I have just been informed that the car i ordered and paid a deposit for 4 weeks ago , based on the computer showing a built slot available in week 46 (next week) will now not be built until 2009. I am also told that all production of superbs for 2008 have been put on hold until 2009 so anyone who has ordered a car in the last few weeks or is ordering soon will not see the car until well into 2009.

This is a disgrace. One rule of selling products is that you should not over promise and under deliver. Especially at the moment as the global financial situation is not good and poeple are being cautious with their money. I am very close to cancelling my order and going to a manufacturer who can deliver on their obligations / promises.

i bet skoda have known about this for some time but have not told anyone so as not to stop people ordering. I have effectively ordered a car that cant be bought.

This is not fair and reasonble. Maybe i should ask for skoda to re-imburse the loss of interest in my deposit that i paid that is now sat in someone elses bank account.

this is also going to screw up the dealers' sales figures as the orders weer placed early in quarter 4 but will not materialise until quarter 1.

its more annoying as my car will likely be the first petrol DSG in the UK. I cant go looking for what cars are already in the country or for an ex-demo as there simply arent any in petrol.

IF YOU HAVE ORDERED IN THE PAST FEW WEEKS I SUGGEST YOU GIVE YOUR DEALER A CALL AND START ASKING SOME VERY DIRECT QUESTIONS. GET THEM TO PHONE SKODA UK AS THE DEALER ORDERING COMPUTER IS TELLING LIES - IT SAYS MY BUILD WEEK IS WK50 BUT WHEN THE DEALER CALLED SKODA THEY SAID IT WOULD NOT BE THIS YEAR.

i believe some senior people from SKODA UK look at this forum so the more of us that jump on the bandwaggon and complain about this the more there a chance of getting a response.

:mad:

Edited 19 November, 200817 yr by jcblincs
calmed down a bit now- original title was a bit harsh !!

Well done Skoda

From my past experiences with Skoda Customer services, they seem to believe they are Rolls Royce .... not an Eastern European manufacturer of rehashed VW's

I genuinely feel sorry for you seeing the level of enthusiam you have had for the car in this forum, and all joking apart do feel that this is a disgusting way to treat someone willing to handover upwards of £20k for a car from the marque.

The problem, I guess stems back to when their were issues with the sunroof supply and this has put quiet a few cars back in the build process. What I think has happened, is the supply is now resolved and they are now building these cars and hence why others are being put back. Some will be put back more than others depending on spec/colours etc. being ordered.

The same thing happened with the recent hailstorm problem, where a lot of cars were returned to the factory and some had to be built again because they were to badly damaged resulting in various cars slipping backwards down the scale.

a credible explanation, mannyo but not an ideal situation. Why havent they got the balls to write to all customers to explain and say sorry. I would if it was my business.

"manufacturer of happy drivers" - not me !!! this is my first skoda and its already looking bad !!!

to be fair i have never bought a new car before and suspect all manufacturers have issues. i believe the wait for a new Audi A4 / A5 is very long at the moment.

what makes it worse is that my outgoing car is 500 miles from needing a service. i was going to sell it privately as the trade if value is pants. Looks like i need to keep it a bit longer which means i then end up paying for a service. i will also end up trying to sell in near to xmas which is not ideal as people will be focussed on xmas and not buying cars !

From speaking with some of my Skoda contacts, I think Manny is absolutely correct.

I totally understand why you are upset, but that's nothing compared to how p*ssed off you'd be if you'd been waiting 5 months for a sunroof equipped Superb. Skoda need to clear the backlog, and sadly, that means other orders have to slip down the build schedule.

Skoda are doing the right thing, even though it's going to inconvenience a lot of customers. They're not the first car manufacturer to have supply problems, and they won't be the last. After all, Audi inconvenienced thousands of TT drivers when they had to retrofit ESP and a spoiler, but that was also the right thing to do.

Bagpuss.

yes but why dont they contact the customer and say "we are sorry that when you agreed to give us 22k of your hard earned money we had no clue when your car was going to be made but told you it would be week 46 to keep you happy. we then worked out that it was not posible to fit a quart into a pint pot , which is what we should have worked out months ago, and now its going to be delayed. " or something like that.

yes but why dont they contact the customer and say "we are sorry that when you agreed to give us 22k of your hard earned money we had no clue when your car was going to be made but told you it would be week 46 to keep you happy. we then worked out that it was not posible to fit a quart into a pint pot , which is what we should have worked out months ago, and now its going to be delayed. " or something like that.

I totally agree. Skoda should have been up front and honest about it, but sadly this seems to be a rare thing from most companies these days.

Bagpuss.

That's not good, and not great customer care, who informed you? If it's the dealer contacting you then that's perhaps the right approach since its them you have the relationship with

If the economy wasn't goosed they might also have brought in extra labour to clear the backlog, but as it is I'd be surprised if they are running to full capacity. Still, I'd rather have a new one than a mondeo or vectra that's been sat in a carpark for several months.

