Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Main dealer cynicism..

So my Land Rover had a recall on the handbrake. The seal at the back of the transfer box can leak onto the brake shoes in the drum. The fix is to remove said drum, check for leaks and if necessary replace the seal and the shoes, refit prop with new nuts and bolts. Job done.

On mine i could see no sign of a leak (usually you'd get a drip out of the drum) but decided its probably best to have it checked and at least it won't then show any outstanding recalls.

Well after spending 2 hrs waiting in the main dealer, they said its done. I asked what was done and they said we removed the drum, checked and no leaks so we refitted with new bolts etc. Sounds fine.

Had a look underneath on my return home and nothing has been disturbed, no new nuts and not even a sign of a spanner having been on the old ones.

I already have a very cynical view of main dealers based on previous experiences and today did nothing to change that.

Presumably a warranty claim for labour and parts is already winging its way to JLR. Disgraceful.

That sounds like my local franchised dealer, too Steve!
But, it's not just dealers.
I had a water meter fitted back on 10th October. ST Water refused to change to metered billing - allegedly waiting for their contractor to inform them the meter had been fitted. STW didn't even acknowledge any contact forms and emails.
Roll up Consumer Council for Water. One email on Jan 1st. Response this morning that they had spoken to STW and my account would be updated on 6th to show metered billing. Half an hour later, phone call from STW accounts. Now all sorted, with a refund coming of nearly £190 plus my average monthly billing (I read all meters on 1st of month) should now be around £11/month (as against the rateable charges of £51).
Should have fitted a meter years ago and certainly after passed on in 2017.

Hi Steve
My Local JLR dealer would take some beating on incompetence. I bought a Discovery Sport from the dealer 4WD with all the bells and whistles. Waited 3 months for delivery, picked the car up, drove it home and started to read the manual. I wanted to understand the 4WD system as this was a first for me. Sat in the car with the manual and started to try to find all the buttons. They were not in the places they were supposed to be. So feeling a bit of an idiot I went online to see what had changed. To my surprise nothing had changed at all. It turned out the dealer had ordered completely the wrong car and I ended up with one of the only 2WD Discovery sports on the road. It took them another 2 months to order the right car!!!

Six months later it need an oil change after 8,000 miles which I was charged nearly £200 for and two months after that it broke down due to a DPF fault. According to the dealer that was down to " my style of driving". Needless to say I no longer own a JLR product.

They really are useless tossers. We have a metered water supply to our 17 acres about 5 miles from home. When we stopped farming sheep on it about 5 years ago, we turned off the water supply, but told STW that we wanted to maintain the supply and were happy to continue with the standing charge. Ever since then they have been billing us on estimated readings despite it having a remote-readable meter that is in range of the main A46. Even after getting a reading which shows we haven't used any water in 5 years they are still billing us on estimates.

Your idea of a call to the CCW i a good one, I think we'll try it next. Should get a reasonable refund, we've been paying them £60 a quarter for water we haven't been using.

I remember ,not so long ago, my brother's Vauxhall having to have a new steering column ( I think) and he queried why this was necessary and was told that he was driving over too many speed bumps. My brother took up the challenge and sure enough Vauxhall then recalled thousands of this model due to a faulty column.

JLR dealers are hugely variable. We bought a Disco 3 new from S***stone Nottingham in 2005. The ownership experience was terrible.
Just one example - of many - the programmable button on the remotes stopped working when the car was under warranty. The only reason they didn't charge me for the repair was that they had kept me waiting for 2 hours longer than originally promised because the workshop roller shutter door had seized up. disco3. discussion forum gave me the nod that this is the most unreliable workshop door in the country - they have used the excuse so often. I was fairly vocal re their incompetence and I know I lost them at least 4 new car sales.

Second service onwards, we started using Marshall Land-Rover in Melton Mowbray (18 miles away instead of 6) and noticed a couple of changes:
1) The ownership experience was transformed
2) No more annoying faults
3) A main service was nearly £100 cheaper.

We now own a Disco 4 bought second hand from Marshalls Melton Mowbray. It is now 7 years old and I still take it to them for servicing - because they do the job properly and, if the bill is creeping up a bit, offer a small discount to sweeten the pill.

One of the differences, in my view, is that the Marshalls service team is at least partially unchanged from when the branch was a smaller independent Land-Rover dealer. Several of the technicians run Land-Rovers of their own too.

Go for it Tim!

My experience in Italy: poor advice on options from the salesman, DAB radios are no obligatory to be fitted from 2019 but my 2018 model was not fitted with DAB despite it being standard fitment, together with the GPS navigator, in the UK. Then, after 2 years, I considered considered changing the XE sedan to a an E-Pace I prepared a possible specification and sent it to the salesman. I never heard back from him. At this point I would probably not buy another Jaguar.

Peter, I may be too defensive, but I would give the salesman a single chance and ask him if he got your mail. It's not uncommon for email to end up in the spam filter. Otherwise I agree that it is an improper behaviour of the Jaguar subsidiary.

Someone I know took their £120K Range Rover in for a while you wait service at a RR Main Stealer. When they reviewed the dash cam the car hadn't been touched for 45 minutes then they opened and shut the bonnet, did nothing and the bill for this was £750.00