[Cyprio]

Just had a mirror cap replaced under manufacturers warranty at Coopers in Cochester. I've been there twice prior to this, and have to say their service is absolutely first class.

Before I could even get out of the car someone was waiting there with an umbrella (it was raining) to escort me into the place.

I also discussed having a smart repair carried out for a few small scratches on the rear bumper, though when i was quoted £190 'including vat' for a complete bumper respray I thought that was pretty reasonable, especially for a main stealer!

Would deffo recommend them without hesitation.

[Subzero2003]

They were useless for me on 2 occasions.

One when my mum was looking to buy a nearly new 325i and once when I problems with my car, which is under the BMW extended warranty. I was so shocked and annoyed at having been spoken to like a piece of poo (despite me doing absolutely nothing to warrant anything of the kind) that I actually wrote a 3 page email to customer services, who passed it onto one of the Directors and who then passed it on to the Dealer Principle due to the things I outlined in my email.

This coupled with the fact that the pretty, young receptionist have NO idea what i'm talking about when I try to explain a problem, and pass on the wrong information to the service guys because they haven't understood anything.

Carrs BMW in Bury St Edmunds and Elms Cambridge were both utterly fantastic though. I thought all dealers were like Cooper Colchester, but I saw just how good a BMW dealer can be.

If you have bought your car from Cooper Colchester and/or spent a lot of money with them, i can imagine they will be alright because they want to keep customers happy, but if you're in for service and warranty repairs, I wouldn't touch them for love nor money. Even then, a friend of mine has bought 3 cars from them, including an M car, and they were rude to him on his last visit, so much so that his next car was bought and serviced by Carrs BMW in Bury.

[Cyprio]

Hmm very strange, all three visits I've had to Coopers/Colchester have been excellent and nothing has been too much trouble for them.

I had heard good stories about Elms in Cambidge until I rang them and spoke to a salesman about a lci e91 335d that I was interested in buying.

Knowing how rare these cars are, any kind of negotiation on my part was totally rejected and it was almost as if he was doing me a favour selling me the car in the first place!

Also rang them once about an idrive issue and the service person I spoke to sounded totally clueless and disinterested. A week or so later when I mentioned the idrive issue to a service rep at Coopers in Colchester he got the 'master technician' to promptly call me back and discuss the problem.

Sorry to hear about your bad experiences with them, it must have been pretty stressful judging by the lengths you had to go to.

[alzieboy]

Carrs Bury St. Edmunds.

That place is a total **** UP.

http://www.z4-forum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=38215

[Ant Man]

Originally Posted by Cyprio

Just had a mirror cap replaced under manufacturers warranty at Coopers in Cochester. I've been there twice prior to this, and have to say their service is absolutely first class.

Before I could even get out of the car someone was waiting there with an umbrella (it was raining) to escort me into the place.

I also discussed having a smart repair carried out for a few small scratches on the rear bumper, though when i was quoted £190 'including vat' for a complete bumper respray I thought that was pretty reasonable, especially for a main stealer!

Would deffo recommend them without hesitation.

I'm glad you believed you got a good service but all the 'fluff' that some of these dealers put on doesn't actually mean they are any good at working on cars. I much prefer not to have any of this stuff (which costs extra money for the customer) and know that all the work has been carried out and been carried out correctly.

[Cyprio]

Actually it's not what I 'believe', it's what I 'expect' from a company selling premium automobiles (well perhaps not the umbrella escort).

Moreover, if you choose to take your bmw to a stealer for any work to be completed then you would obviously expect the work to be carried out to a reasonably high standard, though admittedly this is not always the case as has already been mentioned.

[NickP]

I've had very good service from Coopers in Colchester when I've used them

[TripleD]

Carrs BSE sales department are useless, had money ready to go on a 335d touring they had in, phoned up and spoke to a bloke called Tom, he took some details and never phoned back!

Went to Cooper Ipswich in the End, fantastic service from Mike Blomfield! Would highly recommend him!

[Subzero2003]

Carrs BMW sales department sounds terrible tbh :/

However, i can confirm their Service department was absolutely fine. I'm a fussy bugger who asks a lot of questions and always wants to see and know what's going on when i take my car in for service (yeh, i'm one of those), but they were absolutely patient and polite with me.

I'm like this, because the last time i took my car into Cooper Colchester, i thought "ahhh i can trust BMW" and just kinda threw my keys at them and told them to call me when it was done.

What i got was no one doing anything on the car for ages, nobody test driving the car to identify the problems raised, some dopey girl on the phone who knew literally nothing and used "errr", "ummm" and "i think so?" more than i have ever heard, then told me it needed a software update (yes, they diagnosed this without even stepping into the car), then they said it'd cost me £200 to do it, then i said "errr what? the warranty should be picking this up as it's a fault", then the service manager came on the phone and told me "yeh, software update - £200" and i said "i'm not paying £200 for it as it should be covered" and just said "Warranty aren't going to cover it and if you're not going to pay, we're just not going to do it then are we?" (he was a royal prick). It then transpired that they had not even called the warranty company to see if they would pay for it and just tried to get me to pay for it. When i spoke to the bigger boss, he called the warranty company to check and they told him they would be happy to cover it.