Mercedes is actually several notches behind Chrysler, let alone BMW, GM et al in wiring its cars for Bluetooth, an impending legal requirement for hands free cell phone use in cars in states like California. Hence this is not a minor problem. I try not to initiate calls from the car for safety reasons but I get many emergency calls, so this is not a vanity issue for me. It is beyond bizarre for a company that wants to market cars in the price classes Mercedes positions itself in that its cars are not in the year 2007 pre-wired for bluetooth and that the Bluetooth "option" is at least a two to three step process that inevitably involves purchasing a bluetooth module separately from a Mercedes subsidiary rather than having the device invisibly prewired into the car at the factory like it should be. At most this would cost a couple of hundred dollars per car, cars that are already prewired for the Mercedes version of Onstar. Lest anyone think German/Mercedes engineering is world class they should spec out bluetooth in a Mercedes. Mercedes must have hired unemployed Yugo engineers for their version of bluetooth. It is not hard to guess that I am hacked because the car spent the day at the dealer only to find: no power wired to the blue tooth module, hence it is useless, and it is Friday and I do not have the time to endlessly hassle with this for another week. It could be worse: at least Mercedes does not force an Iwheel into every car.
- posted
16 years ago