Dealer performance

[Deleted member 360]

@Mick Harris we’ve had ours a year now, and I always wait for a neighbour to have a go but they haven’t! We leave for work around 630am, and our driveway is between our house and theirs so the noise is as you can imagine. It’s fab tho. If it wasn’t so small I’d have got another one!

 

[Quattroken]

This is a most interesting thread. Here in the UK, I test drove an i30N with two laps, round the local dealer's short, but nicely mixed, route. I had previously tried out a more prosaic i30, just before Christmas, but I was, in retrospect, so pleased I never order it, which I very nearly did, at the time.

As far as Sales goes, the dealer appears that they have made great efforts to take the step up from selling “bread and butter” cars, to sales of a serious performance car. All the salesmen have the car for a week in turn, to get themselves up to speed on it. However, I have no idea how their after sales might function. Your comments certainly suggest that this most vital aspect of the long term customer engagement has not been suitably addressed, by Hyundai, for a market that will be far less forgiving of poor quality service.

My alternate choice is an ex staff Peugeot 308 GTi 270, which, by luck, I managed to test drive, once, around the exact same route. There's quite a considerable price difference, compared with the i30N demo car, more that can be justified by the actual difference between the two cars. My requirements are for a fast long distance cruising car that will also excel on back roads and still behave well in city traffic.

Apart from the price and these aspects, I now have to consider that Peugeot and their dealers will, most likely, have had years more experience with performance cars, even only the 308 Gti itself; than any Hyundai dealer, which may well become obvious in my “customer experience”..

 

[Deleted member 360]

@Quattroken it sounds like you’ve found a dealer with knowledge and interest in the car which is great. From my personal experience, in the West Midlands, none of them had a clue and only a few of them had even been in the car. One the two test drives I had, one not driven the car and the other had only had a go on a training event in Madrid. It seems that they come in and the sales managers get the demos and nobody else. Their words not my mine.

For me, the failings are down to basic customer service. Not calling back, missing appointments or being very late for them, ignoring me in dealerships, forgetting xyz. I was very surprised at lack of knowledge but let it go on the basis it’s a big change for them, but the others are surely standard things. My dealings with them since purchase have been really ridiculous. They’re downright rude (I won’t blab on about what happened ), I don’t know if their ‘usual’ customer is accepting of it because I found it surprising. I have possibly unfounded concerns about the servicing, that it’s the same price to standard i30s seems a bit odd, and having been told that they haven’t had any training or information on the cars still makes me a bit concerned. It all seems a bit disjointed, that they hoped the car would sneak in, they’d sell a few and then figure the other side out. As you’ve said it’s new clients and I don’t think we’ll be as forgiving as the customers previously.

It’s such a shame because it’s a great car. You can get bad service from anywhere, any brand, price point. But from my dealings with their central customer service they seem like it systemic and they just don’t really care. Makes me mad, because there’s no reason for it!

 

[Quattroken]

It’s the apparent lack of support from Hyundai, in addition to the suggestions of poor behaviour of certain dealers, that really concerns me. If the culture of the central organisation isn’t right, then the necessary customer backup is unlikely to be there., because that is where dealer and customer will both have to turn to, in the case of any significant problem.

I do wonder if a certain complacency has set in, due to Hyundai sucessfully selling increasing numbers of relatively mundane cars to people who were relatively undemanding customers. Unfortunately, for Hyundai, the pioneer purchasers of the i30N are a different breed of customer. More to the point... Unfortunately for the pioneer purchasers of the i30N, Hyundai might be a different breed of car manufacturer. Perhaps Hyundai needs to find some other "Max Biermann" types, to similarly introduce a radical uprating of the post-sales experience.

 

[Deleted member 360]

That's exactly my thoughts. I think in the long term it will push people back to the more 'traditional' options, as they feel safer when it comes to the whole experience. Which is a real shame. It's definitely from the top, having just received another nonplussed email from their customer service.

I sound like a miserable sod complaining!

 

[Metalrose]

Be interesting to get this feedback to someone high up at Hyundai. Not sure how we would do that but I have to wonder how much some of the senior people at Hyundai know about this. They gave the impression they were serious about the N brand so you'd think that they would want to get this kind of feedback.

I could be wrong as well, they could be equally as not bothered/not capable of dealing with it as the local dealers !

 

[Deleted member 360]

You can email the executive team, I'm sure someone shared the email address on one of the posts. I'll see if I can do it through my complaint, as you said it'd be interesting to see their response.

I actually had someone from the exec team involved just to get a test drive. In all honesty, it made no difference, the dealer still didn't give a hoot!

 

[coxy 2 carpets]

Would be a nice thought that Hyundai browse this forum and read what us owners are saying, but I'm sure that will remain as just a thought ..

