don't misunderstand,

this little mirror problem existed with this car when i picked it up from the m-b dealer in san antonio. in my view, when that dealer starmarked that car, they were obliged to correct the deficiencies in that mirror. i didn't notice the mirror problem until after my check had cleared and i was sitting in the car with the m-b sales person getting my pre-flight. i watched him gulp when i reached up to adjust the mirror, which could not be adjusted. this was 1530hrs on a friday and i could have left the car for this deficiency to be corrected and flown back to houston, but i accepted the salesman's promise to furnish me a new mirror.

little did i imagine that such a mirror was priced at close to a grand. and that the dealer was going to forget me. and that mbusa customer service honcho, a mr paul juron, was going to duck my emails, crr letters, and telephone calls.

it will be never when i purchase another daimler-benz product.

and though the car was starmarked, and i knew that there were some exclusions, i would never have imagined that such an important bit of safety equipment would be excluded. as i said previously, do you think that nhtsa and dot consider rear view mirrors trim items? for m-b to identify a rear view mirror as a "trim" item is a monstrous bit of fraud. imho.

as to the seatbacks, it was funny, but they functioned perfectly when i picked up this car in san antonio. but, by the time i reached houston, a few hours later, they had stopped working.

so sad, albert, said the dealer. what they meant was, "we really didn't inspect this car very thoroughly because it had so few miles and we had serviced it on those few occasions[3] when it came into our shop for service. we assumed that everything was in perfect working order...and we starmarked it."

but as i have now learned, starmarking is a good marketing program that will screw purchasers if the problem areas involve "trim". even "trim" components that the dealer should have caught during the examination of this car prior to starmarking it.

i can afford this relatively cheapskate level of screwing the purchaser of a starmarked benz, but mbusa is penny wise and pound foolish to allow this to be the norm for their starmark program. it leaves a bad taste.

quite candidly, i am not convinced that the suspension components were replaced. even needed to be replaced. consider, when i acquired the car, it had 20,300 miles on it. and had been inspected by the dealer and starmarked. i put 3,000 miles on it from april 2003-june 2003, then put it up in my air-conditioned garage while i left the country.

oh, and after i purchased it and returned to houston, and before i put it up, my indy and i "lifted" it and inspected the underbits. we found no suspension problems.

my indy and i put it up before i took it to the dealer. inspected it and we saw no problems.

had i not been given a tour of the shop of this new m-b dealer, and seen its alignment bay, i would not have requested an alignment. and had this coupe not been put up on the alignment rack, the purported suspension component flaws would not have been noticed. and though i wasn't charged for the suspension parts and the labor to replace them, i was charged for the alignment.

next week, my indy and i are going to "lift" this coupe. just to see if the m-b dealer really replaced any suspension components.

my suspicions are, the suspension component replacements under starmark were fraudulent. but sometime late next week, i shall let you know what we find.

believe me when i tell you that i own a number of benzes. the suspension flaws that this m-b dealer says existed confound me. knowing what i know about how intimately i know my vehicles, i found it difficult to accept that this car had such problems without me suspecting. or me and my indy knowing.


oh, and lastly, the san antonio m-b dealer finally decided to become honorable. seems that my indy buys a lot of parts from them. he put it to them that they owed me a new inside rear view mirror. though they hemmed and hawed and dragged their feet for months, they have shipped my indy a new mirror for this car.

install costs will be on me, but what the hell. in fact, i would prefer my indy do the job than the clowns that work for m-b dealers.

so it goes, the joys of dealing with the new daimler-benz.

i could say more, but i think you get my point.


albert champion

1979 6.9[52k]
1986 560sel[254k]
1987 560sec[90k]
1995 e320cab[13k]