arburk2 said:
did you ever think that the SA was not well educated and the Tech was giving him wrong advise and trusted that he knew what he was talking about...
that is when calling a service manager after consultinng on the board and david contactinng me via e-mail is an option to get all pertenant info to that manager to help you with the issue if they are not educated enough.?
but answer a question. was your SA nice, did he answer you in a timely manner (even if it was a answer that you did not like?)
anyway what was your question to him about the vanos?? what year do you have again?
The Vanos debacle was years ago. It is a sad story, but it all ended well. I just used it as an example of how bad and how good SAs can be.
The Swedish SA was actually the service manager himself. At this time (2002) the info about the Vanos SIB was already in the TIS. I already had the info from this board. I asked the service manager to check in the TIS and check with BMW Sweden. He did and then flat out lied to me, first saying there was no Service Bulletin, then when confronted with the US text saying it did not affect european cars.
I then asked BMW Sweden to confirm that the text in the Swedish TIS matched the text in the US and German TIS. BMW Sweden flat out lied to me. At this time BMW Sweden was running a nation wide cover-up of the Vanos stuff, an effort that had recently been given up in the US and Germany.
Later the SA lied to me about what engine number I had in the car, saying it was outside the range affected by the SIB.
When I asked where the engine number could be found, I was told they did not know.
Well, I found the engine number anyway, and indeed the car was right in the range of the cars affected by the Service Bulletin about the Vanos updates.
When I confronted them with the fact the had been lying all along they did not say nice things. If someone pulls a fast one on me and I detect it, and I protest in a polite and constructive way, I do not like to get told off rudly.
I was called a spy for knowing things that were public knowlege in the US, information given freely to any customer concerned with Vanos noise in the US and in Germany, and found in the Swedish TIS as well.
To answer your question, no, they were highly impolite.
All in all, as I see it, pre-meditated, skilled and iterated fraud with the intent to rob me of $5k worth of Vanos stuff.
A few months later, in Germany I asked an SA what he thought of the Vanos units in my car. He took care of it in a truly excellent way. Afterwards when I wanted to thank him, and show my gratitude, he just said "It is my job to do the best for the BMW customers. I am glad I could help. You are very welcom back to us whenever you visit Germany." And I do return whenever I am in that part of Germany.
A few days later, when I was back in Sweden, he called me just to check everything was fine with the car and that there were no leaks or noises after the long drive.
David