Ok, so following on from MH gaining Simon Thomas' email address, I've bashed out an email to him. I hope you have too MH, and that others follow suit - the only way things are going to change is if management are made aware of the situation. Given the response I've had (which I'll put below my email) I'm not sure I'll get anywhere, but 'a faint heart nay won a fair lady' and all that its worth a try:
Dear Mr Thomas
My name is XXXX, and I have ordered the new VW Golf GTI. I apologise for emailing you directly as I know you must be very busy, however I feel that it is necessary given my current situation so that you are aware of what is happening at a customer level. If you could take the time to read my email I would appreciate it greatly.
Just for background information, both I and my wife love Golf GTI’s. My current order will be our 7th GTI, ranging from the Mk 4 all the way up to the Mk7. This will be my third brand new GTI having previously ordered from new the Mk 5 and Mk 6 versions.
With the news that the order books had opened in April I swiftly took myself down to my local dealership to order the Mk 7. I ordered on 8th April. At the time I was given an estimated delivery day of 31st July, however having bought GTI’s previously I expected a few weeks delay on this given the desirability of the car and the fact that you VW only make a certain number. I was the first person to order from my dealership, which has various branches in Hertfordshire.
Over the coming months I was given the following build weeks: firstly BW23 i.e. the first batch of MY14 versions – given I was one of the first to order this was more than reasonable. However, this is where things started to go wrong. My build week then slipped to BW26. I accepted this at the time, given as stated above I expected some form of delay. However, it then moved to BW28.
At this point I was starting to get disappointed by not only my car slipping back but also the fact that no one in VW could give me any reasons why. Having contacted VW Customer Services they emailed me promptly with an apology and stated that as far as they were concerned BW28 should not move. Given the excellent nature of the service thus far, and the fact that they had taken the time to email me directly (and also to confirm that the build week wouldn’t move) I accepted this.
Again, I was disappointed. My dealer called me some weeks after telling me that yet again my BW had slipped to BW32. Given this was because of the 4 week factory shut down, in terms of build this was only a one week delay. Even though my patience was wearing thin, again I accepted this.
A few weeks later I was again contacted to tell me my build week had slipped, this time to BW33. However, this time I was told this was confirmed and that once it was confirmed it wouldn’t move as it was locked in the system at the factory. As this was solid confirmation of a build week, I yet again accepted the delay because I was told that it physically can’t move once it’s locked in.
The online tracker moved to BW confirmed 4 weeks prior to build. Everything was going smoothly. BW33 came along and the tracker moved to ‘Build In Progress.’ Again, everything working as it should be.
I’ve now discovered over the last week that my car wasn’t built in BW33. It won’t even be built in BW34 (this week). I’ve been told by VW that it’s likely it will be built in BW35. This cannot be confirmed however.
I’m sure from the above you can see my predicament and the hassle that I’ve had. Now 20 weeks after ordering I still cannot be told when my car will be built. Even when this does happens I still have 4-6 weeks to wait as it gets shipped over. My spec does not include the options that can cause a delay, such as DSG or the panoramic roof or the reverse camera.
I’m hoping that after reading this you can offer some advice and help with my situation. All I want is my car. As you can imagine I was very excited back in April when I ordered it, and having test driven one in July I know what a fantastic car it is. However this whole debacle has totally taken the shine off the whole process. It’s not often that you get to buy a new car, especially in the current climate, and I have to say I’ve been really disappointed with the way VW have not only dealt with my situation given I was one of the first orders, but also the lack of information and urgency that comes out of the factory in Germany. For example, I could have bought a BMW M135i and had it 8-10 weeks from date of order; at the moment I am looking at a minimum of 25 weeks at best for the GTI.
Please could you look into this for me? Any advice or help with speeding up my order would be greatly appreciated. As stated previously, the Golf GTI is in my mind the perfect car and I’m very disappointed with this whole process ; the way I am feeling at the moment I wouldn’t buy the mk 8 GTI – and that saddens me greatly.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
Kind regards
END
Both Mr Thomas and his PA are off today, so I received this response from another PA:
Good afternoon Mr x,
Thank you for your email.
Mr Thomas is not currently in the office. To avoid any delays in dealing with your query I have just forwarded your email to the relevant team who will be contacting you directly.
Kind regards,
Tanja
and my reply to which I'm awaiting a response:
Hi Tanja
Thank you for your email. If you could make sure Mr Thomas gets the email anyway, that would be great.
If you have a read through my predicament (sorry if its a bit long and boring!) you will see that I have been speaking to various teams throughout VW and none of them seem to have any power to do anything other than apologise; I was hoping that as the CEO of VW UK, Mr Thomas would not only like to be made aware of what is happening at a customer level, but also that he would be able to help me as the 'normal' channels open to customers such as myself are providing fruitless.
Thank you for your continuing help Tanja.
Best wishes
