Sirius Radio Reception
#1
12-01-2010, 10:57 AM
Sirius Radio Reception
For more than one year we have had continuous problems with using Sirius Radio in our 2010 GLK. At least 6 trips to dealerships and still not fixed. It only works in big cities and then only intermittently. Once we leave town, it is likely to go off and never come back on. We just traveled from Indpls to Raleigh NC and couldn't get reception anywhere . Tried every thing.
Dealers keep say it is a Sirius problem. They say it is Mercedes problem.
We have Sirius at our Indy home and it works perfectly. If I pull the car out of the garage and try to tune in--it seldom works from there either.
Love the car but because we travel so much---at this point I will go back to driving a Lexus.
Dealers keep say it is a Sirius problem. They say it is Mercedes problem.
We have Sirius at our Indy home and it works perfectly. If I pull the car out of the garage and try to tune in--it seldom works from there either.
Love the car but because we travel so much---at this point I will go back to driving a Lexus.
#3
01-15-2011, 09:22 AM
I have what likely is the same problem with my 2010 E350C's Sirius radio.
I start the car up in the morning after "sleeping" overnight in the underground garage of the building. Drive the car outside, turn on the radio, and tune to channel 90 (MSNBC, though it's still named "JBC"). Starts fine, plays normally.
After 5 minutes, the channel goes out and radio shows "no service". This radio is now essentially dead, and the channel will likely not return. Maybe 40 minutes later it will flake in and then go out, or maybe it will never come back. In this "no service" state the keypad is inoperative, so I can't even change channels.
Ok, the dealership service center maintains this is a known problem caused by Sirius' merger with XM and channel/transponder and/or compression changes. They insist Sirius is aware of the problem.
This week they replaced my Sirius head unit (i.e. satellite receiver module) with what they say is the 2011 part. Purportedly there was "new firmware" in this replacement. Unfortunately there is zero improvement. Same crap.
I have been provided with a list of 35 channels which have been reported by others to be in this category, of channels which simply cannot be locked reliably by the Mercedes Sirius radio... and of course 90 is one of them. The Service Manager and Shop Foreman are aware of this problem, but apparently Mercedes does NOT have a solution.
I've opened a ticket with Sirius, and expect to hear from 2nd-level support next week.
I've opened a ticket with Mercedes customer support, and expect to hear from a specialist on Tuesday.
I plan to meet with the GM of the dealership this coming week, to discuss the matter. This is simply unacceptable.
This is just crazy.
I start the car up in the morning after "sleeping" overnight in the underground garage of the building. Drive the car outside, turn on the radio, and tune to channel 90 (MSNBC, though it's still named "JBC"). Starts fine, plays normally.
After 5 minutes, the channel goes out and radio shows "no service". This radio is now essentially dead, and the channel will likely not return. Maybe 40 minutes later it will flake in and then go out, or maybe it will never come back. In this "no service" state the keypad is inoperative, so I can't even change channels.
Ok, the dealership service center maintains this is a known problem caused by Sirius' merger with XM and channel/transponder and/or compression changes. They insist Sirius is aware of the problem.
This week they replaced my Sirius head unit (i.e. satellite receiver module) with what they say is the 2011 part. Purportedly there was "new firmware" in this replacement. Unfortunately there is zero improvement. Same crap.
I have been provided with a list of 35 channels which have been reported by others to be in this category, of channels which simply cannot be locked reliably by the Mercedes Sirius radio... and of course 90 is one of them. The Service Manager and Shop Foreman are aware of this problem, but apparently Mercedes does NOT have a solution.
I've opened a ticket with Sirius, and expect to hear from 2nd-level support next week.
I've opened a ticket with Mercedes customer support, and expect to hear from a specialist on Tuesday.
I plan to meet with the GM of the dealership this coming week, to discuss the matter. This is simply unacceptable.
This is just crazy.
#4
02-01-2011, 06:37 AM
Just an update on this problem...
(1) Sirius never called back, even though they were supposed to.
(2) MBZ support called back, but of course could only acknowledge that they were aware of the problem. No solution, and no promise of one.
However they did instruct me on something I hadn't known before, and that was how to "dial direct" a channel number using the keypad. You push "*", and then enter the channel number. I didn't know that.
I then rattled off several complaints about the satellite radio interface (e.g. (1) if you get into "category" on the sub-menu, you are shown a list of the categories always starting from the first one in alphabetical order rather than the category corresponding to the channel you're currently tuned to, (2) if you dial to a category and push OK, you are immediately taken to the first channel number in that category instead of more sensibly being shown a next-level menu which would list the channels in that category so that you could dial to the one you really wanted to go to and then push OK, (3) there is simply no way to see the channels in any category because of the missing next-level menu, so when you rotate through channels having selected a category you're automatically taken to the "next" channel number in that category but you really have no way of knowing what it is going to be, or how far you have to spin before getting to the channel number you really want to reach, etc. etc.). He told me to send an email to mailmaster@mbusa.com and it would get forwarded to the "right department". SURE!
