Fitness for purpose

[Robertb]

I have a Mercedes CLS with blind spot monitors. The radar units are turning out to be consumables; it has had two sets in 10 years, and I've just had another failure. Needless to say, they last over a year so are outside of any warranty but are plainly not fit for the purpose they are designed for.

I'd not mind but they are over £600 a side. I'd like to just turn the system off, but I can't as it says its inoperative so I can't access the function to switch it off as I normally could, so I'm left with the lights in the mirrors permanently on which is distracting and dangerous as it makes the mirrors hard to look at in rain. The option cannot be 'coded out' either, as far as I know.

Do I have any recourse to Mercedes under some sort of consumer rights?

[ADJimbo]

Robertb said:

I have a Mercedes CLS with blind spot monitors. The radar units are turning out to be consumables; it has had two sets in 10 years, and I've just had another failure. Needless to say, they last over a year so are outside of any warranty but are plainly not fit for the purpose they are designed for.

I'd not mind but they are over £600 a side. I'd like to just turn the system off, but I can't as it says its inoperative so I can't access the function to switch it off as I normally could, so I'm left with the lights in the mirrors permanently on which is distracting and dangerous as it makes the mirrors hard to look at in rain. The option cannot be 'coded out' either, as far as I know.

Do I have any recourse to Mercedes under some sort of consumer rights?

From memory, Mercedes Benz UK Genuine Parts hold a two year warranty if that makes any difference to your problem?

In terms of consumer rights, you d have very little recourse other than the warranty above - if it is two years that is. My pragmatic suggestion would be to raise the issue with Olivier Reppert ([e-mail]) who is their UK CEO, and see if its picked up by someone on his UK Executive Team in the hope of gaining some traction and goodwill from them.

Edited by ADJimbo on Thursday 4th December 12:38

[southendpier]

that sounds annoying - unplug power to the lights?

[Robertb]

Embarrassingly it seems to have fixed itself since this morning. Fingers crossed it was a glitch on this occasion!

[spookly]

Have you looked at whether you can code it out with a decent OBD tool?

[119]

A lot of Merc stuff and VW nowadays is hard coded into the/an EEPROM i believe, so may not be that straight forward.