Insurance work done at BMW - Would you complain?

[CrippsCorner]

Hi guys. So a while back someone reversed into my Astra which was parked outside my house. Admitted liability straight away, and shortly had a call from her insurance and had my car booked in for repair. It had been cracked in 3 places (front bumper only)

It turns out my local repair centre is the BMW bodyshop, 7 miles from my house. Had a 3-4 week wait for parts, but eventually went to collect the car.

Issue 1) Noticed straight away my grill badge was damaged. Guy went to check pre-photos and confirmed. Said they'd get me a new one. First they ordered the wrong colour, then they ordered one from China - A month went by without it arriving, so called and they apologised and ordered me one from UK

Issue 2) On the way home my indicators were going crazy. Turned out they changed my light (even though this wasn't mentioned or required) but had forgot to put all the bulbs in. I sorted this on my drive

Issue 3) After a few days the temperature readout started going crazy, often reporting 5-10°C lower than it really was, and sometimes just E - I hunted under the car and noticed the sensor was damaged, and it was just flapping around on the floor! They had never connected it properly to the bumper grill. They ordered me a new one and fitted on-site several weeks later.

Issue 4) This one just turned up when I was washing the car at the week; up and personal for the first time since the repair. The fog light surround is hanging on by one clip, two lower ones have been smashed off. I will pop back to BMW this week or next to show them this latest one.

Now I'm not used to complaining, but this seems like a lot after just a simple bumper repair. They did a very good spray job to be fair, and the manager there seems very nice. However it's been extremely inconvenient to have to go back so many times... I basically only get one free afternoon per week and this has taken up many of these afternoons. There's also the petrol costs, whilst not significant. I don't know what I'd want from complaining? £15 petrol lol? Just an apology? Would you bother...

The only other thing that slightly annoyed me is replacing the light on one side. Wouldn't it have been nicer to replace both? I now have one brand new, and the other older with pitting and slightly faded (I know that doesn't sound great, but I'd rather they were matching either way!)

Thanks.

[Evil.soup]

You sound well within your rights to complain to be honest, I guess you need to work out what you want as compensation for your inconvenience.

If there isn't anything specific, then it may not be worth the hassle of making a complaint. Do you know who you can complain to about it? Since the garage manager has been spoken to already, are you thinking of complaining up the chain further and who to?

[Ninja59]

Wow, just not good enough or enough care taken. Yes complain, I suspect you will find the person that was responsible for the removal and refit is different to the prep and spraying side hence the disparity between the spray and fit/refit.

Simply either using the wrong tool, rushing or just not giving a st.

[The spinner of plates]

Ninja59 said:

Simply either using the wrong tool, rushing or just not giving a st.

Being a main dealer, I’ll vote “all 3 of the above” please

[CrippsCorner]

Evil.soup said:

If there isn't anything specific, then it may not be worth the hassle of making a complaint. Do you know who you can complain to about it? Since the garage manager has been spoken to already, are you thinking of complaining up the chain further and who to?

Well I did search online and came across the official complaints route, of which I can write an email to [e-mail]

https://www.bmw.co.uk/en/footer/contact/contact-us...

A colleague suggests I ask for a free service when the time comes! I'm not sure that'd even work considering I don't actually own a BMW... I guess I could just put my experience out there and see what they say, might offer something without me asking?

[Hol]

We had a similar experience with an Audi being repaired by a Ford repair centre.

Including an ABS sensor being unplugged that lit up the dash warning lights, despite being told they had just test driven the car and it was all good.

I don’t think they like fixing other manufacturers cars.

[MitchT]

I'm not convinced that there's any such thing as a "BMW bodyshop". I had a BMW go the main dealer's nominated "BMW bodyshop" for accident repairs. It was actually a generic body shop owned by the group that owned the BMW dealership. Also, they made a complete dog's dinner of the repairs with the car having to go back repeatedly over the course of six months before I ran out of energy and decided to tolerate the remaining few imperfections. A few years later a weld line from the repair started to corrode but it was too late at that point to have any comeback. I can fully understand why people get road rage when faced with the stupidity of other road users, because once a big chunk of your life has been consumed by the abject and protracted misery of dealing with insurance companies and persistently incompetent repairers, you're on edge all the time on busy roads, fearing that the whole sorry episode will repeat itself.