The BMW poor customer service saga continues

So, I took my car back to the dealer to get the key problem done today. I got my courtesy car, a BMW 1 series. Some people told me I should be grateful for that so I shall pretend to be. It is a lovely car, not underpowered at all.

If you read my previous rant about the problem you may just remember that the operating range for both the remote keys had suddenly dropped so that neither key would work unless I was standing next to the car. I ranted and I raved because the dealer had failed to fix the problem and also failed to correctly acknowledge it. Read all about it here:

http://londonlanka.blogspot.com/2006/07/why-im-disappointed-with-bmw.html

About 15 minutes ago I got a call from Fish Face, the service chap. It went like this:

"Hello Mr Diaspora it's Fish Face from HR Owen. Are you going to be ok in the courtesy car until tomorrow as we have ordered a new key for your car which will be with us tomorrow?"

I was nice and pleasant to him and said that I'll be ok. I had to ask him why they have ordered 1 and not 2 keys as I took both keys in and I didn't want to leave with only 1 working key and no spare.

"Well I'm not sure as I haven't actually spoken to the technician myself, but I'll find out" he said, and promised to call me back. I found it astounding that he claimed not to have spoken to the technician yet but I left it with him.

He called me back 5 minutes later and said:

"They've only ordered 1 key because they are not sure exactly what is causing the problem and they want to eliminate the key. BMW won't pay for the cost of 2 keys if it is not the problem and, if it's not the key that is the problem then it's the BUS system."

"What's the BUS system?" I asked.

"It's the central computer system." our fishy service bloke responded.

"OK" I said "but surely if the problem was with the key then it wouldn't have occurred with both keys".

"Ah yes, but we need to eliminate that".

So, the gist, according to Fish Face, is that it may be the key but BMW won't pay for 2 keys under warranty unless they can be sure that they key is faulty. Fair enough, but I will be without my car for at least 2 more days because these experts can't find out what the cause of the problem is. I don't know how much to believe from Fish Face and I have decided to seek another dealer in the future.

My fighting sprit is waning, I just want the problem solved, I want my car back and I want the central locking to work as I walk up to the car, not just when I am standing half a millimetre away from it. Clearly all the computer diagnostics won't actually tell them why the problem exists and they have to use brainpower to attempt to solve this.

I think the brainpower thing may be the root of the problem here. I am no genius, nor do I pretend to be, but I told them 3 weeks ago that the problem occurred with both keys and therefore it is probably not caused by the keys. I think they are about to discover that for themselves. Frankly, diagnosing a problem by a process of elimination always smells of desperation, but I'll see how they get on.


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