Hello,

This is basically a rant.....

My MINI COOPER "58 plate needed new front brake pads, (it went for a brake fluid service) cheeky sods at BMW wished to charge me £220 quid.....i was going to pay it then i got talking to a woman who came in with the same thing....

Front Brake pads...however they were only charging her £200??? I know its 20 quid but how do they make up their prices....:angry:

I love the car....HATE their service....

Anyone else had bad experiences with MINI/BMW.

Its the dealer you have the problem with, not BMW/MINI. Whats the dealer called?

Personally, i think anyone who pay's the prices they ask for is stupid....... whenever i go for a service or anything i wont leave till ive got a discount..... my 59 plate mini one went in for its first service in september, they wanted £235 for front pads, i asked for a breakdown for the bill and questioned how he justified so much on labour, i got the price down to £160.

I was talking to someone at a porsche specialist earlier this year, he said when he was working for a main dealership he was told to judge the customer and charge as much as he thought he could get away with, if someone flashed a gold or platinum card then the bill would go up by 3-4%..... its disgraceful, and from what i gather most dealerships and service departments are like this.

its mini/borehamwood BMW...ive had so many problems with them...i had my car back from a service once and they had spilt oil in the boot and some property of mine had gone missin from the boot too!!...

And i am flattered by that last comment but i wouldnt say i looked that wealthy lol. I try to barter with em, but i took my other half to pick up my car up from a 4th trip to this dealer and the man behind the desk was talking to HIM! its my sodding car, i pay for the damn thing and he had the cheek to completely ignore me and speak to me boyfriend!

I wana tell em to stick their dealership where the sun dont shine

ive taken my mini's to three different dealers/service departments around me, as has my brother...... Stevenage, Cambridge and Bishop's stortford, the worst of which by FAR is stevenage, second is Bishop's stortford and third is cambridge.

On my last mini, (the one i wrote off :P) i took it to be serviced at stevenage, first service, and they said the front pads needed doing, so i pushed their price down to i think 170, let them do the work, they rung me up a day later telling me they where unable to remove the drivers side wheel, the reason for this........ the bolt was done up too tight, i couldn't believe this, as the tyre garage i use is run by a friend of me, and i know he uses a torque wrench to do up the bolts to mini's recommended 130nm.

i asked if i could speak to the person servicing the car, they allowed me to do so and put me through to what i can only explain to be some illiterate nut spinning monkey, who basically told me that the figure mini put in the book of 130nm was wrong.

Now my dad, having been a mechanic many years ago had herd of such things before, he reckoned that the idiot in the garage had used an air nut gun to try and take off the bolts, to be specific the special locking wheel nut and had stripped the head meaning you have nothing to hold on to to remove the bold. so i rang up the garage and asked to investigate, upon speaking to the manager he told me that each bay is video recorded, and that he would look for me, about 20 minuets later he informed me that what my dad presumed was true, and that the garage was at fault, but there was still the issue of how to remove the wheel, he then put me through to the so called 'senior technician' who told me they would heat up the bolts on the wheel in order to remove them....... to which i said, if you damage my wheel of anything around it, your replacing it...

two days later, the manager rang me up told me my car was ready for collection, and that my wheel, tyre, wheel bearing, break calliper, pads and disc's had all been replaced on the front drivers side.... god only knows what they did to get the wheel off, but they royally ****ed it up!

oh and by the way they still charged me for my pads........ 4 weeks after i hit a stag on the way home from my friends house and wrote off my car! sods law eh??

basically what im saying is these service departments, and the so called engineer's and technicians are an insult to genuine mechanical engineers such as myself! they are all incompetent, have no idea how to fix things unless the computer tells them how to, and they overcharge for labour like anyones business! I HATE the service departments, and only go there for the stamp in my book.

Hello,
This is basically a rant.....
My MINI COOPER "58 plate needed new front brake pads, (it went for a brake fluid service) cheeky sods at BMW wished to charge me £220 quid.....i was going to pay it then i got talking to a woman who came in with the same thing....
Front Brake pads...however they were only charging her £200??? I know its 20 quid but how do they make up their prices....:angry:
I love the car....HATE their service....
Anyone else had bad experiences with MINI/BMW.

Hi there,
Not quite sure how they can justify £200 to change the front brake pads, did she have the fluid changed too?
I had my brake fluid changed under the TLC package and had to pay for the new fluid and disposal of the old stuff.
If you don't like the dealer then take it sonmewhere else, you're the customer so the choice is yours!

I have a good relationship with my dealer and I believe that helps, I know when I go in for anything i'll be looked after, and as such they get my business for their efforts. I'll be getting my fourth MINI with them next year.

I thought £264 for front and rear pads last month on a R57 Cooper from a Mini dealer (without haggling) was quite steep, but it doesn't seem so bad now.