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

[Kevyn Shortell]

I would have to say, that is rather well, horseshit....

It's now 2001, almost 2002, and Audi still hasn't gotten any better
since 1996 in regards to service. It doesn't take 4+ years to realize there
is a problem, and correct it.

Local dealers to the bay area, are not the only people with this problem,
I'm sitting in Tucson, and they tell me, with Audi Consumer relations
pushing
on them, the soonest they could get my car in is 8 days. So basically I
spent
4 hours on the phone, and some other person will get shoved back 1 in the
queue, so my car can get fixed.

Stop making excuses for Audi, they don't have any intention to fix the
actual
problem. They would have fixed it by now if they actually were planning on
it.
Instead, they have tons of paperwork which states your feedback is important
to us, but then nothing actually happens as a result. Which if you notice,
is exactly
what Audi has done.

Yes, I bought Audi based on it's reputation, which if I were to judge solely
by
my experience with Audi, is greatly exaggerated. My BWM has never had
the amount of issues, that I've had with my Audi.

And with regard to scheduling appointments well ahead of time, it's not
practical, and it's not even feasible. I'm going to do what most other
people
seem to do is, ignore the dealerships, as they are pretty well useless
unless
something is broken you can't fix. Which is annoying, since free oil-changes
and maintenance is one of the selling points of the car.

Yes I realize it's a problem, but do you realize it's not a Bay Area
problem?
I've called 15 Audi dealers within a 500 mile radius, they've all told me
the same thing.

What does that say to me? Audi doesn't have a clue about customer service.

Kevyn

No one buys a 40K car, to be told
> 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/
> ///
>
>