(3) My replacement 2011-part Sirius module radio still fails on channel 90. Also, it seems to fail even on channel 5, which is not in the list of the problem 35 channels (which does include 90).
Sometimes, I'm fooled into believing it's going to work, because I can receive 90 for 10 minutes. But then it will go to "no service" and I'm angry. Or, it will remain on and I'll park the car at a restaurant (turning the car off with the radio still on), and then come out of the restaurant an hour later and the radio will immediately show "no service" and I'm angry (because it will not return until the next morning, after an overnight sleep so that it "cools down").
(4) I did call the GM (Chris Pass) of Simonson in Santa Monica, who was very responsive. He got his shop foreman (Peter T.) to call me back.
Peter is aware of the problem, and has talked to my Service Advisor (who got the radio replaced). He's also talked to MBZ Dealer Technical Support about the issue.
I have an appointment to bring the car in on Wednesday and let them have it for a few days if necessary, to see if they can make a breakthrough. I'm convinced it's some kind of a "thermal" issue, where the radio and channel 90 seems to always work when "cold" (e.g. first thing in the morning) but as the radio "warms up" some electronic component must be flaking out.
Also, the "voltage surge" that occurs when the car is turned off or on with the radio still on seems to be another possibly related cause to triggering the flaky component to fail.
The fact that channel 5 has failed for me, though it's not on the list of 35 channels, is interesting. Maybe it just never got reported... and there are MANY (or all??) channels that will fail, because it's the radio itself that's got a design problem having nothing really to do with specific channels.
Anyway, Simonson is seemingly paying attention to my (and apparently hundreds of others') satellite radio problem and appears interested in truly trying to get it resolved.
(1) Sirius never called back, even though they were supposed to.
(2) MBZ support called back, but of course could only acknowledge that they were aware of the problem. No solution, and no promise of one.
However they did instruct me on something I hadn't known before, and that was how to "dial direct" a channel number using the keypad. You push "*", and then enter the channel number. I didn't know that.
I then rattled off several complaints about the satellite radio interface (e.g. (1) if you get into "category" on the sub-menu, you are shown a list of the categories always starting from the first one in alphabetical order rather than the category corresponding to the channel you're currently tuned to, (2) if you dial to a category and push OK, you are immediately taken to the first channel number in that category instead of more sensibly being shown a next-level menu which would list the channels in that category so that you could dial to the one you really wanted to go to and then push OK, (3) there is simply no way to see the channels in any category because of the missing next-level menu, so when you rotate through channels having selected a category you're automatically taken to the "next" channel number in that category but you really have no way of knowing what it is going to be, or how far you have to spin before getting to the channel number you really want to reach, etc. etc.). He told me to send an email to mailmaster@mbusa.com and it would get forwarded to the "right department". SURE!
(3) My replacement 2011-part Sirius module radio still fails on channel 90. Also, it seems to fail even on channel 5, which is not in the list of the problem 35 channels (which does include 90).
Sometimes, I'm fooled into believing it's going to work, because I can receive 90 for 10 minutes. But then it will go to "no service" and I'm angry. Or, it will remain on and I'll park the car at a restaurant (turning the car off with the radio still on), and then come out of the restaurant an hour later and the radio will immediately show "no service" and I'm angry (because it will not return until the next morning, after an overnight sleep so that it "cools down").
(4) I did call the GM (Chris Pass) of Simonson in Santa Monica, who was very responsive. He got his shop foreman (Peter T.) to call me back.
Peter is aware of the problem, and has talked to my Service Advisor (who got the radio replaced). He's also talked to MBZ Dealer Technical Support about the issue.
I have an appointment to bring the car in on Wednesday and let them have it for a few days if necessary, to see if they can make a breakthrough. I'm convinced it's some kind of a "thermal" issue, where the radio and channel 90 seems to always work when "cold" (e.g. first thing in the morning) but as the radio "warms up" some electronic component must be flaking out.
Also, the "voltage surge" that occurs when the car is turned off or on with the radio still on seems to be another possibly related cause to triggering the flaky component to fail.
The fact that channel 5 has failed for me, though it's not on the list of 35 channels, is interesting. Maybe it just never got reported... and there are MANY (or all??) channels that will fail, because it's the radio itself that's got a design problem having nothing really to do with specific channels.
Anyway, Simonson is seemingly paying attention to my (and apparently hundreds of others') satellite radio problem and appears interested in truly trying to get it resolved.
