Daz

Highway Robbery

Dick Turpin had the decency to wear a mask - absolute daylight robbery and atrocious customer service. In a nutshell my engine management light came on, suggesting my 1 series had a problem with a brake sensor. I took it to a local garage who reset it after a diagnostic for £30 and advised they could not find anything majorly wrong with it. The light came back on so to err on the side of caution, I foolishly booked it into BMW at Belmont for a 'diagnostic, wash and valet'. All for the 'bargain' price of £99.00. When dropping off the vehicle an attempt was made to coerce me into getting the AC checked and the refrigerant gas changed. Fortunately as I'm a trained AC engineer, I knew that what I was being told was basically untrue and basically a ploy the staff have been told to mention to customers in order to con more money out of them. Thankfully I declined. At this point alarm bells started ringing. I had to chase the dealership on the afternoon after dropping off the vehicle at 8.30am as no one bothered to phone and tell me what was going on - only to be told they needed to keep the car as they could not find what the fault was. I agreed but said I needed it back asap as I need it for work. The next day I still ended up chasing them again, as no one even attempted to phone me to keep me informed. I received a 'video' of the 'free vehicle health check' via email, which was basically a mechanic walking around the car with a phone, mumbling something unintelligible which could not be heard over the white noise from the garage in the background. Not helpful in the slightest. I then received a phone call mid afternoon (after chasing them) where i was advised it 'might' need a new vacuum pump and sensor, and all for the bargain price of £1029. I was gobsmacked. Not only that, but £550 was for LABOUR. Bearing in mind the BMW parts in question can be bought off the internet for £57.04 and £17.49 respectively, I fail to see how they can justify an uplift of nearly £955. I showed the estimate to my local garage who laughed and said they were 'taking the p*ss' and that under no circumstances should those parts and labour costs be anywhere near what they had quoted. I am now awaiting a revised estimate from them which I will be notifying BMW of when received. They won't give a damn, it's just to see what excuses they can come up with to justify trying to rob me blind. I suppose they make most of their profit by ripping off elderly, retired businessmen with more money than sense, but this business practice is quite frankly disgraceful. I will be reporting it to trading standards and referring to my brother, a small claims solicitor to try and get my £99 back as they have in effect, done nothing to my car. Even the free wash and valet resulted in my car being returned to me covered in orange paint or rust splashes. I am absolutely livid and disgusted with the whole sorry situation. So, if money is no object and you don't mind being robbed blind with estimates for work that is either vastly overpriced or not even required, then by all means use this dealership. Quite frankly it has made me want to sell my BMW and never buy another again. A horrendous experience and I genuinely feel sorry for anyone who takes their car there, as you will be ripped off left, right and centre. I bet the BBC could have a field day looking into this in rip off Britain or some other watchdog programme. I now await the standard cut and paste apology / response from the dealership which will have about as much sincerity as their trained rob dog mechanics.