That's the truth. For whatever reason ALL Mercedes I've had, past or present, have the most finicky dipsticks known to man, seems like it take a good week of constant tweaking for the reading to finally be correct and consistent.

Still, it's better than a lot of newer cars, like Toyota, which don't even have a dipstick tube anymore with their "filled for life" transmissions; rather just a hard-to-reach fill port, and inspection port that is used to measure fluid levels at a tiny temperature window, it's unbelievably sensitive...