[Tabu]

Hi Everybody,
Sorry for the rant, but I'm just getting so frustrated with Nissan.....
So I've had to constantly contact my dealer for an update on delivery, ordered back in August and delivery date has slowly slid and continues to slide. Most recent update was that the car was due on 16th Dec, after speaking with the dealer he sounded hopeful. I went ahead and got my insurance transferred and payed the premium. Alas, 16th has passed and still no car . New due date was 21st, well that's been and gone too with no word from the dealer.
I've spoken to the dealership manager today who has explained, that there are issues with delivery (well duh), and admitted that communication between themselves and suppliers have not been great, hence the lack of update they've been providing. Also mentioned something about one of the delivery companies used for transporting the cars going into administration?!. He advised me to contact Nissan customer service, after I mentioned some form of goodwill. Well I did just that and ncs, said they couldn't offer any goodwill gesture as the delivery issues are out of their control! To make matters worse, ncs quoted the earliest delivery date to be 4th Jan!
To conclude this rant, what I now have is my existing car that is no longer insured as insurance has been transferred (will have to get this reverted back), due to changing delivery dates I had to pay for MOT on my current car - if the car was delivered on time then MOT would have still been valid. Tried to get the dealer to pay for it, but that was a no-go.
This whole experience is driving me nuts, if getting the car is this much hassle, what on earth is their after sale service like!!

Grateful for any advice you guys may have.
Thanks for listening

 

[Fontie]

Which dealer did you buy from Tabu ?

 

[Tabu]

Hi Fontie,
My dealer is Motorline Nissan in Dartford

 

[...]

motorline enough said
they should compenste you for insuarnce at least as they gave you the date and you swapped in good faith as for MOT i am surprised they took it without a decent amount of MOT on it anyway

 

[12Inchmick]

Hi Tabu, mine is the same story as yours, ordered August, delivery Dec 18th, then 8th, then 18th and 22nd. Contacted NCS today and was told to expect delivery to dealer on 5th or 6th Jan.
Dealer has since contacted his area rep and I have now been told that although the NCS Date of the 6th is on the system, Nissan is trying to get all the deliveries due 2010 sorted as they don't want the VAT bill on all the cars that get pushed into 2011. As they deliver up to 24th it still might be possible.
As I have said many times on this forum, I am disappointed for the delay as it would be nice to have the Juke as soon as possible, but with the weather at the moment I am happy to still have my Nissan Terrano 4x4 to get about in. At least it is better than all the salt and muck getting on the Juke. Not to mention I would probably kill anyone who had the bad luck to slip or slide into the Juke in the snow.
So, unhappy yes............... but it won't kill me.
Still nice to have a rant though.

12inch

 

[brownjnr]

Hi, I had the same issue with mot and wlmg did the mot for me! I would demand something from them! Try asking for accessories!

 

[Ozma]

Well **** Im glad to see you can still keep smiling andimust sayyour updatesreally do put a smile on my face - Im not even calling the dealer until the New Year for an update re my delivery date - I figureI can live without the bad news of the date moving further into 2011 - have a great Christmas and hopefully a Juking New Year

 

[12Inchmick]

Well **** Im glad to see you can still keep smiling andimust sayyour updatesreally do put a smile on my face - Im not even calling the dealer until the New Year for an update re my delivery date - I figureI can live without the bad news of the date moving further into 2011 - have a great Christmas and hopefully a Juking New Year

Same to you buddy........... hope you get all you want and a few nice surprises too.

 

[Tabu]

Thanks for your responses

@deks36 - ''motorline enough said'' Have you had a bad experience with motorline?
@12Inchmick - Thank you, your post helped to lighten the rant, and yes the rant did feel good

Well, trying to find a positive; given the weather has been quite bad lately, maybe getting the Juke later will keep it looking fresh for longer. In the meantime I'm going to try my luck with the dealer again. Hopefully he can offer something in the form of goodwill. It's christmas after all

Thanks Again & hope you all have a great christmas and new year!

