Under the category of "free maintenance", I had a bulb out indicator on my MCS for the past week or two and couldn't find the one that wasn't working, so I took it into MINI of Louisville yesterday. My SA was very nice and looked through my records and noticed I hadn't had my wipers replaced so she offered to do them under the "free maintenance" program, that is until she realized I had 36,005 miles on my car. Then it was oops, you're 5 miles over the 36,000 mile free maintenance limit so SOL. "I'll check with the Service Manager and see if we can still do it. Sorry, he says that is controlled by MINI and we can't make an exception." Really? I guess the next time I am in the market for a new car, I'll have to pass because it's $5 or $10 more than I want to spend. Way to go MINI or MINI of Louisville - that's the way to show "good will" to your existing customers!

I didn't come in looking for free wipers, just a repair for my problem. My SA tried to do a good thing, but then had to back-pedal. When it's time for me to replace my MCS do you think I am shopping MINI first?

 

Just to play devils advocate. Where do they draw the line? It's not OK at 5 miles, but they make an exception...is it ok at 10 miles or 100 miles? Even if the dealership ate the cost of the blades (say it costs them $20 for all 3 wipers), they have to eat the cost of the guy installing them. Book time could easily be 0.5 hrs (at $112/hr or so) then the dealer is eating another $50 or $60. Does this job that is now approaching $100 to each draw the line or can you get your last oil change done at 5 miles over, or a clutch the burnt up just at the end?

MINI is fairly decent at good-willing items, especially when the cost get high (ie transmission, clutches, motors, turbo, etc) and helping the owner. These items are being eaten by MINI USA and not the dealer.

Sorry if I sound like a jerk but they have to put down a number to hold the rules to somewhere. I agree it stinks they offered something and then took the offer back. To me it can get sticky if you are at 35,500 and make an appointment and cant get int here until 36,020...do they cover it because you made an appointment earlier or couldn't get in? Not sure as every dealer can choose to handle these situations slightly different.

What I'm getting at is: are you really going to look at a different brand because if this little instance? Was the taste in your mouth so bad from them trying to do something and realizing they spoke too soon (we are all human after all, and dealers are notorious for telling us what we want to hear or mixing the message up upon delivery).

I just had to go to a 2nd dealer to get warranty work done on our CX-5 because the first one said it was "normally operating". I didn't want to go to the 2nd dealer because on a previous Mazda they screwed me over on some work and it was bad enough we got rid of the car before it failed on us, as it did on the next guy within 3 months of buying it. They would not follow the TSB to diagnose the common issue and therefor could not replicate the problem and fixed nothing.

 

Sorry, but that's just B.S. on the dealerships part, that's really indefensible. It was probably a five mile drive to the dealership. And I doubt it was raining....Booking for .5 to change wipers? Nah. Someone could do that in the time someone was getting a car out of a bay. It's an excuse not to do the right thing, plain and simple.

I was several hundred miles over on mine, my dealer didn't even bring it up, did everything under warranty, no questions asked, and what my car needed done was more involved.

There are rules, and you can go strictly by the rules--and alienate your customers in the process, or you can go by the SPIRIT of the rules, in which case everyone ends up happy. Unbelievable a dealer would be so tacky over something as small as that.

 

If they hadnt brought it up would you have thought about it? I am going to have to agree with Yetti....you passed the cutoff...5 miles or 500 miles...you were still past it. The option was there to buy additional time/milage on the coverage but the choice not to do that was made.

 

Lets be real here. 5 miles is within the error of the Speedo over the course of 30,000 miles, and we are talking about a part that takes minutes to install for a technician, and costs the dealer very little. I've never had a dealer on ANY car give me an issue on a service interval, and I've owned several cars. Wether or not the owner brought up the issue is immaterial--the dealership would have come out so much better to suggest it and do it, rather than suggest it and bail on it. It's horrible customer service; instead of going "above and beyond", which is what all dealerships are striving for on those evaluations the send out, they chose to go "below and under."

I cannot believe anyone is defending the dealership on this one. You can bet if it was a BMW M3, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

My MINI dealership has always made a point to make sure before I walk out the door that everything is good. This included a dealership that I didn't buy the car from (they opened after I bought my MINI, and were substantially closer), which did some minor work that found on top of what the car was in for, and didn't charge for it, very nice, considering I didn't buy the car from them. I would go back there in a heartbeat, and buy from them.

How many miles were on the car when they sold it to you? I'd just tell them to take those back, then boom, you're back under the limit. Ridiculous, really, that they did this. I'd bet the majority of MINI dealerships would not have done this.

 

Usually dealers will let this slide. They must of seen you with something expensive lol. All dealers are not created equal. I blame this on the service dept at your dealer. Sometimes these guys get caught up in their policy and don't realize that small thing can cost them big business down the line. Who knows maybe this dealer is counting pennies. Go somewhere else.

 

LOL - I am not pissed or upset. No, I didn't expect new wipers - they weren't even something I thought of until my SA brought it up. I just thought it was a ridiculously silly example of how MINI of Louisville or MINI (not sure who this comes down to) could have done something nice for a customer and had me leaving saying "wow, what great service" rather than "wow, that kinda sucked". It's like the commercial, that shows a guy being moved ahead in a line of customers and winning a check for being the 50,000 customer or some such thing and the guy behind him wondering what happened. Yes, there needs to be a cutoff and 36,000 miles IS 36,000 miles. To play the devils advocate to yetti96's devils advocate, I made the appoint yesterday morning while in the office and had to drive 15 miles to get to the dealership. Should I have had it towed, just in case?

