Elvis,

When I bring Dad's Alfa in for a service, I get a Fiat. When I brought my new (at the time) 306 XSi in for a service, I got a 106. When I took the SLK in, I got an A-Class...

Cars should be clean and reasonably new (2/3 years old?), but to expect the same spec. or model is a little unreasonable. Crap servicing isn't and I have shouted at plenty of garages for that, but does bringing in an SLK mean I should get another SLK for the day??

I have to agree with Roger...

Forgive me if I have seemed unreasonable, stating that I expect equivalent. I simply mean that I expect an Impreza sport, GL or a legacy.

What I get is either no car at all, or a corsa size car.

Sorry for continuing this worn out thread even longer, but some of you seem to think that I am expecting an STI or something.
To me it is reasonable to expect an A class to replace a Benz, a Focus to replace a Mondeo, and perhaps a Sport to replace a turbo,
Not: "We don't have any courtesy cars available for three weeks".

If other dealers can afford to do it, why can't Subaru? (Don't answer that - this thread has gone round in circles enough times now).
They charge enough.

My limited experience has been somewhat different, everytime I have been in I have had an Impreza as a courtesy car. It was an oldish one 96 I think, but it was clean and beats getting the bus home. The dealer I use is in Chesterfield and have been very good so far. Hope it stays this way,

I love my car by the way!!

Elvis,

What you expect is reasonable... the fact you ain't gonna get it, makes it unreasonable as most car dealers in my experience, are always short of courtesy cars [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img] No matter what make. Even with BMW you have to book in advance but at £75 p/hour labour rate, I should hope they are more able to deliver customer satisfaction.

Alfa gave me a Fiat once with no tax disc, a broken headlight and no fan... When I complained I got a '96 Clio with no power steering and a letter under the seat from the previous client complaining about the fact that it had had no tax disc either :eek:

As it turned out, this Auto Italia dealer soon found it's way onto Watchdog. This was 1 week after they returned the GTV with cr@p repairs to the driver's side door. They charged Norwich £2000 for the work, and it went back twice!! Then it had to go to another repairer for £700 more work.

I personally am yet to meet a decent, efficient, courteous dealer. Bar BMW, but then...

I've been waiting ages to moan about that ;)

Never bothered with courtesy cars but the one thing that annoys me is the lack of appreciation that dealers give to the value of my time.
They charge me >£50/hr and yet tell me to drop the car in and wait of a Saturday morning only to take 3hrs to carry out the necessary (specialists included, perhaps even worse!)
Dropping the car off and leaving it for the day is also a hassle as it means leaving home very early, travelling in the wrong direction for 12 miles, and then trying to catch public transport to get back.
My time is worth a lot more than the dealer chares for his but it seems it's OK if it's only mine that is wasted.
I love the car and really want to ensure it's well looked after but I do not want to hear 'pop in at 8 sir and we'll only be an hour' only to have to sit doing sod all for 3 hrs on a Sat. morning.
Grrrrrrrrrrrr!

When mine is in for service i take whatever courtesy car is available as i make sure that i do not really need a car that day. If i feel that i will not need a car at all the dealer i use will pick the car uo and deliver back to work/home or wherever.

I have had mixed reactions with courtesy cars..

My first Subaru Dealer used to um and ahh about a courtesy car, and then it was a Justy - the most spiteful POS I have had the misfortune to drive. My second Subaru Dealer gave me a nice new MY01 estate (GX) - at least it was new, clean and presentable.

In the past I had a Lexus IS200 Sport. It had to go back to have some replacement Alloys, I requested a car as I did have a meeting that day so I needed a motor - They gave me a fairly new GS300 as a replacememt. So some dealers good, some bad.

I don't think you will ever win on this unfortunately.

Jim :)

Dealers really are the pits wherever you go. When I took my wife's Celica in for it first service they said - it'll only be 20 mins, so I waited. After 40 mins I went up and asked how much longer and they told me they hadn't even STARTED it! I was furious - I'd been sat in reception right in front of them all that time, looking at the same 3 month old copy of Autocar, and they hadn't even had the courtesy to tell me. They weren't even busy.

got my 1k service for the at welch group in cambridge next Sat, so see how that goes...

And to think, I expect them to "Thank You Sir for spending such a riduclous amount of money servicing your car at our garage which took 5 hours longer than we told you and cost several hundred pounds more..."

:D

I have noticed a big difference in the level of service available in England. In Northern Ireland I have had 3 services and in each I was given an Impreza GL from 2 different garages.
I had the car serviced in Sheffied and had to get a taxi home!!!

I am grateful to have any sort of courtesy car, and couldn't really care less what it is. If it's roadworthy, and gets me there, that is fine.

However, my biggest gripe is they always seem to have been lacking a bit of window polish for the last 6 months, so you cant see a thing when the sun shines or in the face of headlights.

