-way street in the old village at Kutna Hura, outside Prague. However, the VPC also apparently replaced the wheels, because they were all spotless when I took dealer delivery.

Rambling, another bad thing for me was renting a Volkswagen in Amsterdam and asking the Dutch attendant (in English) to program the navigation system (a total piece of trash) to get me to Nurburgring, Germany (not Nuremburg, opposite end of the country). By the time I caught the error I was stuck in the mother of all traffic jams outside Frankfurt, miles past Nurburgring and my only chance to do hot laps on the Green Hell in a Lamborghini Huracan.

NYCSoiL

I dropped off the car on May 10th in Frankfurt, the car arrived to the port (MD) first week of June, but was released from VPC a month later. Shipping is quick, it just US Customs, EPA and other BS that can possibly cause a delay.
I second Center of Excellence delivery, but your dealer MUST arrange it in advance.
Enjoy your time in Europe!