Owners of Vehicles Equipped with Mercedes-Benz Tele-Aid v Mercedes-Benz
Lawyers Investigate Mercedes-Benz Tele-Aid
Tele-Aid is the concierge service provided in Mercedes-Benz vehicles, similar to Gm's OnStar- made famous by the company's ad campaign featuring folks getting locked out of their cars or calling for help after an accident.
Owners of 2000-2006 Mercedez Benz vehicles cars will get an offer from Tele-Aid for a free year of service, but owners will have to buy a new Mercedes to get it-- more likely they'll buy an upgrade kit installed at dealerships for $15.
Mercedes-Benz will be switching to digital, cutting off nearly 200,000 of its 420,000 subscribers to Tele Aid. Owners of 2000-2006 models will have to get an upgrade as well, but the cost for the new equipment ranges from $600 to $1,500.
Apparently, Mercedes was behind the technology curve when it designed, built and installed the Tele-Aid systems in its vehicles, in that it used exclusively the old-fashioned "analog" cellular communication frequencies, even up to the 2006 model year.
The FCC announced in November 2002
that as the end of 2007 it would no longer mandate that cellular carriers support the old analog cell phone systems. Mercedes continued to sell the outdated system to unsuspecting buyers for another four years or more, knowing not only that the technology was obsolete but that it would soon be wholly unworkable.
Online blogs estimate that somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 current Mercedes Tele-Aid customers will be affected by this, either losing their service entirely or paying up to $2,000.00 for an upgrade. So far, Mercedes has offered only a $200.00 rebate with a two year future subscription to Tele-Aid (which it would cost the customer abother $480 to buy.)
The lawsuit seeks to represent certain owners of Mercedes-Benz vehicles equipped with Tele-Aid.