Elvis,

i used to work at the Birmingham Business Park, and Carstins would collect my car from there and return it afterwards; and if required would also provide a courtesy car for the duration.

This was for a Lease Plan company car.

mb

It all comes down to cost. As a dealer we need a profit to run the company. The courtesy car cost is in the labour rate. If we ran new WRX's etc this would push the labour rate up.

I run three courtesy cars, two Legacy estates and a Justy. The fact is most of my customers don't as for one - so why should they pay ?

Perhaps dealers should charge for them ? Or give a discount on the labour rate if not taken ?

David

I can't believe some of the low expectations expressed on here.

IMHO Subaru dealers (in general, with some exceptions) and IM are having a laugh. One day soon they are going to wake up and smell the coffee.

From the minute I was handed the keys I was disappointed in the service.... e.g. having to drive next door to the petrol station to put some fuel in..... NOT what I expect on a £20K+ car.... in fact even the Peugeot dealer where we bought my wife's 206 from had the good grace to put in 3/4 tank, pretty good considering we had battered down the price using quotes off the Internet....

Tim

Just a few points -

If you take your Rolex for a service do you get a loan one of the same value ?

Your new digital camera packs up and you take it back to Dixons - what do you use ?

Your Nokia fails to communicate - you call Vodafone and what do you get ?

David

Elvis,
I think you are quite right to expect a reasonable level of customer service, something that is often missing at main dealers.

The chap who mentioned earlier about the Service Manager giving out his Merc is a superb example of "excellent customer service", I bet that guy will go back to that dealer every time now.

You should complain when you are not happy and praise when you are, although this is often wasted when talking to service staff, talk or write to the man at the very top.
My opinions with my dealer have changed from excellent to rubbish after the service receptionist left, his replacement has already forgotten twice to order parts that they noted were required after a service, this single staff change has totally changed the performance of the dealership risking loosing loyal customers.

Good Customer Service is King.

Allan

My dealer has 1.1 saxos for courtesy cars - but only let you have one if you insure it yourself and show them the insurance.......

I cant be bothered with that hassle.

What about grey imports and servicing ? My local dealer was quite happy to sell me a UK car a few years ago and service it (with a curtesy car available) but couldn't show me the door quick enough when I turned up in an imported Forester. Excuses ranged from 'computer diagnostic problems to parts availability and liability if anything went wrong'. They just didn't want to know, yet a local Vauxhall main dealer couldn't have been more helpful and the nearby independent says "no problem , do you want a curtesy car or should we collect and return ?'
I think Subaru main dealers have to sort their act out and provide what the paying customer wants.

Brian

My dealer, SG Petch in Richmond, always have a courtesy car available, even at short notice. My car is always washed and the bill is nowhere near the amounts I read here that some folks pay.

It isn't a manufacturer issue, it is down to the dealer. That's why I am onto my seventh car (third scooby) from mine.

Worst service in my long motoring carreer - Vauxhall dealers. Never found a one that could even spell service, never mind give any.

Ken

Elvis

Move to Cumbria and use Stan Palmers. On every occasion I have had a brand new car, and I mean 10 miles on the clock, whilst mine has been in for service. Service costs have been £100-£300 for each alternate 6 month service. Sometimes cleaned sometimes not, but I'm not complaining, especially as I see how the rest of you are treated.

Take my car to Gatwick Group in Crawley. Well actually they kindly pick it up! Excellent level of service (have just bought a new WRX from them at a very good price) Courtesy car of some description usually available, although it's pot luck and insure yourself. But who cares it's for a day and part of owning a car.

Earlier in the year they were allowing old shape customers to use one of their WRX demonstrators as a courtesy car.

Really can't fault the service, if not a little pricey, but I did go in with my eyes open.

I suspect with the 10,000 mile service interval we may see labour costs sneak up to cover costs.

Bottom line I'm afraid Elvis is that these guys are running a business and want to make a profit.

Dave

Robinsons did the business as usual - Matthew R picked up my WRX from home and left me a Forester S Turbo for the day. And this was just for the free 1000 mile service...

Gareth

I must say i'm very happy with the service i get from my dealer here in Kent "Walldonway",no matter how late i book the car in for a service they allways find me a nice car for the day,last month i had to leave the car with them for a few hours and they gave me a sti7 which was nice :) Also i've never had a service bill over £130 and just booked in for my 18 month's at £125.
Chris.

as a large independant garage in the north, we operate 3 courtesy cars, 2 fiestas and 1 micra. all are replaced on a 12monthly basis(from new) so they never have more than 14,000 miles. they are only base models but are never older than 12 months. the customer takes a car at his/her own discretion and must provide insurance. the same level of fuel is expected to be returned with the car(usualy about half), its up to the customer. if requested they can have a new clean car with a reasonable amount of fuel(they must replace what they use) but its nothing fancy.

on top of this the use of the cars is not charged onto the bills/passed onto the customer. this is probably the reason we operate base model cars.

how ever, directors of large companies have been known to get use of a fully loaded 3 month old merc E320!!!!

