boomer

I received my letter from Subaru (UK) Limited on Friday 26th September 2003 telling me that my nearest Authorised SUbaru dealer may be Midland Birmingham (MB) on College Road, Kingstanding.

Bad timing for me, as the day before i had my 20,000 miles service at Cutlers, and MB were offering 20% off "your next service" - argghh!

Nevertheless, i decided to pop around to see the new place on the following day (27th).

First impressions were very good. Looks like they have spent quite a bit of money on the place, including a 9 foot blue metal fence completely surrounding the place to protect our price and joys from any passing scum. Inside was also very nice, and the service area was clean and tidy - they must have worked very hard to impress IM.

However, whilst having a coffee with the salesman, there was a distinct cold draft caused by a door that had been kicked in the night before, as some of the dregs of the earth had popped in to collect some PCs (including some nice TFTs) without paying

Still, they would not be able to pass a Subaru over the metal fence, and the existing key safe was being replaced by an even stronger one - so on the car front things seemed ok.

Although Cutlers had carried out my service, IM were refusing to allow them to do warranty repairs - and my front disks were exhibiting "small surface cracks", so i asked MB about doing the work. Their service chap said that he would get onto parts to see how long they would take to arrive and give me a call to arrange replacement. So far, so good.

However, by the following Saturday (4th October) i had heard nothing, so i popped back in to see what was going on. I spoke to the parts guy, who checked in the service guy's notebook and indeed there was an entry there for the previous week, but he didn't know anything about it

He said that he would check things out, and get someone to call the next week (indeed on the Monday - 6th October).

Well last Thursday (23rd October) - TWO AND A HALF WEEKS LATER - i received a call from MB to say that my front disks were now in. Two and a half weeks is quite a wait for what should be a standard part, and it would have been nice of them to let me know earlier so that i knew what was happening - not very good

Still, i did manage to book the car in for the following Saturday (today, the 25th October) to be the work done - so i dropped the car off at 08:30 and went for a nostalgic stroll around Witton Lakes (i used to live in the area 20 years ago!).

After 90 minutes exploring, and a bacon butty at a cafe just opposite Perry Common Road on College Road, i returned to pick up my car.

It was almost done, and was on it's road test because there were a couple of error codes that needed checking. No worries, so i has a browse around the showroom to drool over the STis etc

But after 20 or so minutes, looking down from the viewing gallery, they seemed to be experiencing a head-scratching moment in the service area. Shortly after a chappy came out to say that they key didn't have a battery installed, so they couldn't start the car!!!

I explained that the alarm wasn't controlled by the key itself, but by the fob - and, er, where is my fob?

Alarm bells started ringing in my head. The fob must have been there for me to drive to the garage, and it must also have been there to move the car from the front of the garage to the service area. So why was it missing, where had it gone?

In my mind i started planning ahead - i had a spare set of keys at home, but the missing fob would need to be de-activated somehow - in case someone came back in the night to steal my car.

However, much to my relief, the fob was found in the driver's footwell, unbroken, and the car was road tested and returned ok.

I guess i will never know what actually happened to the fob, but it does concern me that an Authorised Subaru dealer doesn't understand something as basic as "how to start a standard UK WRX"!!!

In summary, IMHO, MB are making a lot of effort, but do have a lot to learn.

mb