10.0

really awful
Crashes / Fires:
0 / 0
Injuries / Deaths:
0 / 0
Average Mileage:
0 miles

About These NHTSA Complaints:

The NHTSA is the US gov't agency tasked with vehicle safety. Complaints can be spread across multiple & redundant categories, & are not organized by problem. See the Back button — blue bar at the very top of the page — to explore more.

Get notified about new defects, investigations, recalls & lawsuits for the 2016 Mercedes-Benz S550:

Unsubscribe any time. We don't sell/share your email.

problem #1

Jun 012022

S550

  • miles
Failure of LED instrument cluster. 2016 S550. No display. In October 2020 I had total system failure in my garage. Battery discharged down to +/- 5V. The car was still under warranty. Tech arrived and tried to recharge battery. He did not have the proper equipment, (his statement). I had to use two of my chargers in parallel plus his to get car back to life. He disconnected the battery from car to get there. Battery came back to life. Everything seemed to work. Started to drive car and experienced random IC failure. There were times when cluster worked fine and suddenly it went blank (black). Contacted dealer and was told that I should keep on driving it would fix itself. Dealer had the car for a week and could find no fault. And it fixed itself. Great!!! Note, at this time the car was still under Warranty. Forward to June 2022. I replaced Batteries. As in 2020 display died (black) randomly. This time it was more often black than alive, it does not want to recover. Note, every time the display dies I loose all indications, no speed indicator plus anything else. No steering wheel controls. No sound of directional indicator (blinker). Dangerous to drive. It can happen at any time. It can work when I drive off and stop!!! Note, this I find very interesting, there is no failure code anywhere, not in the diagnostic Xentry either. That for my opinion is a design problem. Dealer uploaded some code into cluster. Told me it is working. Came to pick up car, SA brought me the car and told me IC failed again. Dealer then advised me that I would have to ~$3000 to get it fixed or contact MBUSA and request for them to pay. Consider that the whole thing started when car was under warranty. Contacted MBUSA on 10/19/22 reporting the details. Was promised a response within 24/48 Hrs. No response. Followed up several times, it is on there computer. Today's date is 11/8/22. They are ignoring me. For my opinion this is a design fault. No failure code! This is it.

- Delray Beach, FL, USA