My local main dealer (Tiley of Bristol) apparently got lots of complaints about their courtesy cars (they used to use Justys) so they started a new scheme a few months back. You can either have a Justy for nothing or pay them 10 quid and drive a new WRX for the day. Of course they run them empty to empty... but personally I don't object too much to paying a tenner for something decent to run around in while they sort mine.

In any case, it's better than I used to get from my local BMW main dealer in the days when I ran a 325... Dick Lovett of Bristol never had a courtesy car for me, never had the car ready on time and always managed to introduce a new problem while temporarily removing the old one. One day I turned up at 6pm to pick the old girl up (having heard nothing all day) only to be told "it's still up on ramps we had to order a suspension part". Half the rear suspension was out because there was a bent subframe bolt or somesuch. Believe it or not even after that cockup it took a half hour argument with the service manager to get a courtesy car...

When I had my 45k service done by Holdcrofts, I asked for a courtsey car as I needed to get out and about for work. I got a perfectably acceptable Y reg 1.6 GL Wagon (IIRC) and I didn't have to wait weeks for a slot.

I asked for the wipers to be replaced as the Bosch ones from Halfords were smearing badly. I'd left the old Subaru ones (pre Bosch) in the boot as spares. Holdcrofts rang up to say they'd found some spares in the boot, did I really want new ones. Thumbs up for that.

I can't fault the service from Holdcrofts to date.

Just confirmation of PaulT100's comments re Tiley's in Bristol. I didn't mind stumping up a tenner for a WRX for the day, when they recently serviced my STi7 (not purchased rom Tiley's). All of the staff were pleasant, polite and helpful. I think some people have hit the nail on the head; It's not thc car, it's not the manufacturer, it's the dealership and their business ethos, it may even be one member of staff within the dealership that warps your perception of the Subaru empire! For those that are unhappy, by all means complain, but remember, you have the ultimate sanction...It's your money.....
Blooscoob

Oh and by the way.....
Elvis, a classic example of the comments in my last post is, a Saab dealer. Saab spent god knows how much on an interactive website, allowing me to change vehicle colours and interiors and do 360 degree views of the different options, all very impressive. Impressive enough for me to complete the e-mail request for a 24 hour test drive. 2 days later, a beautifully presented Saab pacakage arrived on my doorstep, with a personal letter from the MD of Saab UK advising me that I would be contacted by my local dealer, who was Williams in Bristol, to arrange the test drive. This is what i'm looking for I thought to myself, decent service from a company that's interested in helping me. So I waited for the phone call......and I waited........waited some more.......after about a week of waiting for the call, I rang the number on the covering letter and explained my predicament, politely and pleasantly, after all, this may simply have been an oversight. The individual that I spoke with said that they would speak with Williams and call me back which they duly did. "There is no problem sir, Williams are expecting you sometime today if that's convenient?" I agreed that I would go to tneir showroom at lunchtime. Very impressive showroom, nice and quiet, one person waiting for service at the parts counter, two salesman sat at their desks writing and a sales manager moving around the sales floor. I was the only potential client in the showroom. I did what most people would have done I think, and went and looked at the model that I was interested in. I walked around it, inspecting it from all angles. I sat in it, tried to change gears, gear lever locked, looked over the interior. Then I got out of the vehicle and waited....and I waited some more......after about 5 minutes of waiting, with 3 salesman obviously doing something far more important than selling, I got pi55ed off and walked towards the exit shaking my head, thinking to myself "If they can't be bothered to look after me when I'm giving buying signals for a £27,000 car, how are they going to look after me when I have a problem?

Before I got to the exit, the "sales" manager spotted me, leaving with a shaking head, "can I help you sir", he shouted from behind me. I turned and replied "Yes, you can talk to me please", anyway to cut a long story short, I was introduced to one of the 2 salesman, who did the usual, I enquired about a test drive as suggested by the Saab website, to be told that they don't keep the model I wanted in stock, it would take 2 to 3 days to get one in for a test. No problem, I'll leave it with you and expect your call..........and guess what? I'm still waiting for that call and thoroughly enjoying my new STi7. A classic example of an individual dealer completely wasting the millions of money that is spent on marketing, just to get you into a showroom and as a result providing me with a negative perception of Saab as a Company.
Blooscoob

LOL!

I don't like the courtesy cars so I'm not buying another scoob!

Bye then.

Didn't know you were branching out into jewellery or consumer electronics!

You should be asking what happens if you take your Toyota for a service - or Mazda or Lexus etc These guys are who you have to beat.