 

[...]

not with your branch once dealt with motorline in Canterbury
salemanager had an appalling attitude, no customer service all about sales not service.
wasnt a new car either it was a used one

 

[chris78]

Whats is it with you and dealers, deks?

 

[...]

too many bad ones out their just after your money with no customer service
or care for you once you have left the building
I can honsetly say their is only one company I would recommend in the south east and in future I will be going to them for any new car that I want their customer service is second to none
CRAWLEY DOWN GROUP I got my Skoda from them and still speak with James the salesman there
and really wish i had got my Juke from them (multi franchise)
Motorline is a multi franchise in Canterbury and they dont give a stuff about customers
if you have a skoda from them you have to take it to Renault dealer to get it serviced, thats good not. their parts dept is also in the Renault dealership
all done to save money but not good for reputation

 

[chris78]

I think in most walks of life its true that once someone takes your money, they couldn't give a stuff. Clarkson did a great article in Top Gear last month about car dealers and customer service with the theory that if any dealer actually bothered offering customer service, they'd clean up

 

[...]

correct i didn't see that was it on telly or magazine?
I totally agree with him such a shame really i have been buying and selling used cars for 10 years now I think from memory I have only ever 4 come back with problems and never yet have I had an unhappy customer. mind you I haven't got rich from it either.

 

[chris78]

It was in last month's magazine. He was telling a story about how his Mum ended up with a totally different car as got no service. It's amazing how much business car dealers lost. I went into our local VW before I got my Ford Kuga intent on buying a Tiguan. All the dealer had to do was take me for a test drive and give me a price. They had no cars to drive and never bothered ringing me back so I got the Ford. Another VW dealer lost the sale of a Beetle cabriolet for the missus. She'd had one before and we went in intent on buying another. The dealer tutted, huffed, told us there was no point as there was a minimum 6 month waiting list and we ended up buying a Mini cabriolet instead. When I got my Scirocco, I went to 4 dealers virtually begging someone to sell me one. Finally Beadles in Dartford did me a great deal, but amazingly, one of the dealers I'd visited emailed me about 3 weeks after I'd placed the order to ask if there was anything he could do! I took great delight in pointing out that he'd lost a sale as he couldn't be bothered and that Beadles had taken an interest and secured the deal.
Even recently when we got rid of the mini, we looked at the DS3 and the citroen dealer was too busy making his tea and eating sandwiches at his desk so we walked out and went elsewhere. Selling cars at a franchised dealer must be the easiest job in the world. It's amazing how many screw it up

 

[...]

The dealer that supplied my Juke was doing really well to start with, very friendly and helpful quick replies to emails, went the extra to secure a deal , but then let themselves down by refusing to listen to me when the problem arose, and in truth it hadn't been for that and the following public abuse of me, I would of happily reccomended them which is why I put the thread up I did at the time, but now its another dealer I wont be going back to.

 

[Dougal]

Ahh, car dealers, they are people, no different to you or me but, like has been said here, you wouldn't think so by the 'couldn't care less' attitude of some.
Sales people in all walks of life have their fair share of these mindless zombies in their ranks and much like taxi drivers (sorry guys) once you come across a bad few the whole bunch is tainted.

I was a sales person for a very short period of time (around three years). I though it was a step up and a chance to get away from manual labour. Not that I minded the physical side of things but, I wanted a chance to 'do better'. That's a laugh... targets have to be met and the underhand tactics that were employed left me with a bad taste and a healthy respect for how low some people can go to make money.

To get back to the car dealers - some are very good, so I am not putting them all in the same boat but, I will not apologize if some may pick things up the way they want and not the way I have expressed my views.

When my wife and I started looking around for our next car I automatically went to our Honda dealer first. They have always been very courteous and they did have a car which we fancied but, ended up too expensive for us. We did get offered a very nice deal on the Insight against our car but, although it is still on our list, it has slipped to third place.
We tried to arrange a test drive of Juke with our local dealer and after a couple of weeks a reply came back asking me to contact them (I don't give out phone numbers if I can help it). I foned them and because their Juke specialist was not available a note was taken for them to contact me - they never have. That was around June/July 2010.
Offers have come through but, never any attempt at contacing me personally about a test drive. There was an email asking me if I wanted to order!!! Ha, ha... I fell off my seat laughing. Why on Earth would I simply want to order from a dealer that does not get back to me and no test drive offered either? So further promotional emails have been deleted promptly.

