[ba] Audi will go the way of the dodo.

[Ti Kan]

Kevyn Shortell wrote:
> Count me out of the Audi is great catagory, Audi is just another car dealer,
> who can't seem to get their act together on what to do once they've sold you
> the car.
> 
> Just as a thought, I called the local Lexus dealer, asked what his wait for
> service was,
> he said 3 days.

Audi is sort of a victim of its own success with respect to this problem.
Audi sales were so bad 10 years ago that rumors said that they were going to
pull out of the US market.  Then the A4 came in 1996 and dramatically
turned things around.  The massive sales increase in the past couple of
years has the dealers scrambling with respect to service.  They don't have
enough capacity and there are not enough dealers, hence the backlog.
They are aware of the problem and trying to fix this, of course.  Carlsen,
for example, has gone to a two-shift schedule and the service department
is open until 10pm on weekdays.  The Andersen-Behel (Stevens Creek) dealership
dropped its VW line to focus only on Porsche and Audis.  However, the SF bay
area is unique in that it also has the biggest boom of new Audis and these
alone are not sufficient.  Newcomers to Audis are dissatisfied with this
issue and it's reflected in the service surveys, but hopefully they will
sort things out soon.

Audi is not just another car dealer as you speak.  Surely the dealership
is an important element in the overall ownership experience of a new car,
but what you bought is undeniably a superb, state of the art high tech
automobile, providing a level of driving satisfaction quite unlike most
others.  This is the reason why you bought the car isn't it?

What you know now from this experience, is to schedule a regular
service appointment well in advance the next time.

-Ti
01 S4 2.7 biturbo quattro
84 5000S 2.1 turbo
80 4000 2.0
-- 
    ///  Ti Kan                Vorsprung durch Technik
   ///   AMB Research Laboratories, Sunnyvale, CA. USA
  ///    ti at amb.org
 //////  http://www.amb.org/ti/
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