Mercedes Benz C230K Sports Coupe - a model that has major quality issues. Avoid at all costs

Mercedes Benz C230K Sports Coupe - a model that has major quality issues. Avoid at all costs

Mercedes Benz C230K Sports Coupe - a model that has major quality issues. Avoid at all costs

I bought a 2002 C230K sports coupe about a year ago with a semi-automatic gearbox and 12K miles still under warranty. Shortly after I bought this car, I realized the transmission was acting funny. Surely it must be the way it is designed since I could not make myself believe that the transmission of a quite new Mercedes would break down at 12K miles. Just in case, I took the car to the dealership and told them that the transmission was not as smooth as I would expect it to be. They kept the car for 3-4 days. They called me saying that my car was absolutely perfect and this was not uncommon for these Mercedes cars. Although I was not 100% convinced, I kept driving the car hoping that the transmission one day would get smoother. Just to be on the safe side, I asked the Mercedes dealer to give me some pricing for an extended warranty. They told me when my warranty was about to run out, they could provide me an offer to renew it. Three to four months later, the car stopped at a stop light in the middle of traffic. The warning light came on - "Transmission Failure, take car to workshop". Nice enough but the car was not moving. People were honking. I called Mercedes Roadside Assistance. They finally showed up after 5 phone calls and 3 hours later.

The tow truck turned out to be just a private guy (Happy Towing Company or something to that effect) telling me that he was going to take the car to his garage for the night and drop it at the dealership in the morning since they were already closed for the day. This guy had no Mercedes association except for telling me that he was sent by Mercedes to pick up the car. Not knowing what to do and stuck in the middle of the traffic, I let this guy tow the car to his garage for an overnight stay after obtaining identification and a phone number as well recording his licence plate. About a week later the car was fixed. The explanation I received from Mercedes was they replaced some parts in the transmission that were supposed to be replaced as part of a recall on this car. The work was completed under warranty. At this time, I asked the dealership again if I could obtain an extended warranty. At this point my warranty was going to run out in about a month. The service manager told me that Mercedes did not offer an extended warranty at that time since they are changing the company they offer extended warranty with and it will take another 2-3 months until the new extended warranty will be offered. I was also advised to find a third party to get an extended warranty from in the meantime. So of course a couple of weeks after the warranty ran out, the car broke down in the middle of traffic again – The message I got was again “Transmission Failure, take car to workshop”. So I took the car to the dealer and they came to the conclusion that another part in the transmission system had failed but this one was totally independent of the previous ones and since my warranty had expired, I needed to pay for it myself. The bill for this part was &#163800 ($1500). I disputed this and decided to talk to service manager in charge. Well if I talked to a donkey, I would have gotten a better response. Then I decided to call Mercedes Customer Service directly and filed a complaint. First they seemed to be helpful only to come back with the same explanation; this time the part that broke was different than last time although it was the transmission failure in both cases (please note that the car had only 16K miles on it at this point).

These were totally independent incidents (apparently these cars have transmission failures regularly – sometimes within a couple of weeks of each other). So basically I got nowhere. The dealership is also not releasing the car to me until they receive payment for parts and labour. At this point I am considering taking legal action but not sure where to start from. I will go ahead and get the car back since I don’t have much choice at this point and I need my car.

Dogruoz Click this link to e-mail the above consumer: //