Well I went my last round with Ronald, and came away with nothing.
I called him, as he hadn't rang me on Tuesday as promised and he actually picked up. Perhaps he needed a couple of days to prepare some more bullsh!t. As usual he didn't know a lot. He knew that it had cleared customs. He didn't know that my dealership are going to come and get it, PDI it first thing and make it available to me tomorrow afternoon.
So I said "the delivery is in hand, what's happening about the goodwill gesture?".
He then talked about how despite the car waited at Emden for 22 days, the car was not late as it was delivered in a month (give or take a day). I said "rewind there, Tony Blair, the fact that the car was built 7 months after the order was accepted at the factory and that my BW bounced from BW4 to BW21, up and down a bit and settled on BW18 is the bone of contention here, not how long it took for delivery once built".
He then went on about dealership allocations and how some dealers are very optimistic with lead times even though they are out of allocation. So I responded "Once the order was accepted at the factory, VW AG, provided an estimated build week of BW4, that wasn't a number plucked out of thin air by the dealership".
He didn't have an answer for that, other than going around in circles about 30-35 weeks being normal for an R's lead time, and insisting that the factory did not accept my order until December. I reminded him about the email I sent a good 6 weeks ago that clearly shows a screen dump of the salesman's system which shows the factory accepted the order on the 24th of September and allocated an estimated BW4 at that point. Fact, irrefutable.
He gave up that line of bull and then said he'd spoken to the dealership today about goodwill and said I had already had some. He stated my level of discount (£3700 off RRP) was my goodwill. I corrected him by stating that negotiated discount at the start of the ordering process had nothing to do with goodwill. He then countered by bringing up the "goodwill" of honouring my fixed p/x value for so long. I stated that it formed part of my contract and to renege on it would be a breach of contract.
I also said that the delay was punishing the dealership on my p/x as it had 3 months extra depreciation they didn't account for, but it was VW AG's fault, not mine. He said I was therefore better off. I disagreed. I said that my mid 15 plate R would be worth little or nothing extra at trade-in or sale against a March 15 registered example because to the consumer they look the same age. So in effect my R has got 3 months depreciation built into it from the point of delivery.
I put it to him that he need not concern the dealership with goodwill negotiations, and to do so strongly implies once again that VW UK take no responsibility for customer satisfaction and instead pick the pockets of the dealership to fund any goodwill gestures. He quoted the "we're all one family" speech. I said that it was fundamentally wrong to punish the dealership for VW AG's or VW UK's shortcomings by dipping further into their bottom line.
He didn't have an answer for that. We went around a little bit before I finally said (2 mins before I was able to leave work) "Well Ronald, it has been entertaining for me at least, and i'm sure you would have caved before now if you had the authority to fund a goodwill gesture yourself without mugging the dealership. I'm sure i'll enjoy the car tomorrow thanks to the excellent service of my dealership and absolutely no credit given to VW UK in all of this. Right now VW has a great product in the MK7, so luckily for you, your customers are tolerant of poor service". We said our goodbyes.
Not empirical proof by any means, but i'm 99% sure that VW UK never dip their hands into their own pockets when a goodwill gesture is deserved and forthcoming. You get whatever the dealership is prepared to shave even further off their bottom line and i'm sure they only give you that for fear of getting a poor customer satisfaction survey rating (which really harms their performance related tiers of discount).
I for one will be reassuring my salesman that i'll have nothing but praise for them if I get the call (I didn't get one last time), it's a pity you can't give VW UK a poor rating though (the questions asked do not give you the opportunity to do so). No point hurting the dealership's margin for something not their fault and to do so will potentially reduce their ability to offer a good diiscount if their margins are already smaller than they could've been.
To top it all off, I got a call from Peter Cooper dealership in Southampton. My dad lives down there and gets his GTD serviced there. VW UK had been on to them rather than Pulman in their enquiries as they were chasing my dad and not me (we have the same forename, although our addresses are 350 miles apart).
VW UK are completely useless.
