Riding home the other day I hear a metal grinding noise from my BMW F800GS back wheel. It was a Friday afternoon and I was almost home so decide that I will take the bike to BMW Motorrad Clearwater the next morning (Saturday) as they are not too far away. Get there and I am very well received by everyone in the sales office. One of the tech guys has a quick look and confirms my suspicion that the rear bearings failed.
So I leave the bike there and they promise to get back to me during the week with a quote. I phone a couple of times to follow up and finally on Thursday late afternoon I get a call to tell me they have prepared a quote. I am told “to come and discuss the quote” once I receive it which sounds ominous. Once I receive the quote I understand why as they quoted me a whopping R 39,000.00!!!!
They wanted to change everything on the rear of the bike including a new hub, brake discs, pads, sprockets, chain etc. While they are at it they decided that they might as well replace the brake discs, pads, steering head bearings, bearings etc. on the front wheel as well.
Once I recover from a slight heart attack and phone I am told this is the “worst case scenario” and they don’t have to do all the work immediately but that I must come and discuss it.
Sensing and epic rip-off I tell them to leave the bike as is and I will collect it and get someone else to have a look. I borrow a bike trailer and pick up the bike on the Saturday and drop it off with the guys from ACME. Get a call from Manny on Monday to say they can fit a good 2nd hand back wheel for R 3,900.00 which includes the fitment. I subsequently had the steering head bearings replaced by Justin from Motorrad Tech as well for R 950.00. So all in all I spend R 4,850.00 and the bike is back and in very good running knick. I had the back brakes and discs, chain, sprockets etc. checked and they are all fine. I also had the front brake discs and pads and bearings checked and they are fine as well.
We all know that taking an out of warranty bike to BMW Motorrad dealer for service and repairs will be more expensive but never thought it would be complete day light robbery like this! Are they trying to scare people into buying a new bike by pushing the cost for repairs up so high that they can get you to rather trade on a new model?
I for one will never set foot inside a BMW Motorrad Dealers’ Service Centre again.
Update 01 November
Let me clear up a few things for the guys taking me regarding this issue:
- I stick to my story that in this case as the fact remains that I was quoted for a whole bunch of parts and work that afterwards were found to be in running order and that not needed replacement including the chain, sprockets, rear brake disc, rear brake pads, brake callipers, speed sensor, front brake disc, and front brake pads.
- The guys that I asked to check my bike afterwards are qualified bike mechanics.
- Let me use the speed sensor is a case in point. On the Saturday that I took the bike in the mechanic that had a look at the bearings looked at the speed sensor as well and said that he will rather remove it immediately so that it does not get damaged as they are pretty expensive to replace. From my understanding if the speed sensor fails the bike’s ABS lights come on and stays on as the ABS uses this sensor. So if the mechanic confirmed that the speed sensor was fine and removed it so that it did not get damaged and the bike was not showing a warning light, why o why then quote to have it replaced?
- Naturally I was not “forced to accept the quote” but the point is this, what was the thinking behind sending me a quote for R 39,000? What reaction were they hoping to get from me? Honestly if any one of you had received a quote for R 39,000 after you took your bike in for what was diagnosed as failed wheel bearings how would you react?
- As I mentioned before the impression that I got was that they have a policy to send you a huge upfront quote to shock the hell out of you and then once we get to the “come and discuss part” they will try and get you to agree to as much of the cost and work as possible.
- When I collected the bike I did discuss this with them and I told them that this was my opinion. The person that send me the quote basically said that they just put the quote together based on what they get from the workshop, tally up the total and send it through. That seems to be the amount of thought and attention that goes into it. I am also in the service industry so I asked if they don’t feel it would be a better approach to put together an “essential” quote i.e. this needs to be done to get the bike back on the road in safe running order. They can then provide you with a separate quote on other wear and tear items they feel will need to be replaced in future i.e. brake pads etc. They did not have a reply for me on this suggestion.
- I paid them for the open time and diagnostics on the bike before I collected it as this was naturally man hours spend so I had no issue in paying for it.
- My lasting impression from this experience and the reason for this post was simply that I think the only interests the dealer had in mind during this whole process was their own commercial interest and how they could maximise this situation in trying to make money out of me. I don’t think my interest as a customer was taking into consideration at all. In my book that is bad customer service and since a lot of the proposed replacements were unnecessary an attempted “rip off”.
- Happy to share the quote with anyone if you want to pm me. It is a pdf doc so I am not too sure how to upload it.
