Saints and Cowboys
- the Good, Bad & Ugly Sides of Service
We delivered our BRA 289 to Stüber on Monday 4th December 2000, to have an additional fuel tank fitted
(underneath the boot floor) and a new stainless steel exhaust system. We were verbally quoted about DM600 (£194) for the
tailored manufacture and fitting of this secondary fuel tank, and up to DM1500 (£546) to replace the exhaust system. When we
returned on Wednesday 6th December to collect the car, we were charged DM650 (£210) for the new 75 litre stainless
steel petrol tank (including sourcing and calibrating a new fuel guage sender, and modifying the existing 36 litre tank to
drain into the new tank), and DM750 (£242) for the exhaust system (new twin pipes, but using the existing manifold and rear
silencers). At my request, they made up a cross-pipe (to link the left and right sides of the exhaust system just after the
L-shaped downpipes, but because the exhaust note sounded odd with this, remade the two downpipes without the cross-link - all
within the above price!
Individual examples too numerous to list, but as well as being a leading authority, Gerry replies promptly to all my
faxed pleas for help, even on Saturday evenings or Sundays - well above and beyond the call of duty, a true enthusiast;
many thanks, Gerry.
I sent a fax on 31-12-99, requesting him to contact me (to arrange a visit to estimate the cost of repairing our BRA 289
car). Despite it being New Years' Eve, Peter phoned back within 30 minutes, and we agreed to meet up the following
Saturday morning. Once he saw the car, he was honest enough to say that he couldn't do a satisfactory repair for the
price that we had been quoted elsewhere, so turned the job down!
Within seven hours of sending an e-mail (on a Sunday) requesting advice on how to repair our two (and my brother-in-law's)
faulty Pace satellite receivers, Martin had replied with his suggestions. I duly ordered the kits he suggested - which
arrived on Thursday, only four days later. The first two repair kits I fitted cured all the faults in the MSS300 and
MSS500 receivers - but now we can watch television again, I have not fitted the PRD800 kit yet!
Despite the fact that our Renault Clio Williams does not fit into their collection of cars for sale (mostly Mercedes SL
& SLKs, Ferrari Testarossa, Jaguar XK8, BMW Z1 & Z3, etc.) they have offered to help us sell the car for an
agreed price. Anything over this sum is their profit, and if unsuccessful, they will not charge us for their efforts in
keeping the car well-presented. This may be too good an offer to turn down. They can be contacted at
http://www.autoscout24.de/Partner/Auto-Koch
Firstly, lack of communication (the delays were excused usually by the partner being on holiday - when do they actually do
any work?) hindered the purchase process for all of our three houses in England. Worse still, with the first house purchase,
when the builders pressured us to exchange contracts on schedule, Maples lied to us and the builders, claiming that the
contracts had been posted to us over one month earlier, and trying to swing the blame for the delays onto ourselves. Maples
then charged us for a second set of contracts to be drawn up and sent to us, and after all the dust had settled and we had
completed the purchase, we eventually received the original contracts - the late postmark on the envelope providing the
evidence of their lies.
Which brings us on to the second Cowboys Award - the Melton Mowbray Building Society insisted on charging us 2% above the
standard base rate for our mortgage (just because we live in Germany!) - currently (Feb. 2000) at 9.3%, repayable over 25
years. This is a scandalous discrimination, which should not be legal in this civilised (?) world, and is fortunately not
practised by all companies - the Yorkshire Bank offered us a rate of 5.74% (fixed for 5 years) on a mortgage repayable
over 17 years 10 months!
I purchased a new computer (in component form, without monitor) for DM2027 (£654) from Snogard in mid-November'99. Hardly any
items were in the original packaging, they supplied me with the wrong keyboard (later reluctantly exchanged), a mouse (with
the wrong driver), a DVD-ROM drive (with no driver, so it would not even function as a basic CD-ROM drive), and a hard disc
that had no Master Boot Record - I suspect this is why the PC is now so unstable. Despite my repeated requests for help,
Snogard have refused to assist me (perhaps they are even less PC-literate than I am!). Meanwhile, I downloaded a suitable
mouse driver from the Microsoft web site, and obtained a CD-ROM driver from another site, but Snogard refused to exchange the
DVD-ROM drive for a cheaper CD-ROM drive, expecting me to pay an additional DM199 (£64) for a DVD-ROM driver - in order to
use the DVD-ROM drive that cost DM179 (£58). I then placed the matter in the hands of my solicitor, and even Snogard can
probably guess where my next PC will NOT come from?
After a cable fault which caused the 13/18V supply (for the LNB) in my Pace MSS300 satellite receiver to fail, I found a
web site that explained how to repair the unit (and offered all the necessary components for £8,95 - see Martin Pickering
above). However, due to a lack of time (I was trying to sort out my new PC, see Snogard above), I decided to let a local
company (Nicolin) repair the unit. They estimated the repairs would cost about DM70 (£22), so I authorised them to go ahead -
provided the sum of DM100 (£32) would not be exceeded. One week later, they phoned to say the receiver was repaired - for
which they charged DM156,45 (£51), and whilst they had restored the missing 13/18V supply, the Videocrypt decoder was then
dead. This new fault is more severe (and Nicolin want "significantly more money, about DM200" (£64) to repair this),
so I contacted Martin Pickering, whose kit for £8,95 (DM27) sorted the problems.
Not only is the service appalling, Steve attempts to compensate for his ignorance with abuse. This company does not deserve to be,
and probably will not be, in business for much longer. There just isn't space to list his attitude here - just one example of his
'charming' manners can be seen on our web page dedicated to this
@rsehole
Having eventually found a company (VM77) who could make up the wishbone that Steve Porter of Formula 27 failed to supply
(see above), I gave the car to this local tyre specialist for them to straighten the wishbone mounting bracket and set
up the tracking accordingly. They refused to give me a written estimate for the work (but verbally stated that it would take
between 1 and 2 hours), but once completed, charged me over DM623 (£200) for this job, claiming that the wishbone was not
properly manufactured by VM77! Thiebus possibly knows how to fit tyres, but they certainly don't have any more knowledge than
Steve Porter when it comes to repairing cars, and you can guess where I will NOT purchase any tyres from in future.
I sent a fax to Geoff Bedding at Hi-Spec on 30th August 2000 to order an uprated front brake kit for our BRA 289,
and eagerly awaited a reply. Despite sending further faxes (on 11th September, 25th September,
6th October, 17th November and 11th December - all of which were ignored), and many
long-distance telephone calls, I still seemed to be no nearer owning this brake kit. Finally, Geoff agreed (on
18th December, during yet another pleading phone call from me) to make up a set of discs and source the
appropriate calipers, so that I could collect the complete kit from his premises on Wednesday 27th December 2000
between 10:00 and 11:00 am, on our way back to Germany (this was to be a belated Christmas present, from me to myself).
Having just missed our booked sailing (see Hi-Spec above), Hoverspeed refused to slip us onto the next sailing (despite their being
ample space), insisting that our 'special-offer' 3 day ticket (for 'only' £101) had just expired, so we had to buy a new full-price single
ticket for £116,50!
These two burocrats deserve their own page, which you can view here.
- Since 10.07.2000, you are visitor number
 View Counter Stats |
|
|
|
Page created on:
January 1, 2000 |