Regarding, "good will", I will say MINI of Louisville or MINI, again not sure which, did my son a good turn a few months ago in an out-of-warranty repair related to costly carboned valves and timing chain issues that came up at about 55,000 miles on his 2009 Clubman. I am certainly in a better position to spend a few bucks for new wipers than he was to spend several hundred extra bucks on getting his car back on the road. Needless to say they did a nice thing for him and I am grateful for that.

All in all, just thought it was an interesting experience.

 

not free

pre-paid

and most owners do NOT recoup what they paid ...

 

I would think the mileage that would have qualified the wipers as eligible for replacement would be the key factor not the mileage when it was eventualy done.

 

+1 to cct1. While I understand that a dealership and MINI USA have to draw a line somewhere...that line should not be at replacing wipers. Especially when you're 5 miles over the "limit".

And yes, the whole "free maintenance" thing is a misnomer. You're paying for that maintenance every time you write a check to your lender.

 

Sorry, <yetti96>, your argument doesn't hold water.

Wiper inserts are probably $1-2 in bulk.
The guy dropping them in is not the master tech clocking $100+ billed to the customer (less than 1/3 of that to the tech), but the kid that washes the cars before they are returned to the customer. The marginal cost to the dealership of the kid doing the wiper job vs shooting breeze is zero.

All of that is moot since the dealer could have easily subtracted those 5 miles from the warranty paperwork, and had it fully covered by MINI USA. If they cared about the customer, that is. I have first hand experience having warranty work done after it had expired.

Customer goodwill == return business, or no return business.
I will bet you anything <highlander709> will take his business to another MINI dealer the next time he needs something.

I am doing just that - my nearest dealer had proven incompetent on multiple occasions, and advertises $150 oil change jobs. That is exactly 2x the cost of the oil change rate at the local BMW dealership. BMW takes more oil to boot

Some MINI dealers are good, others no so much.
Find the former (sadly you may have to learn the hard way), avoid the latter.

a

 

I would write a letter to the general manager, and tell him how you were treated. All the Mini dealers that I have been to bend over backwards to make things right. It may be the service people will be schooled on better public relations.

 

Well that's a bummer, I would have had to say "It was more than 5 miles to drive here to the dealership!"

 

Sucks....
But all good things came to an end....
Yours ended.
Sorry you are not entitled.... Yes it would have been nice (on several levels) if the dealer had looked at this and done it for free....
But they are not required to.....
So close....yet so far. Be happy it was something small.... Er...mini.
The sense of entitlement..... Gotta watch out...destructive thing......

 

It's not "entitlement." The original poster didn't feel "entitled" to it, the MINI dealer brought it up in the first place. Nor is the original poster angry. Big difference. Like I said before, you can go by the letter of the rule, or the spirit of the rule. They chose to go strictly by the rules, which THEY are "entitled" to, and will lose at least one customer for it.

There is a right way to do things, and a wrong way to do things. This was simply the dumbest thing I've seen a dealer do in quite some time. You could have an ecstatic customer for 2 dollars worth of parts and 5 or less minutes worth of work, or you can do something like this.

I had my windshield replace a few hundred miles after warranty, and they did it under warranty (This was before MINI acknowledged there was an issue with the windshields). They didn't have to do this, and I greatly appreciated the fact that they did. When I see what happened above, all I can think of is what were they thinking...As someone else above wrote, this isn't the norm for a MINI dealer. You can defend them all you want, but that dealership is an outlier, it's not typical. All of you who are defending that particular dealership should ditch your own and take your car there for servicing.

 

I'm not saying it would be the right thing to do but if I was due for brakes (probably not an oil change or anything cheaper) and I knew I would break 36k on my way to the dealer even after I made the appointment I would consider the tow job. Call me ridiculous or abusing the system but yeah to answer you assumed rhetorical question I would. Glad to hear you weren't upset or pissed off as some of us thought you may have been. Yeah it was a crappy situation. That's where it comes down to how well is the service department going to work for you. Sorry it was a bummer but I guess be glad it wasn't a clutch something substantial.

If it makes you feel any better I just got my wiper blades done under service (rubbing it is right?) before I went to MOTD and on the way up there, through most of GA while it was raining, I ran the wipers. It left lots of black streaks and a tar-like film on the windshield. So go buy good ones from a local part's store and be be glad that you didn't get the same bad batch of blades as I did. My friend who just bought a 2013 R58 the day before we went also had the same crap on his car, so I know it wasn't just me.

 

Mini of Louisville service in my experience has been excellent. They made a mistake by telling you that you had free maintenance still. Simple as that. I'ts not something I'd fret over.

Didn't you say they helped your son to some degree with an out of warranty repair? If so, who cares about some wipers that cost $10. It really is a non issue.

 

Which is exactly why they should have done it in the first place; it IS something simple, and the dealership brought it up in the first place. It isn't a big deal, but puts a smile on the customers face. Some people value that, some don't. They obviously don't. That dealership comes off as cheap, whereas they could have come off golden. Just not a classy move.