We saw that both Hyundai and Kia were taking out new model 4 x 4 machines and we seriously entertained both and went to the dealers.
The Hyundai dealer did not have the 4 x 4 salesperson available to handle my enquiry at the time and again a note was taken of our interest asking for him to get in touch with me - he never did. Although, the salesperson I was dealing with did try to sell me the i30........... and he didn't seem the slightest bit interested in our interest of the ix35.
We went to KIA to see about their offering and was told that they were now taking the overflow of orders from Hyundai's ix35 and offering people the Kia Sportage as an alternative. I asked when we might get a test drive and the salesperson didn't offer me any dates because he did not have a car to offer the test drive in nor did he know when he might get one because of the full order books. Well, that did it as far as both Hyundai and Kia are concerned - their sales staff don't seem to have been given any kind of proper customer relations training whatsoever or they have a very short term memory for how to handle customers and increase sales.

Next stop Nissan dealership - we walked across the road and decided to confront the dealers' salesperson face to face - not one person got up out of their seats to ask if they could help. We walked out again never to return.

We went to Volkswagen. I have had the Golf TDi in the past and wanted to have a look at what they had to offer. I knew the format of the Tiguan but, it was a little expensive for us. There were a few very keenly priced Passats on the forecourt but, I know the model is about to be replaced. I was drawn to a Passat CC however. it looked very sleek and inviting to me. I went inside to ask for a test drive. No problem sir. The sales guy could not have been friendlier. No asking for my drivers license either - very trusting I thought. Never mind we'll see what's what. He showed me all the controls and we went for a spin. I fell in love with this car. It drove very smoothly and with the suspension setting set for comfort (CC stands for comfort coupe) it was very comfortable, soaking up road imperfections with ease only jumping a little at the worst of them. The engine was a 140 bhp diesel and it did not lack for response. I am not a speed freak, preferring comfort over performance but, I do like my cars to have enough oomph to get past something in a hurry if I need to and this machine certainly does this. We went back to the dealers and if my wife had agreed then we may well not be going for the Juke right now. We asked the dealer to let us think about it and he kindly got in touch soon after to see what we were thinking. Now we went back a short while later to ask for a drive in the automatic version. I know the DSG gearbox is a lovely one to operate as I had driven a car with it before. However, there was not one available and my details were noted by another salesperson who would try to prise the keys out of the hands of the MD for a quick spin when convenient. That was about 2 maybe 3 months ago. Oh well, so much for good intentions. My wife didn't like the dealership anyway because while I was away at the call of nature she was looking intently at one of the Golfs. She says she was trying to make her intentions known to sales people that were passing her by without actually saying 'excuse me I want to buy this car'. So, she was put right off the dealer. It seemed to her that unless you were a man they didn't want to know.

Next stop Skoda - I was interested in the Yeti but, my wife doesn't like it and although, I eventually went for a test drive in a Superb by myself on another day, my wife admitted she does not like Skoda full stop. She just doesn't like the badge. The sales people could not have been nicer and offered us a test drive of any vehicle that they might have available at a time to suit us. Even though I had my own test drive, I was offered to come back at any time to show my wife the car too and go for another drive. But alas Skoda is not to be. It must be a car we both want.

So, it came back to the Juke. I was determined not to go to our local dealer and we opted for another some, sixty miles away who till now cannot have been nicer. We test drove the 1.6 Acenta he had in and was offered a test drive of the 4 x 4 when it arrived - it did we haven't but, will most likely order anyway.

So that's my little story about dealers. I hope you have found it interesting and I will keep posting as things progress.

 

[...]

IF you didn't have you address in your signature I would swear you were in my location.
Edited by: deks36

 

[Jukeofhazard]

Well written and very interesting.

 

[Dougal]

Thanks Juke - wasn't sure if I should have posted here rather than a new post. Oh well... hum-dee-hum