Dealer Complaints

[sahal]

I've had a couple of questionable experiences with a BMW dealership reagrding service on the car (replacing my brakes before they were due, for example) -- does BMW SA care about this sort of thing ? Does someone on here know whom I might be able to contact outside of the dealership (besides the media) who might care ?

(I'm currently waiting for the service manager to call me back, but I'd like to know if I have any options)

 

[deveng]

The car is estimating when brakes are due... nothing beats an honest techs

Assessment. Esp if it's done under motorplan I would not see it as a negative

Do you have a very questionable experience to share ?

 

[ChefDJ]

I've had a couple of questionable experiences with a BMW dealership...

Haven't we all. Sorry to hear mate.

 

[Danny2]

I've had a couple of questionable experiences with a BMW dealership...

Haven't we all. Sorry to hear mate.

aint that the truth..

and no BMW SA don't really care and nothing gets done about the complaints

 

[r0ckf1re]

I'm assuming that ops car is out of plan therefore the rant.



Sent from the Edge

 

[zippy320]

Isn't this normal practice? With my cars off motorplan , they advice me that the brakes have between 2 to 5000kms left on it so they advice me to have it replaced .

On our cars still on motorplan , they don't bother asking , they just replace it . I remember this being the case from the days when our E30 was new and on motorplan .

I spoke to a tech at a dealership about this , he tells me that they have a margin or tolerance or something and BMW SA allows them to do the change .

If there's so few kms left on the pads , then rather they replace it then you having to come back in a few days or weeks or month to have it replaced again , its a headache .

Is the OP car off motorplan and were the brakes changed without permission ?

BMW has some strict measures in place to combat abuse , I see a massive BIN at SMG , where they tag most parts that they remove from cars , mark it with all their details and a job number and these parts are sent back to BMW for inspection .

 

[sahal]

Since there are questions here is what happened to me:

Got a call that the brakes need to be replaced, I asked if they were sure since the computer hadn't said the brakes needed doing. I was told that the brake pads were at 3mm and needed to be replaced, the sensors will go off imminently. This sounds great, thanks for checking -- please change the brakes!

When I go over I ask to see the old brake pads, and they are clearly more than 5mm each.

The technician who worked on my car comes up with calipers opens them to 3mm and holds them next to the brakes to illustrate that the brakes are at 3mm.

I showed him how to use the calipers and they are closer to 6mm than 3mm (and they are 12mm brand new).

The service manager comes over and agrees wth my measurement.

It then took me about 30 minutes to get them to remove the service charge for the brake change from my bill. They initially wanted me to wait around for them to put the old brake pads and sensors back onto the car.

This makes it difficult for me to trust any recommendation from the dealership for discretionary work.

Thanks for the replies.