Window Problems

OK - so this is probably only going to be of interest to owners of newer Gs but here is my story.

First off my "other" car is a 2006 S500 and this story relates to my experience with that rather than my G..

Last year it went into a MB dealer for a service. Got car home afterwards and found that the drivers door window wouldn't go up or down so returned car to dealer who plugged it into computer and diagnosed a faulty window motor. Not too bad as I have an extended warranty which covers window motors so made a claim before they started work. Next I get a call from MB dealer to say, sorry, not motor but control unit (needless to say that extended warranty doesn't cover ECUs).

Result - a bill for £158.40 to diagnose OSF Window is faulty. PLUS a second bill for £397.20 to replace motor, find out that wasn't the problem and then fit new door control unit.

Last week, car went into same dealership (my excuse is I paid for a 3 year service plan) for a service. Got home and found that front passenger window wouldn't go up and down. Now call me a conspiracy theorist if you like but that seemed a bit too much of a coincidence to me so I did some Googling and found an American MB owners site where members had also suffered windows not operating and a number said that in their cases it was a software problem and could be solved by resetting or programming the software (why on earth an on/off switch needs to be programmable I don't know).

So I called the MB dealership and told them that (a) my window wasn't working and (b) I had discovered that this could definitely be a programming problem caused by something they did when servicing the car. I get on well with the Service Team Manager and he agreed that the first thing they would do would be to try and re-programme. Called me back later to say, all fixed - no charge. Went to collect car and he said "no idea why that happened but all four windows now working". I laughingly said "I'll double check before I set off). Hard to believe, I know, but checked and now rear driver's side window not working. They took it back into workshop - reprogrammed and now all windows do operate properly.

Moral - if you have a similar problem definitely worth investigating programming problem BEFORE spending a fortune on new parts.

I'm only annoyed that I didn't find this out a year ago when I'm convinced that previous fault could have been solved at no cost rather than an outlay of over £550.