littlebrooklyn
Senior Member
Hi
I am back again, the newbie with the 2yr old Mercedes that my partner went all the way down to Swindon from Hertfordshire to buy yesterday.
Oh my how disappointed we are right now :-(
After a 6hr trip my partner parked the car in the driveway and a short while later he suggested taking me out for a spin. We got in the car, turned on the ignition, depressed the footbrake, went to put the gear lever into drive and it was totally locked in park. For a whole hour we read and re read the manual in the vain hope that we might have done something wrong.
As my partner had worked for years in a Peugeot Dealership as a Service Manager he suspected something was not releasing the solenoid so we phoned the Mercedes Assistance number. They could not get anyone to us until the following morning, today. We were told an engineer would arrive between 8 and 9am, he turned up at 10.45am, with his wife in the van!!!!
He tried to release the gear lever, couldn't and in the end used brute force to wrench the lever out, which it did with a bang. He then informed us that the reason the gear lever was locked was because we had parked the car on a slight slope and that the weight of the engine was keeping it pinned in place. When we mentioned that we had owned an automatic Peugeot 206 for the previous 5yrs with not one single problem, he said 'oh maybe you should have kept that then!!!!!!'....how to instill confidence in your product NOT!
He told us in future to always put the car in neutral, apply the handbrake, let the car settle, then push into park. He also recommended that if we had the problem again that we should remove the gear lever cover, then with the use of a biro, push back a black plastic plate and then push the end of the biro into a hole which would manually release the pin. We hoped that this would be an end to the problem. However my partner informed me that the Mercedes workshop had told him that our particular year of car, 2003, had no manual override available, although the mechanic insisted they were wrong.
We assumed the problem was fixed.
A few hours later we took the car out for it's first spin. We parked outside a relatives house on a flat road using the procedure the mechanic had told us to use. When we returned to the car, guess what???? the ****** gear box was locked again!!!!!! My partner lifted up the cover of the gear lever and knocked back the black plastic plate but there was no hole, the workshop was right, our particular car does not have this manual override facility. By sheer brute force and in danger of seriously damaging the car we finally managed to shift the gear lever out of park and drove it home.
Two hours later and numerous phone calls to Mercedes Assistance, we sit here with a car we cannot drive and an after sales service that is totally crap. Mercedes Assistance wish to recover the car and leave us to make our own way to pick up a hire car. We were not happy with that response and asked that a Mercedes technician be sent to sort the problem out. They responded by saying they would get back to us in 10mins.....which was 2hrs ago.
This car cost us an awful lot of money, we mistakenly thought we were buying a quality car with quality back up service. Right now we would just like to get our money back and go back to a simple Peugeot.
I would appreciate any comments from any other owners having this problem.
Lyn...seriously miffed mercedes owner
I am back again, the newbie with the 2yr old Mercedes that my partner went all the way down to Swindon from Hertfordshire to buy yesterday.
Oh my how disappointed we are right now :-(
After a 6hr trip my partner parked the car in the driveway and a short while later he suggested taking me out for a spin. We got in the car, turned on the ignition, depressed the footbrake, went to put the gear lever into drive and it was totally locked in park. For a whole hour we read and re read the manual in the vain hope that we might have done something wrong.
As my partner had worked for years in a Peugeot Dealership as a Service Manager he suspected something was not releasing the solenoid so we phoned the Mercedes Assistance number. They could not get anyone to us until the following morning, today. We were told an engineer would arrive between 8 and 9am, he turned up at 10.45am, with his wife in the van!!!!
He tried to release the gear lever, couldn't and in the end used brute force to wrench the lever out, which it did with a bang. He then informed us that the reason the gear lever was locked was because we had parked the car on a slight slope and that the weight of the engine was keeping it pinned in place. When we mentioned that we had owned an automatic Peugeot 206 for the previous 5yrs with not one single problem, he said 'oh maybe you should have kept that then!!!!!!'....how to instill confidence in your product NOT!
He told us in future to always put the car in neutral, apply the handbrake, let the car settle, then push into park. He also recommended that if we had the problem again that we should remove the gear lever cover, then with the use of a biro, push back a black plastic plate and then push the end of the biro into a hole which would manually release the pin. We hoped that this would be an end to the problem. However my partner informed me that the Mercedes workshop had told him that our particular year of car, 2003, had no manual override available, although the mechanic insisted they were wrong.
We assumed the problem was fixed.
A few hours later we took the car out for it's first spin. We parked outside a relatives house on a flat road using the procedure the mechanic had told us to use. When we returned to the car, guess what???? the ****** gear box was locked again!!!!!! My partner lifted up the cover of the gear lever and knocked back the black plastic plate but there was no hole, the workshop was right, our particular car does not have this manual override facility. By sheer brute force and in danger of seriously damaging the car we finally managed to shift the gear lever out of park and drove it home.
Two hours later and numerous phone calls to Mercedes Assistance, we sit here with a car we cannot drive and an after sales service that is totally crap. Mercedes Assistance wish to recover the car and leave us to make our own way to pick up a hire car. We were not happy with that response and asked that a Mercedes technician be sent to sort the problem out. They responded by saying they would get back to us in 10mins.....which was 2hrs ago.
This car cost us an awful lot of money, we mistakenly thought we were buying a quality car with quality back up service. Right now we would just like to get our money back and go back to a simple Peugeot.
I would appreciate any comments from any other owners having this problem.
Lyn...seriously miffed mercedes owner
