IndyA8

Just spoke to a buddy of mine who is also a road dog, sells med devices and he and I looked at cars a couple of years ago. I bought a 97 A8 with 45K miles on it from a 3rd party. He bought a Lexus ES300 with 60K on it. At 52K miles, my transmission let go and needed replace. Audi dealer quoted me $10K and couldn't get to it for at least 6 weeks. Audi specialist quoted me $8K for rebuild, and 3 weeks later, I was back on the road. Audi Customer Service said they couldn't help me as car was out of warranty, and they didn't have any campaigns on it. Sorry, but your loss.

My friend calls me today. His Lexus, which now has 125,000 miles on it, was burning oil, so he dropped it at the dealership to get fixed. He bought the car from a 3rd party, but when he got it serviced, the dealer still gave him a new ES330 to drive. They called today and told him an internal seal had failed and he needed a new motor. He said, "Wow, car's only worth about $10K, what's a motor cost, $10K or $12K?" Dealer said, "Yeah, but how's about we give it to you." Turns out, dealer chased down regional rep and complained about how bad it looks for Lexus to allow a simple internal seal to fail. Regional rep agrees and signs off to provide a FREE MOTOR for a car that had been out of warranty for 75 THOUSAND FREAKING MILES, and 3 years!!!! So, he now has a new, warrenteed engine about to be installed at absolutely no cost to him. And of course, he also has a brand new, free ES330 loaner car to drive until it his 7 year old entry level ES300, which he didn't even buy there, is ready.

Say what you will about how Japanese cars suck, they do know how to treat a customer. Tell you what, next time you want to talk smack about Lexus, and how you don't care if you lose a little reliability in exchange for more "passion", show me your cancelled check for $10K to replace your transmission.

I am going to call Audi and tell them this story.

JimR

Zow.

PaulW

Double Zow.

bpower1

so THAT explains their market share and profit! Duh, AofA...

greenie

Lexus has a history of great customer relations and much of it has to do with the dealerships. Before purchasing my Audi, my history was with Acura. Same thing! They were and are terrific. The one thing that made me think twice about this purchase is that , on this forum, a number of posters refer to the dealer as "stealer". I also followed a number of posts that referred to Audis weak customer relations and weak set of dealerships. All of this said, so far my relationship with Audi has been fine although I have not been "up against it" like your friends and others. Thats USUALLY the gift of buying a new car. I am a techno freak and can appreciate German engineering while at the same time understand quite well the reliability of the Japanese products. Theres room for both and I guess it comes down to choices and chances and how one wants to be transported "to and fro".


greenie 6625

04 A8L silver/sabre

AudiNutA8A6

the dealers were be required to read the book "Raving Fans" and visit the Audi Forums daily; then maybe they would understand how much we care for our choice of cars, and provide the type of experience we deserve to enjoy from Audi and their dealers.

PlainRuss

It's Audi's decision. Dealers get paid from Audi for warranty work/customer good will work. If Audi decides not to help on something, who pays the dealer then? 10 grand would be alot to swallow for a service department. Really if Audi steps in to pay, it only benefits the dealer. At least we get to do the job then and get paid for it. Otherwise, in case like the trans, the customer goes elsewhere. That's lost money to the dealer, and now you have a ticked off customer as well. At the same token, where do draw the line? All warranties have a start and end time. And when someone is close to it, bending the rules a bit only seems fair. But again, where do you draw the line? I don't know, I could go on for days about it but I think I won't.

buybeach

I didn't put him up to this, honest.

Buybeach a/k/a Buyback

Austin A6 3.2

Here's my theory on why the dealership experiences of many here have been less than great.

Lexus:
When Lexus entered the luxury car market, they had to build a good reputation quickly to get customers away from Lincoln/Cadillac and Mercedes Benz/BMW. So they made sure they picked and trained dealers that were going to give their customers better service than any of the competitors to lure buyers away from these brands and create a good brand image. Excellent reliability certainly helped Lexus grow as well.

Audi:
After the "Unintended acceleration" crap from 60 minutes and others back in the 80's, Audi sales went from about 74,000 cars in 1986 to under 15,000 cars in 1995. The impact on the dealer network must have been devastating and those dealers who kept selling Audis were probably not the most motivated ones.

So, we have two dealer networks: One that is trying hard to grow a new business and is motivated and enthusiastic to do that. On the other side, we have a dealer network that is losing business without their or Audis fault, simply due to lies distributed by the media.

Looking a few years past that in todays environment, you probably still have a lot of the 'old style' once frustrated dealerships around that just don't know how to deal with the luxury class customers that Audi is targetting now.

From my experience here in Austin, I can say that things are getting much better. The old dealership here in Austin (Maund) literally sucked *** and as a result I wrote a four page letter to Audi complaining about a large amount of frustrations with this dealership. Audi has taken action and we now have a new dealership (Roger Beasly) that much better understands customer service. Free loaners, quick appointments etc. are no longer the exception but the rule.

That said, I think that Audi has to go a long way in their efforts to build an excellent dealership network. But with a lot of new dealership buildings (we will get a new one in Austin next year, increasing the service bays from currently 4 to 14!) and things like that, they will get there. I just think that a lot of that old mentality of the post 1986 years is still around and Audi needs to kick these people in their behind.

I think the Lexus treatment your friend received is exceptional but I doubt that this is normal even for Lexus. And I think Lexi are extremely boring cars and wouldn't buy one unless the Germans start sucking really bad. - But that's just me. I love getting into my A8L every morning, just like I loved the TTR I had before. Puts a big smile on my face and that's worth some eventual trouble. I doubt I will have a $10,000 bills coming my way, I think you were probably just a little unlucky.

My 2 cents.

2000 Audi A8L

Paldi

11 days and counting... :-)