My friend went through this with his E300D. His is a 98 and the sunroof switch went bad, no big deal the dealer ordered him another. But the problem was MB did an update to the console in the 2000my, along with all the other stuff they did to the W210.
So the switch wouldn't work because it was made for the updated console. So insted of paying $25 for a new switch it was going to cost him $550 for the whole thing. He cleaned the switch and it still seems to work good enough, putting off that $550 reaming as long as possible.
I was under the impression that changing the consoles was just a plug and play. The W210's are pretty easy to pull apart.