The other day a tiny bit of plastic broke off one of the window switches,  the next day the silver tip came away from the other one! Are these particularly fragile? And can they be easily replaced,  I'm guessing not !

Quite a number of people have this happen with these switches. You have to replace the entire switch pack (check out eBay). The assembly can be removed from the door card, unplugged and replaced.

Often caused by the plastic reacting to some types of hand cream or perfume/aftershave on the users fingers.

This was also an issue on the Mercedes C class circa 2005, I know, because it happened to me. There was a whole fluster of complaints on the owners forum, but you could at least replace individual switches, and 'Chinese' Ebay copies were rife... Mercedes of that era were atrociously built having an over influence from accountants rather than engineers!

I wonder if anti bacterial gel is also a reactant! Thanks for the help, I'll have a look on Ebay then I might need some advice on removing the door card, thankyou. ( although there's probably a  video for that !)

Yes, I would expect the anti-bac gel will cause damage:

 

8 minutes ago, Wesdave said:

I wonder if anti bacterial gel is also a reactant!

If it's the good stuff, it'll be at least 70% alcohol, which is also a solvent...

15 minutes ago, StephenFord said:

If it's the good stuff, it'll be at least 70% alcohol, which is also a solvent...

Yet another unforseen consequence of that darned Covid!😀

37 minutes ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

Yet another unforseen consequence of that darned Covid!😀

Yeh I know, especially for an airborne virus which everyone was house trained to wash their hands every 10 minutes! 🤣

I won't be the only one suffering then, I wonder if future switches are more tolerant,  I wish!

So at the moment I can't see any on Ebay,  it might even be possible to change just the 2 switches,  maybe. 

I might glue the bits back on to make them more solid while I look into it but do I use araldite or super glue or is this going to compound things?

18 minutes ago, Wesdave said:

I might glue the bits back on to make them more solid while I look into it but do I use araldite or super glue or is this going to compound things?

Superglue will not work, it's actually quite bad at gluing stuff, especially under frequent stress. Araldite is good, but be very careful on application that you do it very neatly and don't get it anywhere you don't want!

2 hours ago, StephenFord said:

Superglue will not work, it's actually quite bad at gluing stuff, especially under frequent stress. Araldite is good, but be very careful on application that you do it very neatly and don't get it anywhere you don't want!

I find super glue is rubbish at gluing everything you want to fix and excellent at gluing everything you don't 🤣 

Thankyou,  I prefer Araldite too, and I will be careful,  thanks 

I've glued them for now but I'll need to replace them at some point,  does anyone know the part no for the updated switch pack please? Mines the electric front windows only, thanks, Dave