Shame that I can't agree with your comments.
We went in a couple of weeks ago asking about Coopers and the salesman could not have been less helpful if he tried. (Admittedly it was late on a Sunday, but they arranged the time of test drive not us.)
Can't remember his name, but maybe he thought we weren't serious buyers or, perhaps, because we wanted to test drvie 'a' Cooper as opposed to a specific Cooper that they had to sell.
The one he had was tatty and overpriced too - and it wouldn't start. He made no attempt to explain anything during the test drive and was quite aggresive on the phone the following day when he said they had a car that matched our spec at another Sytner, but we'd need a non-refundable deposit and could only reject the car if something serious was wrong. Now, I can understand the rationale for this - thye don't want people asking to see cars from other dealers in the group as they incur costs transporting them etc - but there'd be a way of talking about this without becoming aggressive. I'll also concede however, that I didn't take the call, and if you ever try that tactic on my missus, you get very, very short shrift.
It's a shame as we also have a BMW 530d M Sport Touring and get fantastic service from the BMW side. Even when we went to test drive, they let us go out in two 5-series in a row (one 525d SE and one 530d M Sport) despite the fact that they were both out of our price range and we had no intention of buying either.
I'd like to think it's not purely down to the price difference of the respective cars, and I hope it gets better with the Mini now we've bought one (from another dealer) as they're only about a five minute drive from our house - depending on the London Road traffic of course.
