[paulpud]

I bought my first Alfa in March of this year and having read worrying tales of poor service from dealers, I was very happy with the service I received both when I bought the car and when I had to return it for a couple of small repairs. But this dealer is over 60 miles away from my home and I had reason to use a more local dealer recently which I found to be somewhat more indifferent.

My experience started on 17th September when, whilst driving home, I had a Motor Control System Failure occur. The following morning the car was limited to about 2000 revs and limped to work so, once there, I telephoned my nearest Alfa dealer and arranged to have it inspected the following day. I was told that they would need the car for most of the day so, as they were unable to offer me a courtesy car, my other half agreed to give me a lift to and from the dealer. Fortunately the error message disappeared later that day and the car seemed ok but I still took it to get it checked out.

Later the following day I received a call to tell me I needed a replacement inlet manifold and I arranged to take the car in on 29th September as the car was still driving ok and this was the earliest date they had a car available. I was told my car would be needed for 2, possibly 3 days. On 25th September I received a call telling me the parts were now in stock and asking me when I would like to take my car in; I reminded them of the agreed date only to be told a courtesy car was not available until 6th October.

On Monday 6th October, I finally took my car to the dealer. The service department opened 10 minutes late, told me my car would be available on Friday 'all being well' and gave me a 147 as a temporary replacement. A decent enough car, albeit quite dirty and the CD/Radio refused to work.

Friday lunchtime came and I received the call that my car was ready but there was a problem; the technician had noticed that the inside of my front tyres were bald and not roadworthy, and so the car could not be road tested. Now I will admit to being less than thorough when checking these sort of things, but I do check when I wash my car at least fortnightly and, although I knew replacements weren't far off, I felt sure I'd have noticed if they were bald. On suggesting I would collect the car and get them sorted, I was told that the car really should be road tested first, so I repeated my intention and explained that I would take the car back if I experienced any problems.

Credit where it's due, the car does seem fine, but I do think the service received generally lacked a little something. I checked the tyres when I got home and, although the tread pattern is worn on the inside, the remainder of the tyres have between 2.5mm and 4mm of tread remaining and are perfectly legal. To use this as an excuse for not doing a road test is ridiculous.



The unroadworthy tyres