I rarely sit all the way through that sort of thing, but found this interesting.
It's a shame that you're so far away Olly, or you'd be getting another customer when my current Service Plan runs out. I knew there was a reason we shouldn't have moved from Hampshire. We were even only a couple of minutes off the M3. Anyway, good luck with getting some bigger premises
@BlackC55 - I would think that what you have at the moment doesn't attract many new customers looking for somewhere worthy of their much loved Mercedes. No wonder you don't show it off on your website.
It was good to hear that you take on apprentices and aren't too cocky yourself to listen to what your staff say. Reminds me of a time back in the 80s when I was on the dark side with a Munich offering (520i) that I put in for a service at what was considered London's leading dealership immediately before setting off to Austria for a holiday with my family. Whilst on the autobahn on the way down my kids in the back remarked on a strange noise. I stopped by the side (a scary experience on such a fast road) and checked that the wheels weren't falling off, before eventually tracking the noise down to the fuel pump. It was then that I spotted that the big fuel filter near the tank had a massive arrow embossed on it that was pointing to the tank. I guessed that it was the wrong way round but didn't want to fiddle around with it there and then, instead deciding to keep the car's speed down so the petrol pump didn't have to work so hard.
The day after we got back home I drove round to the BMW dealership and told them what happened, knowing that a new filter had been installed by them during the recent service. They gave me a coffee while they put my car up on a ramp. A little later the smartly dressed service manager came back to me and said that everything was fine. When I asked if they had put the filter the right way round, he assured me that it was already correct. I argued the point, much to his obvious disgust, until he eventually agreed to let me into the workshop to show me where I was wrong. Along with the mechanic who did the service, the three of us stood under the car with both men insisting that the filter was the right way round. When I asked them to explain what the effing great arrow was for on the filter, they insisted that it was nothing to do with the direction of flow.
My exasperation was clearly showing by now because a young lad, presumably an apprentice, joined us and bravely agreed that the filter was the wrong way round. The service manager glared at him angrily before storming off to get the workshop foreman. The foreman's first comment was "Ah, sorry. I can see the problem here." He went to to explain that my car was a facelift model that had had many changes, including a different fuel filter design and location. A lip around one end of the filter was now at the other end, and the lip was what the technicians were used to using to identify which way round to fit it. Without that apprentice, I wouldn't have got my fuel filter correctly fitted.
It was a very reluctant apology I got from the snooty service manager, but he refused to go any further than that. When I challenged him about the extra strain that had been put on the pump while trying to send fuel the wrong way through the filter for a couple of thousand miles, he insisted it was fine. Even though I reminded him that he said the filter was fine when it wasn't, he refused to back down. He wouldn't even provide written acknowledgement that they had got it wrong in the first place, so I had something to fall back on if the pump failed.
It was the last time I used that dealership and the last BMW that I owned.
I hope you get your back sorted.
