monitoringstar

Hmm - worrying! I bought my 2010 Superb Estate at CDG. Dan and Amy in sales were great and 18,000 mile service seemed OK. They also have a Ford service franchise and took my wife's Focus there for its 2 year service. Her car has sculpted wheel trims with cable ties in place. Having had one tyre replaced 3 cable ties were the same but one was a different colour. After the service, which included checking the brakes and security of the wheel nuts, guess what - the cable ties clearly had not been touched and the trims had never been off the wheels! On contacting the service manager the response was "Its OK, its a low mileage car, in good condition there won't be a problem, but if you really want you can bring it back and we will check it while you wait" He totally missed the point that this is actually fraud - the check sheet said work I had paid for had been done when patently it hadn't. What else had I paid for that hadn't actually been done? I did take the car back "early afternoon" as arranged. Arrived at 12.50 pm, at 13.05 pm car is still where I left it. Ask receptionist what is going on. Brusquely told "You were early, you weren't meant to arrive until 1 o'clock, all the technicians are on lunch". Eventually at 13.10 pm the car disappears off. As 13.50 pm I again ask what is going on "the technician is just putting the wheels back on, won't be long now". You would think that having screwed up on the first visit they would pull out all the stops to get the remedial visit right. Instead they simply made an already bad situation worse. No one from the service management made an effort to see me face to face to apologise. After my initial complaint, Chris Voller the Commercial Director, did call me, but the re-assurance of his call was totally dispelled by the second visit. I subsequently returned their customer service assessment form with low scores and an "unhappy customer" covering letter, but no-one has bothered to follow it up. Pretty clear to me that the problem starts at the top. Whether they just condone the technicians cutting corners or actively encourage them to cut corners I can't say but with strong management it wouldn't happen.

It rained so much there was no chance any mud was going to set! Contacted my local dealer and they quoted me £145 (+ VAT) for the update disc, but said it would give me 7 digit post code function. When asked (parts dept) whether this would need firmware update they said they would check and get back to me. Sure enough within 30 minutes they rang back - as I had bought the car (new) from them and had it serviced with them they could update the firmware and install the new maps for free, but I would not get to keep the disc, when would I like to bring the car in? They confirmed that updating the firmware would wipe the music and favourite destinations etc but that is a relatively small price to pay to get a free map update and improved functionality. Does anyone know if you can back up the music and favourite destinations etc and then simply do a mass restore after the firmware update?

The key thing here is surely UPDATE! 95+% of the maps etc will be unchanged year to year, looked at like that £145 for a (probably) less than 5% change in the data makes £145 seem VERY expensive. I was really only prompted to this topic as I have just returned from a business trip to Ireland and according to the Columbus system in my 2010 Superb Estate I was driving across fields for a large part of the trip from Dublin to Galway!