Mercedes Benz is amazing for their service, right? That's what I thought and that's why when I fell in love with the CLK 320 at first sight, I never worried about getting one. I'm young, haven't bought a car before, so being my first I was at least skeptical of the process. I had to order this one and wait 7 months, but the process wasn't flawless at all...

I called numerous times regarding my order, my configuration of the car, and my expected delivery date. Always got updated info, always believed it. That's where I was wrong. When the car arrived it had the wrong color interior, and none of the options I ordered. I was fuming... you'd expect them to find and correct their mistakes somehow...

Continental Cars in Austin was where I bought it. They didn't see the same problem I did. They saw a car they could sell in 1 day no matter what, and didn't want to make it right by me. So I called Mercedes HQ in New York. After a few bounces, a VP of customer service listened to me and told me to give me one day, he'd fix it.

Mercedes gave me the misordered 98 model as a loaner for 5 months. They reordered and rushed my new car (a '99 CLK 320, correctly configured) to the dealer, and made them exchange the cars at no cost. I've never heard of such a thing at ANY company and was *blown away* - they earned a lifetime customer with that fix.

Now as for the car, its beautiful and solid. I've had some minor issues with the car, especially the foglamps losing connection periodically, but it handles well and is quite fast even in the 3.2 liter. I don't enjoy the lacking steering wheel controls (in the 2000 model) or the expense of upgrading to the low profile tires (in the 2000 model) but early adapters don't have the luxury of customer feedback and slight modifications.

I've had nothing but good times with the car and will always tell this story as a tale of what an amazingly service oriented company can do.