01 Nov 07
So I rang my local dealer, Dick Lovett in Bristol, half-expecting not to be able to get through, to spend 10 minutes on hold, to be fobbed off and generally treated like a second-class citizen, particularly as my inability to read a service interval indicator meant I needed the car booked in at the double.
In fact a very polite woman informed me that sadly their servicing schedule was uncommonly busy and they couldn't take the car for four days. I was expecting her to say four weeks.
No courtesy car was available (nor expected at that notice) but I thought I'd make things a little more interesting by sending my wife in with the car. She needed to spend a few hours in an apparently nearby shopping centre, so it suited our plans to perfection.
She arrived and was relieved of the car by a courteous assistant and told that it would be ready in a couple of hours. However the shops were rather further away than first thought, so they had someone drive her over there - and they returned at the appointed time and took her back to the dealer, where she was reunited with a newly serviced and immaculately valeted BMW. The cost was £204.