- So finally for the guys who think I am the one in the wrong on this with comments like “I sincerely hope you are never my client” I can just say that if this is the kind of customer service you believe and practice in I can assure you that I never will be.
So I leave the bike there and they promise to get back to me during the week with a quote. I phone a couple of times to follow up and finally on Thursday late afternoon I get a call to tell me they have prepared a quote. I am told “to come and discuss the quote” once I receive it which sounds ominous. Once I receive the quote I understand why as they quoted me a whopping R 39,000.00!!!!
They wanted to change everything on the rear of the bike including a new hub, brake discs, pads, sprockets, chain etc. While they are at it they decided that they might as well replace the brake discs, pads, steering head bearings, bearings etc. on the front wheel as well.
Once I recover from a slight heart attack and phone I am told this is the “worst case scenario” and they don’t have to do all the work immediately but that I must come and discuss it.
Sensing and epic rip-off I tell them to leave the bike as is and I will collect it and get someone else to have a look. I borrow a bike trailer and pick up the bike on the Saturday and drop it off with the guys from ACME. Get a call from Manny on Monday to say they can fit a good 2nd hand back wheel for R 3,900.00 which includes the fitment. I subsequently had the steering head bearings replaced by Justin from Motorrad Tech as well for R 950.00. So all in all I spend R 4,850.00 and the bike is back and in very good running knick. I had the back brakes and discs, chain, sprockets etc. checked and they are all fine. I also had the front brake discs and pads and bearings checked and they are fine as well.
We all know that taking an out of warranty bike to BMW Motorrad dealer for service and repairs will be more expensive but never thought it would be complete day light robbery like this! Are they trying to scare people into buying a new bike by pushing the cost for repairs up so high that they can get you to rather trade on a new model?
I for one will never set foot inside a BMW Motorrad Dealers’ Service Centre again.
Update 01 November
Let me clear up a few things for the guys taking me regarding this issue:
- I stick to my story that in this case as the fact remains that I was quoted for a whole bunch of parts and work that afterwards were found to be in running order and that not needed replacement including the chain, sprockets, rear brake disc, rear brake pads, brake callipers, speed sensor, front brake disc, and front brake pads.
- The guys that I asked to check my bike afterwards are qualified bike mechanics.
- Let me use the speed sensor is a case in point. On the Saturday that I took the bike in the mechanic that had a look at the bearings looked at the speed sensor as well and said that he will rather remove it immediately so that it does not get damaged as they are pretty expensive to replace. From my understanding if the speed sensor fails the bike’s ABS lights come on and stays on as the ABS uses this sensor. So if the mechanic confirmed that the speed sensor was fine and removed it so that it did not get damaged and the bike was not showing a warning light, why o why then quote to have it replaced?
- Naturally I was not “forced to accept the quote” but the point is this, what was the thinking behind sending me a quote for R 39,000? What reaction were they hoping to get from me? Honestly if any one of you had received a quote for R 39,000 after you took your bike in for what was diagnosed as failed wheel bearings how would you react?
- As I mentioned before the impression that I got was that they have a policy to send you a huge upfront quote to shock the hell out of you and then once we get to the “come and discuss part” they will try and get you to agree to as much of the cost and work as possible.
- When I collected the bike I did discuss this with them and I told them that this was my opinion. The person that send me the quote basically said that they just put the quote together based on what they get from the workshop, tally up the total and send it through. That seems to be the amount of thought and attention that goes into it. I am also in the service industry so I asked if they don’t feel it would be a better approach to put together an “essential” quote i.e. this needs to be done to get the bike back on the road in safe running order. They can then provide you with a separate quote on other wear and tear items they feel will need to be replaced in future i.e. brake pads etc. They did not have a reply for me on this suggestion.
- I paid them for the open time and diagnostics on the bike before I collected it as this was naturally man hours spend so I had no issue in paying for it.
- My lasting impression from this experience and the reason for this post was simply that I think the only interests the dealer had in mind during this whole process was their own commercial interest and how they could maximise this situation in trying to make money out of me. I don’t think my interest as a customer was taking into consideration at all. In my book that is bad customer service and since a lot of the proposed replacements were unnecessary an attempted “rip off”.
- Happy to share the quote with anyone if you want to pm me. It is a pdf doc so I am not too sure how to upload it.
- So finally for the guys who think I am the one in the wrong on this with comments like “I sincerely hope you are never my client” I can just say that if this is the kind of customer service you believe and practice in I can assure you that I never will be.