That's not good, and not great customer care, who informed you? If it's the dealer contacting you then that's perhaps the right approach since its them you have the relationship with

thats the thing - i actually contacted the dealer as last week there was some weird info coming form his computer system. i have been a away for a few days and contacted him for an update. he said the computer was now showing week 50. i said i was not happy and i wanted him to contact skoda and find out. he came back 30 mins later with the bad news. if it wasnt for me chasing it the dealer would not have known - its not reasonable for the dealer to check progress of all his cars every day. Skoda had not informed him of all the issues until he started digging. some dealers might not bother digging as much - i am a pain in the **** and keep bothering james every other day and james is responding by getting on the phone to skoda. many other customers who simply sit back and wait and have dealers who are not that bothered will be blissfully unaware as it seems the contact from skoda to the dealers has not been great

i am not in a position to do anything else but wait. no other car came close to the superb so its not as if i can turn around and cancel my order and go elsewhere. its not the end of the earth - its only a car for god sake !!! just rather irritating. at least i am not driving round in a shed thats falling apart at the moment !! ok - its 6 yrs old but still in the same condition it was at 2 years old with a few more mile on it. Audi interior trim is built to last and it still feels like the day i bought it. just annoying that it needs a service and ABS light keeps coming on. i could do without the hassle and expense of sorting this so close to getting a new car !

Found this new item.

The Associated Press: Skoda Auto cuts production due to global crisis

makes interesting reading.

Christ mate, have you only just realised this, I've been trying to tell everyone for ages that they are killing the brand with head in the sand and lying tactics.

If the cars weren't so nice I'd really post what I think of SUcK.

At this point, I'm counting myself very lucky to have got my car as quickly as I did.

I'm not surprised they have cut production, but that would only be for cars not allocated to customers. Depending on whether your dealer has done the right thing in the ordering system, this might have an impact on delivery. From what I understand, a lot of dealers order a car, but don't indicate in the order system that it's for a specific customer. In the current climate, this might lead to it's build being delayed.

(Note to Jonathan: I'm certain that James will have made sure that your car is marked as allocated).

Bagpuss.

Just been to see my dealer, Milton Keynes told him my car an Elegance is still due to be built week 45. Will know more next Monday. Is yours a petrol DSG, there might be a proplem with these.

Good Luck jcblincs, keep us informed.

In fairness with regard to the build dates you are given, I am sure these are only given as estimates. The dealer is damned if they do and damned if they don't.

When I ordered my Octy II a few years ago and around the same time of year as the OP, a similar thing happened to me. As I had ordered quite a bit of extra spec the car did not get an early build date (which is understandable) but sadly the build date ran into the Christmas period and as Skoda seem to shut down for around a month over the Christmas period my car was further delayed. It arrived in February, nearly 4 months after ordering it!! In fairness the Dealer did say that this might happen. When I sold Cars for a living, it was not uncommon for this sort of thing to happen and it is totally outside the dealers control. It isn’t just Skoda that has these problems many other manufacturers have the same sort of build delays, especially if you add a lot of extras to your cars base spec.

Having said all that, I ordered my current 1 series around this time last year, I then added around 18 bits of extra spec. the car was built the following week and I drove it away from the dealers a week after that. Everything was correct too, not a single mistake or fault in the initial build. Less than 3 weeks from order to driving is very impressive in my book, but the Germans can be quite efficient sometimes I have heard said.

To the OP I would say hang in there and don't let the delay tarnish your experience of driving the car. It should be great:thumbup:

JCB whats your current car are you selling it privately?

JCB whats your current car are you selling it privately?

its an Audi A6 1.8T sport manual 2002 with 89k miles. We are hoping to try and sell it privately as the trade in value is rubbish. We are lucky in that we have a third car (BMW E30 convertible) which is currently SORN'd but if we can sell the Audi we can use this car until the superb arrives.

**********************************

Edited 5 November, 200817 yr by DGW
To keep within the For Sale rules.

I thought you'd sold the A6 to a Chinese guy in Manchester?

i did. the other A6. !!!

we bought a new shape A6 earlier this year. we made a mistake. it was the wrong car. so we sold it. We had kept our old A6 in the garage and SORN'd it as we didnt get round to selling it. so when we sold the new shape A6 we resurrected the old shape one and we are using it now !!!

Needed the car for Jan 09 as a replacement for the current motor which goes back to the leasing co. Been scrabbling around for months trying to get one within budget and now looks like it's back to the drawing board

The problem effects 1.8T DSG only.

All other production is uneffected.

The problem effects 1.8T DSG only.

All other production is uneffected.

how do you know this fact? I believe it affects all superb production. will be interesting to see how this one develops.

My car was ordered on 31 July with delivery expected sometime from mid Sept to mid Oct. The build was then delayed by the sunroof problem (it is a 170CR DSG with options). My dealer advised me last week that the build week is now showing as week 52, so delivery will be sometime in January. It seems that at one stage the build week was being quoted as far out as February, but has been pulled back a bit. It all seems in a state of flux. I originally ordered the car during the previews so that I would avoid any delays that might result from orders taken at the 'official launch date'.