Abort, Retry Or Fail?

Last week I booked my car in for a service since the computer biatch was telling me that it needed one. So I dutifully haul my butt down to Oxford for 10 am and roll up at the BMW garage expecting an hour or so wait whilst they serviced the car. TBH, that's no great hardship, the dealership is quite plush for waiting customers, with free coffee freshly made to any description you care to proffer, cakes, biscuits, newspapers, magazines and a huge plasma TV to keep you entertained.

So having prepared myself for a little of BMW's hospitality, I was quite surprised to get a rather curt response from the service rep who told me that "I was early". Hmm, this I know, the car was booked in at 10, and I arrived at about 9.45 and so explained to him that I was early because I didn't know what the traffic would be like on the roadwork congested a34. It seems however we'd got both of our wires crossed. What he was referring to was to the fact that the car was early, not me.

You see rather handily, all the important info about my car (such as how long the brakes have left, how long till an oil change etc) is stored on my key, and having put my key into his special key reader, all the info popped up on his computer screen. It appears that the car did indeed want a service, but a *statutory service* which basically is a MOT test. The car is only a year old, and consequently won't need a MOT service for another 2 years - it appears that this particular date wasn't reset via the software before the car was delivered to me. More to the point, the car won't need a normal service for about 5,000 miles yet (or so the info indicates on the key).

That's all good news for me, means I save a wod of cash for a couple of months, but it gets better. I was about to leave when the dude asks if I'd like a complementary valet, and who am I to refuse, after all the car is a complete pig sty inside and filthy outside to-boot!

I then set about the rest of my chores for the day, which I'm not going to discuss because they are top secret... even though Phil tried to extract information from me for most of the evening I've still not spilt the beans :)

Posted by Abi on the December 13, 2005 10:30 PM