#5
02-04-2011, 07:31 PM
Loose antenna mounting!!!
Simonson's had my car since Wednesday. They've easily duplicated the Sirius "no service" symptom on channel 90, and also on several other channels outside of the list of 35... as I'd reported to them had been my own experience, that it went beyond just the listed 35.
Presumably they've been "chasing" whatever they could think to investigate.
Anyway, today I got a call that they may have found the culprit. Turns out (so they claim) the mounting bolt holding the roof antenna down firmly was "free floating". I of course find that hard to believe, as the antenna was not actually dangling loosely.
Nevertheless, they had followed the antenna cable from the Sirius module (in the trunk?) up to the roof, and had pulled the ceiling liner to get to the fastening bolt, where they discovered it was not securely tightened. The effect was that the antenna was not pulled firmly into the rubber seal (preventing water from entering).
More importantly, it was not pulled firmly down onto the grounding plate that is underneath it.
Ok... they tightened it up securely.
And they now report that they have not been able to reproduce the "no service" failure, since this "turn of a screw". They're going to keep the car over the weekend, to give it more testing to see if the failure is truly gone. I should be able to get it back on Monday.
But for now they feel that this could well be the solution.
I suppose it's possible, and others who've had their antennas replaced as part of the dealer's attempted solution may well have actually gotten the same problem (i.e. loose antenna fastening from the factory) effectively solved in the process of installing a brand new replacement antenna at the dealership, presumably with a proper fastening bolt turn.
Would be hard to believe that many hundreds of cars are leaving the factory with their antenna's not fastened properly, so I'm still dubious. But if this turns out to be the solution in my own case, well I'm thrilled. Having this genuinely fixed is all I really care about right now, and if this was the answer for me then great.
Presumably they've been "chasing" whatever they could think to investigate.
Anyway, today I got a call that they may have found the culprit. Turns out (so they claim) the mounting bolt holding the roof antenna down firmly was "free floating". I of course find that hard to believe, as the antenna was not actually dangling loosely.
Nevertheless, they had followed the antenna cable from the Sirius module (in the trunk?) up to the roof, and had pulled the ceiling liner to get to the fastening bolt, where they discovered it was not securely tightened. The effect was that the antenna was not pulled firmly into the rubber seal (preventing water from entering).
More importantly, it was not pulled firmly down onto the grounding plate that is underneath it.
Ok... they tightened it up securely.
And they now report that they have not been able to reproduce the "no service" failure, since this "turn of a screw". They're going to keep the car over the weekend, to give it more testing to see if the failure is truly gone. I should be able to get it back on Monday.
But for now they feel that this could well be the solution.
I suppose it's possible, and others who've had their antennas replaced as part of the dealer's attempted solution may well have actually gotten the same problem (i.e. loose antenna fastening from the factory) effectively solved in the process of installing a brand new replacement antenna at the dealership, presumably with a proper fastening bolt turn.
Would be hard to believe that many hundreds of cars are leaving the factory with their antenna's not fastened properly, so I'm still dubious. But if this turns out to be the solution in my own case, well I'm thrilled. Having this genuinely fixed is all I really care about right now, and if this was the answer for me then great.
#6
02-13-2011, 07:20 PM
Well, as unbelievable as I still think it is, I've had my car back from Simonson for over a week now, and the Sirius radio "with the tightened roof antenna mounting bolt" has yet to ever drop channel 90 (or any other channel) even one single time!!!
They swear that's all they did, and I of course was infinitely skeptical that it would really fix the problem... which by all accounts and year-long national other user stories should be in the Sirius radio module itself.
And yet... I have not seen "no service" since they secured the roof antenna bolt and thereby pulled it down securely onto the rubber mounting and grounding plate underneath it.
Don't know what to say, except that I'm of course overjoyed that this problem is seemingly now 100% fixed.
I don't know if I really needed a replacement Sirius module, or if just the tightening of the antenna would have fixed the problem even with the original Sirius module. But the fact is that I DO now have a 2011 module installed into my 2010 E350C.
Case closed, I hope.
They swear that's all they did, and I of course was infinitely skeptical that it would really fix the problem... which by all accounts and year-long national other user stories should be in the Sirius radio module itself.
And yet... I have not seen "no service" since they secured the roof antenna bolt and thereby pulled it down securely onto the rubber mounting and grounding plate underneath it.
Don't know what to say, except that I'm of course overjoyed that this problem is seemingly now 100% fixed.
I don't know if I really needed a replacement Sirius module, or if just the tightening of the antenna would have fixed the problem even with the original Sirius module. But the fact is that I DO now have a 2011 module installed into my 2010 E350C.
Case closed, I hope.
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