Unfortunately this goes for every brand these days. Mercedes is HORRIBLE (despite the dealership staff trying their best). With Alfa my only trusted guy is now in New Zealand having 'officially' moved. Personal relationships with trusted staff is all we can count on.
From a competence perspective MANY of the skilled techs have left. There was a guy who fitted my M Performance Suspension at Midrand (Michael) who I had full confidence in. Took measurements meticulously, took care in fitting, advised on the hardware changes etc... The last visit I had, the tech had never even seen one of these fitted to the car before. Same for Alfa - the techs I've had the past 3 years have all been different because they have ALL left to Canada and Australia/NZ. JSN I haven't been back to since Shaun left to (wait for it) NEW ZEALAND LOL
From a corporate perspective, the BMW of old is gone when it comes to motorplan claims and that warm feeling of 'support' no matter what happens (partially because of owner's bad behaviour in claiming and probably also partially modeling themselves on Merc/Audi etc processes). Unfortunately the rest of us are paying the price for this. Every claim starts with the bare minimum... even when they know that eventually they will end up doing a whole host of other related things. This is EXACTLY how Merc has operated for years. They will not even service the car a week or two (or 1000/1500km) earlier if it is in for an unrelated claim - they would rather have the customer drive in again because policy is that the car must be within a certain mileage or date range. There is no respect or appreciation for the time of the customer.
I think also in general the world is now run by accountants and lawyers advised by clueless large consulting firms that sell something to one company (be it strategies, client service models, process best practice etc), in one territory and then replicate it as 'best practice' before it has even worked. The FOMO kicks in thinking "OMG Merc is doing this we are going to be left behind" or "Audi is doing this so we are leaving money on the table" and suddenly whole industries and functions are changed for the worse as the differentiators are lost between brands. I think most of us have experienced this phenomenon of fresh grads who have never run an actual business telling us what we should be doing without proper context or understanding of the complexity (or consequences) in implementation... Huge chunk of loyalty and goodwill lost to save a few rands. Even if staff want to help, I feel like they can't these days because of some overarching process or control in place around service. Most thinking people would understand it is not always about the immediate cost in front of you and make balanced decisions... I experienced it with Merc and now as I say BMW is headed in EXACTLY that direction in terms of how they are handling even basic claims.
After your experience (and reading reddit/forum posts about current gen X5s) they should be terrified about keeping their reputation intact. I doubt any of us will trust a new X5 anytime soon.
To be fair to BMW there's also a "what the hell did you expect".
As soon as you go turbo with your sportscars you open it to heavy modding with such ease. Increasing boost is literally a login and some slider adjustments in software. BMW Had little choice with S54 era engines but to just replace any time they spun bearings under plan because nobody bothered to do any extensive modding on the cars.
But ja, owners modding, flashing ecu's back and taking in ruined cars obviously is the result. Now we have such detailed ECU tracking that god only knows what BMW (and all of them really!) can tell about your driving! Every over rev has been tracked on porsche ecu's for at least 15yrs at this point, so by now they're likely tracking even more granular detail to deny warrantee claims.
I've chatted elsewhere how poorly treated myself and my partner felt at merc, suffice is to say I doubt I'd ever buy a product from them in my life after that (and certainly not at the century city branch lol). As the cars increase in complexity the reality is that they also increase in failure points. Whereas we all laugh about S54s spinning bearings, how many different failure points does a modern, high tech automatic, turbocharged (potentially with hybridity?!) car have? at the very least an order of magnitude higher than what we saw from cars of the mid 00s.
Again, OP, if they're saying things about BMW finance to you - I'd imagine they're prepping up to shaft you. CPA has a defined time limit, make sure they're not dragging feet to get to a point where CPA doesn't apply. This hasn't been a 5minute saga- it's already been months.
