Monday 13 May 2013

BMW Service: An experience

I have written about my experience of driving BMW X1 around the country and the tire failure that happened during my trip from Surat to Indore. I had to deal with BMW service in a city other than my home city. This post is about my experience with the service and their handling of it.
16-April-2013 While driving from Surat to Indore, my car ran over a piece of rock. The rock itself was not very large but the way it hit the wheels, it slashed the side wall of my driver side front tire. I did not think much of it when it happened, but 20 minutes later the low air pressure warning came on. As soon as I saw the warning, I feared that most probably this is a case of total tire failure.
I do carry a mini compressor, a tubeless puncture repair kit and a slim spare tire. As I stopped down to inspect the tire, I was hoping that it is probably just a puncture and I can repair it and move on. The tire was completely deflated and I could not see any thing visibly wrong with it. So I though I will just fill the air in it. As I filled the tire with air, I could clearly see the bulge in the tire near the rim. It was clear, the tire had to be replaced.
Since in my view, tire had to be replaced. The spare slim tire that I had has a maximum speed rating of 80 kph and that was also the maximum speed rating of Run-On-Flat, I decided to continue on flat tire and decided against putting the spare tire.
I started towards Indore town without knowing that if they had a BMW show room or not. I called Bangalore service hotline and narrated the turn of events to him and he got me the number of Indore hotline. I tried to call the hotline number in Indore and it came unanswered.
At this time I called BMW company hotline. The gentleman on the other side suggested that since the showroom would be closed by now, it would be difficult to get a tire replacement at that time. He offered to get the car towed to the show room where I have it take care of the next day. But I refused since I could not do anything without the car anyway.
I called Indore hotline again and this time it was picked up. They confirmed that they have replacement tires but they couldn't do anything about it on that day. They suggested that I can stay in the Indore city that night and bring the car next day morning. I also confirmed with the gentleman on the other side of the phone that he would honor my BMW secure insurance and I would not  have to pay for it.
As we reached Indore, we had to make a call whether to stay in Indore, or drive to Ujjain which was our destination that night. Ujjain is where we have relatives so we wouldn't have to worry about hotel etc.
We decided to continue driving to Ujjain that night. Since we could not drive faster than 80 kph, it took quite longer than what we had originally planned.
By the time we reached Ujjain, we had already done almost 200 km on the flat tires.
17-April-2013
Next day morning I decided to change to slim spare tire and went to Infinity Motors. They asked all the details of my BMW secure and then I realized that I did not have details of my BMW secure policy. I called the insurance department in Navnit Motors, Bangalore and they promptly sent the BMW secure policy to my email. The guys at Infinity Motors found another problem, the serial numbers of tires on the policy were accurate but the manufacturer was mentioned wrong.
I got both the Infinity Motors and Navnit Motors guys to talk to each other and they came up with a solution. They said that since policy has to be endorsed with the correct manufacturer of tires. Since that can't be done in a day, I need to pay the money and once the insurance claim is done, they would send me refund.
Since I was pressed for time, I asked them to go ahead with it. They also did engine oil change, since it was due after another 1000 kms.
8-May-2013 I received the check of the amount that I had paid to them.

Considering the fact that there was a mistake in BMW secure and I did not notice it earlier, I was very satisfied with the service that I got with the dealers in Indore and support from the Bangalore dealer.

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