Subaru and Land Rover dealers, Oz style

Yeah but do you get a pudding ;-)

I'm not jealous..... I'm always a little tinged with green....it's the reflection from Percy you see.

Lee D

I am at my Local Land Rover dealer now and the have doe all the above for me and Nell McAndrew is coming in 2 minutes to give me a Swedish massage .

BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ

You what love the alarms what ?

NNNOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-- New signature required bored with the old one © Me

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Ask them for Kylies phone number, would you?

I do think you have a very valid point. We appear to have settled to expect shit service from clueless wankers in the UK.

I heard yesterday that when God made Australia he made it so nice that in order not to piss off the rest of the world he ensured it was eventually filled with Australians...

(well, what do you expect... I'm not bitter...)

Actually - I went to see the Australian Pink Floyd last night :-)

Tim,

I had the same service extended to me in Africa. Ride around the Sandton Land Rover Experience track, tour of the dealership, then on to the PAG centre to see Volvo, Jaguar and LR in one place (Bedford View).

The workshop was bigger than the multi-storey in Northampton (gloomy thought - most of the bays were full of broken Landies!)

Neil

I gather South Africa has a similar approach to Oz. But, it's partly down to competition - we have a lot of dealers, who all compete on price, so have to bring their margins down, and you have to make money to pay for the services you offer. In comparison, I should think most Australian cities aren't inundated with Land Rover dealers.

I'd be interested to know the profitability of yer average Aussie main dealer compared to a UK one.

Does anybody know if Pulse is definitely coming out on DVD (official version that is) in March?

David.

I'm really not sure that this is the case at all. "Service" and "good will" are contributors toward repeat custom and customer referral and therefore may be seen as concomitant with higher profitability.

I firmly believe that we have simply learned to expect less. Crap service has become the norm, and as a consequence, we not longer challenge it :-(

PULSE on DVD was due for a Q2-04 release last time I asked.

Yes, I agree up to a point. But I also see that competition tends to favour those companies who run the tightest possible margins, to the point that their service is lousy, but they're cheaper than anybody else. NTL is a case in point.

The great British public tend to have favoured price over everything else. Given the choice of 2 dealers, one who has great service and the other which has the cheapest prices, we (as in the British) tend to go to the one with the good service, until it comes to parting with money, and then we run off to the cheapest one. It happens time and time again.

People still believe that cheapest is best, and most people don't make the association between cost and service. I'm always amazed at people who expect everything, but want to pay nothing.

Here's an example: I was queuing for ages in an electrical chain store. The woman in front of me got all arsey with the staff and started complaining that there were "plenty of people in the job centre" who could be used to serve customers quicker so she didn't have to wait. I had to bite my tongue not to point out to her that there are plenty of local electrical shops where the service is excellent and she would be served instantly, but of course there's no way she would shop there because she'd have had to have paid a little more.

It's not always the case, but it is depressingly often. I'm now getting into the habit of shopping not at the cheapest place, but the one which offers best value for me. That also means that if I want something with very little value-add (such as a printer cartridge) I'll buy it cheaply online, but for other things I'll go to the shop which offers a good service, and pay a little more if I need to.

If I started up a new LR dealer with a nice off-road track, knowledgeable sales people etc, in the UK, I think I'd go out of business in no time. People would happily use my off-road track and then buy the damn things from Trade Sales or some such. Some of you guys might do otherwise, but the majority of customers wouldn't.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but IMHO the cost-value argument is the major factor.

David

It's crap. Gilmour should shut up and play his guitar. Man can't sing.

Peter 'comfortably numb' R.