Even the steering wheel is extra

Regular readers of the blog will be aware that I have a lot to thank BMW for. I have been a BMW driver for probably twenty five years and through their owners club golf links I have achieved many wonderful things. I won the owners club trophy at Turnberry , I qualified for the British final of the BMW World Cup at St Andrew's and I played Wentworth many times the week after the BMW Championships. I also had access to many top flight courses around the UK, not least Hillside, Walton Heath and St Georges Hill. Add in holiday golf in Morocco and Turkey and it's a good portfolio of add-ons.

The icing on the cake though was the opportunity to play in the pro-am tournament before the BMW Championship in Chicago, which at the time was at Cog Hill and formed part of the Fedex Cup finals. I played with Lucas Glover, the US Open Champion of the time, and we followed Tiger Woods and the Mr BMW fourball round the course.

It hurts me. therefore, to share my disappointment at the way the main dealer experience seems to have been degraded and is now no longer the go to service outlet it should be. I gave Williams BMW in Liverpool one last try this week, as my car has done 125000 miles and I thought there might be some parts which may be replaced as routine. The engine also had a bit of a growl which could have done to be looked at.

In the past I have been attended to by a receptionist who was maybe a mechanic who had worked up to the office/PR team. or somebody who was a bit of a petrolhead and at least would know what I was trying to describe as I booked the vehicle in. Sadly now the person I was faced with had no idea about anything other than what the script said, and was more interested in telling me how much the investigation would cost rather than having any empathy with me. 

I picked the car up two days later and I suspect the growl was cured with a component change as part of the routine service, but I will never know. Luckily they only replaced the windscreen wipers and not the windscreen as I had been assured was what I had booked it in for. I will look for an independent next time and hopefully they can keep it running for another 125000 miles.

If the growl was an exhaust problem I was quoted £3200 for a new system. E-bay indicated to me I might be lucky to get that if I sold the car!!