Been a frustrating day today. Decided to replace the tyres on the wife's beemer as we have a free day at the end of the holiday. BMW tried to get us to replace tyres with them for £800...i called my usual guy over at Micheldever tyres (i do the landie, beemer and the 2 bikes there)...and was quoted £350 all in (including the tracking). Same tyres! Booked appointment with tyre fitters to avoid queues go out to car and discover there is no adaptor to take off the anti-theft bolts on the rims! Dash over to bmw dealer - sorry we don't stock these - tuesday we can get it in. Bugger i am back to work then. Leave dealership. Call tyre to figure out if they have adaptors - "sorry there are about 20 per bmw model so we would drill then out and replace with non-anti theft device".....err, lets cancel the appointment. I rang same BMW dealer to order the part. Talked to a different guy and after a number of questions he says "why don't you come in, we can use our master set to check which one you need, i can sell you that one, then we can backorder for ourselves"...oh ok! The adaptor was only £4 - but the upshot was i visited the bmw dealer twice in one day, ended up at the tyre shop, missed my appointment and had to wait 30 mins (as they are popular).... all-in-all i wasted 2.5hrs i didn't need to.
Don't get me wrong, the 2nd guy at bmw was helpfull and thought out of the box - but when you buy a premium car you expect a bit of help.
Especially as the recent service was £392 and quite frankly everyone in the service dept was plainly awfull - but thats a story for another day.
If your thinking of buying a BMW in the UK.....try and figure out what the aftersales is like. We have a BMW dealer in hampshire which is part of a big group and they stink whilst on the other hand there is a dealer that own's just 3 dealerships and they act like a family business - keen to help, trustworthy, etc. I just wish i lived nearer to them
