Coming home from the BMW show at Gaydon a couple of weeks ago, the front screen in my e30 M3 cracked at the bottom offside. Come Monday morning I phoned my insurer (Adrian Flux) who advised me of the £90 excess before connecting me to their preferred supplier.

The girl at the supplier took the details of my car, a 1988 M3, listened as I offered up the advice that it would probably be a special order part direct from BMW, ignored me and then said it wouldn't be possible to replace my screen till Friday morning. She also added I shouldn't drive my car as ''the wind might blow the screen in''. I then had a choice of am or pm, so chose am.


Friday am rolls around but no-one comes. At 1pm I call to find out what's happening and am told their man will be there by 2.30pm. Finally, at just after 3, I see their van pull up and go outside to meet the guy. Despite the fact that he's parked right next to the front of my car he asks where it is? I point my finger.

Mr Windscreen Fitter then goes to the back of his van and removes what is quite clearly the wrong screen. It is simply way too big and from a later BMW. When I point this out he says ''well its definitely got M3 on the sticker''. I told him it's most likely a newer model M3 and sure enough, it's an e36 screen. At this point he tells me how just last week they'd sent him to do the screen in an e36 M3 but supplied an e30 screen!

Mr Windscreen Fitter then calls his office and tells me they'll call me within the hour to reschedule but they need to order the correct screen. I said surely they can just use the one they'd incorrectly supplied to the e36 M3 owner the week before? Cue sound of cogs whirring and aroma of bullst. ''Oh they used that the next day''. Really? Are you sure? Anyway, I go inside and await a call.

Finally, just before 5, I call them and am told they're having trouble finding a screen but will call me first thing Saturday. I tell them again, to ring BMW. I do this myself and am told that the screen needs to come from Germany and will be 5 days. I then ring the company again and advise them.

Saturday comes, nothing.

Saturday at midday I call again and am told their offices have shut for the Bank Holiday weekend and they'll call me Tuesday. I tell the girl the whole story and ask her to mail her managers with my complaint. I make it clear, without being abusive, that their company has an appalling attitude to customer service.

Tuesday finally rolls around and the phone doesn't ring. No surprises there. Eventually I call and am given the stock line that the ''manager is looking into it and will call right back''. 2 hours later, nothing. In fact, I have to call 3 more times before their ''manager'' finally answers my call and says he ''would have called eventually but has been busy clearing the weekends backlog''. I remind him that my job actually stems from before the weekend. I am then told that my 1998 M3 screen is on order and will be a day or 2. I tell him I don't have a 1998 M3 and explain, yet again, exactly what my car is and what needs to be done to order the correct screen!

Finally, the penny drops and I'm given the new date for the correct screen to be fitted. Wednesday the 5th of September! So that's well over 2 weeks for an emergency screen replacement service where I'm told not to use my car. Brilliant.

I just wondered if anyone else has had to suffer similar?

They are the preferred supplier for my insurer, so I've used them a couple of times now.

Never had a problem really, apart from the day after they changed my most recent windscreen I had an invoice drop on my doormat for about £400, plus the excess. Which I had already paid.

Didn't think anything of it, so ignored it. Week or so later I get a final demand stating I have to pay it or there will be consequences. After phoning up and finding out the accounts department isn't in on Saturdays, on Monday I finally get it cleared up and they cancel it, admitting it was a mistake.

Apologies for naming the company.

I wouldn't mind so much if they actually bothered to call and explain things, but the constant petty lies and blaming anyone but themselves is what really grates. I told them where to get the screen in order to try and help, but they simply dismissed me as if I knew nothing.

Bring the matter to your broker's and the underwriters' attention. After all, it is them who told you to use that supplier. You can, in many circumstances, nominate your own preferred supplier.

I had a similar problem a few years ago with an E36. I was a rep mobile 320i.

The screen cracked so I phoned the nominated repairer.

To be fair they responded very quickly and by 10.00am the next day the old windscreen had been removed and was a nice pile of cracked glass.

The fitter then decided to get the new screen out of his van. It was at this point hat he realised that it was the wrong one.

He knocked on my front door and asked me what to do....

The most obvious answer was the one he got:- no my problem but you better get it sorted.

Predictably it then started to rain.

The fitter then knocked on the door again saying that there was nothing more he could do and was going.

I don't think so. You are leaving my car, in the rain with no windscreen get it sorted.

To cut a long story short another fitter arrived an hour or two later with a correct screen that was fitted in double quick time.

So you think that is the end of the story, No.


A week later the screen broke again, and guess what the previous weeks events were repeated. By a different fitter!

Yeah Pretty sure you can't get a windscreen replaced under the same insurance policy just because it happens again a week later, surely you then reach into your own pocket for a replacement?...

Regardless, similar thing happened recently with my dads' Insignia, not an uncommon car! But they first bought one which had the wrong tint on it? (no idea as I wasn't around) van returned a while later with one which didn't have the correct openings for the automatic headlight sensor.

But surely there's no way they would remove the screen first before making sure they definitely have the correct replacement?!

I had a spare E30 windscreen in my garden for a couple of years, balanced it on top of a couple of stacks of tyres and used it as a table.

Doddle to DIY fit.

It was a company car, so was not involved with the payment side.

And yes you would have thought so!

Windscreens are structural on most cars - they add quite a bit of stiffness to the shell. Perhaps more important for a convertible where the windscreen adds strength to a roll-over structure, but still a pathetic excuse to force you into an 'aftermarket' screen, if such a thing exists (I would have thought they all come from the same suppliers, e.g. Saint-Gobain, given the likely tooling costs, but I could be wrong).

I'm very sceptical about this. My screen is cracked - has been for a while. If I press it with my finger from inside, the crack spreads. If it was a structural component I would expect the shell to exert some forces on it and it would crack further on its own. It doesn't. It's also sitting on what looks like 1/2 inch of rubber which doesn't look terribly structural either.