Has anyone heard of this - I am losing my mind with this car!

2000 ML55 w/ 65K miles. Car started stalling, brought in for service and had crankshaft sensor replaced. Problem came back with increasing frequency. It would stall when driving, I put it in neutral and it starts back up but when I put trans back in drive, it does not seem to catch for a minute, anbd just revs like it is still in neutral. MB next replaced stop lamp switch, which was the only code that came up, which did not fix the problem. Then MB tells me that the transmission seal leaked and fluid got in to the main wiring harness and all the way to the ECM. Thankfully, I bought an extended warranty from AAA, the repair was $9K. MB was actually great about working w/ AAA and coordinating the repair.

BUT after weeks without the car (the ECM had to come from Germany), I have had it back for 2 days, THE SAME PROBLEM IS BACK! The car is back at MB (it stalled twice on the way there). Now MB tells me that they are driving it and cant find anything, there are no codes.

Has anyone ever heard of anything like this? Any ideas? It's making me nuts!

Many times the crank sensor WIRING harness is the problem..won't leave a code.

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they charged 9K only for the problem to come back again ? that's ridiculous. good thing you had the warranty.
do you have a link to this AAA warranty site ? seems like a good company who covered this issue.

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May be a good company, but they will likely go bankrupt with that crap - just like "warranty gold" did.

Hmmm... They probably get a special deal and don't pay the full amount....

I don't know about you guys but if I brought my car in and they replaced a 9k Part and did not do any further testing and driving and the problem ended up being a much cheaper part I don't think I would bring any of my cars back to that shop/dealership.... They seem more interested in moving vehicles in and out at the maximum profit rather than actually repairing them......

Perhaps your problem might be solved by going to a more experienced independant mechanic? The dealerships do have "factory training" but screw over mechanics in droves and can't seem to keep the good ones. I have found the best mechanics are not at the dealerships.

The shifting problem could be caused by insufficient transmission fluid. Did they correct the leak?

It sounds like the ATF contamination was discovered while diagnosing the stalling complaint. I doubt the dealer attributed the stalling condition to the transmission problem, but they couldn't very well not say anything about it either. I find several ATF contaminated ECU's every month, usually during the course of unrelated repair work.