Dear BMW’s head of quality,
I congratulate you for manufacturing one of the world’s best cars while having one of the most miserable services and treatment to your customers. Shocked? Perhaps not as I was while I was starring at the “quality award of the year” given by your group to Qatar’s local agent.
At Alfardan’s workshop, I entrusted my X5 over the span of 10 colander days to fix a mere rear light fault and a Problem with the A/C. However, and to my shock I discovered after 10 days and as I wanted to leave that there exists yet another problem! Miraculously the front kidney grill has a “fitting problem!”
I use the term “miraculous” since no formal explanation was offered to justify what seemed to be caused by an accident! Sitting for extensive hours, I thought of few questions that I would like to ask you:
– Why wasn’t this reported to me “the owner” formally?
– How did this car make it through all the quality checks to the point of returning it to the client with a major defect that was not there when I entrusted the car to Alfardan’s group?
– If this has happened during the 10 days, what efforts were made to meet the deadline of receiving my car on the agreed date?
To be fair workshop and the existing staff, the workshop manager Mr. Nick has apologized and offered me “a solution to go about my life with little inconvenience.” What I did not understand at the time was that the word “little” referred to a “mini” cooper.
Over the span of 4 days, I have kept waiting for a word of apology or an explanation, but I received none. I did receive my car however, which also had to return to the workshop the very next day because of a “low tire pressure fault” this painful exercise lasted for a whole afternoon.
Bear in mind that the saga was witnessed by Mr. Chris, the after-sales General Manager, and the conversation with Mr. Nick took place in Mr. Chris’s office. Mr. Chris who hangs a leadership model high on his wall has refused to meet, talk or even shake my hand followed by a word of apology.
I wonder what leader fails to accept accountability and runs away from responsibility?
Lastly, I fail to understand why BMWs’ standards drop dramatically as they sell their cars away from places like the U.S. or EU? BMW promotes cars with words like “experience” and “sheer pleasure” yet the only experience I am getting is: “shear painful experience” and that is how you lose customers loyalty
Haya
2010/03/06 - 01:47 م
I wrote a very similar letter to a franchise gym here in Doha. Compared to the one in the US, they have neither customer service nor respect! It makes absolutely no sense how they entered the local market not aware that with the number of competitors around, they are merely offering a commodity competing on price & customer service. Given the economic development in this region, price hardly matters, which leaves customer service and experience as the only major competing factor. How hard is it to realize that and change? Uff