 

[Deleted member 360]

@coxy 2 carpets I’ve suggested they might want to take a look, because there’s a few people who are questioning the customer service they provide. I’m sure they’ll ignore that too!

 

[Quattroken]

Unfortunately. I’ve been here before, in the mid-late 80s, and early-mid 90s, both in the USA and the UK, where there were dealers, who were clearly not competent, when servicing or repairing performance variants within the range. Manufacturer support was not forthcoming and it made for a lot of trial and error in finding a competent dealer.

Unfortunately, in the UK, VAG decided that my chosen dealer was not suited to multiple marques (Audi and VW) because they could not accommodate two individual service desks. Since VW was, then, the marque that brought in more money, all Audi workshop manuals, parts and (eventually) expertise was lost and I had to suffer the ineptitude of the new nominated dealer.

Because I was out of warranty, I quickly did what i30N owners may have to do, I found a very competent independent garage, which I still use 22 years on. One may even have to consider this option, for cars under warranty, provided approved Hyundai parts and consumables are fitted and the car still undergoes the necessary annual inspections.

I already know of a mini cab driver who prefers to take his i40 estate to an independent garage – even though the car is still under warranty – because he would have to wait too long for dealer service, to get the work done within what Hyundai would consider to be acceptable time and mileage.

All i30N owners have a crucial advantage that I didn’t have, back then: access to social media. This enables everyone to join together, to compare experiences, to make recommendations, and to take a united stand in convincing Hyundai and their dealers to raise their game. It’s all in the i30N owners’ hands.

 

[MrDeeJay]

I've had similar with a Jeep I had in the late 90's.

I actually ended up driving 40 miles further following a mechanic that left my local Jeep dealer to join another 4 x 4 brand.
Couldn't believe that ONE MAN made such a huge difference to servicing and repairs. The place went straight down hill when he was gone.

Not long after he left I had the Jeep serviced and on the way home I heard a rattling sound from the front. A 2 foot philips screwdriver had been left in the engine bay.
I drove straight back and spoke to the new service manager and gave him the screw driver. Do you know what he said?
Oh Thank you.. THANK YOU..!**@!!&*

Still makes my blood boil to this day.

 

[Quattroken]

I normally drive a 300 mile round trip to get my Quattro serviced. Now that my wife and I are retired, we usually make a holiday of it, rather than the previous double round trip (600 miles in all) of drive out; drive loan car back; drive loan car out (or sometimes a return train journey); then drive my car back. The lengths one has sometimes got to take to avoid incompetent main dealers!

 

[BadShadd]

... This enables everyone to join together, to compare experiences, to make recommendations, and to take a united stand in convincing Hyundai and their dealers to raise their game. It’s all in the i30N owners’ hands.

I thought I heard someone humming toward the end of that. Humor aside, very nicely said.

 

[asd]

Unfortunately proper mechanics is an endangered species, my impression is the ones working at dealers could well be replaced with robots, they just swap out parts based on what error the computer reads, or what a script says... that's exaggeration but not a huge one... Although it has been regulated that (in theory) independent garages can now perform all the warranty service on a car, I still tend to go to the authorised dealer... My experiences with Hyundai and Kia are still better than with VW, Audi, Renault, Toyota and Suzuki. I also have a befriended garage for post warranty, but the guy is getting a little older and hired some fresh hands recently, which immediately showed. I don't think I would go to such lengths as to drive 300 mile trips to service my car tho, just settle with the 'best' I can find in 30 mile radius...

Not long after he left I had the Jeep serviced and on the way home I heard a rattling sound from the front. A 2 foot philips screwdriver had been left in the engine bay.

A good few years back after service in a Yaris i experienced some problems with the gearbox. Some gears went in heavy or sometimes even popped back to neutral.
Turned out there was a (pretty impressive) sandwich jammed between the parts connecting the gear stick to the transmission...
But that sandwich was such a beast, I realised I have been doing my sandwich game wrong my whole life

 

[Deleted member 360]

So the Hyundai way now seems to be blame customer and when customer says ‘nope’ they just say that they didn’t know anything about it Gotta laugh or you’d cry and my bloody windscreen wipers have packed up again (I need the crying laughing emoji!)

 

[Member left member 268]

So the Hyundai way now seems to be blame customer and when customer says ‘nope’ they just say that they didn’t know anything about it Gotta laugh or you’d cry and my bloody windscreen wipers have packed up again (I need the crying laughing emoji!)

Bloody hell your making me feel guilty now Emma... Not had a single Hyundai based issue with mine yet.. Just slight creasing in my seat bolster not a problem at present... and a dent in my rear door from the dickhead that didn't replace the fuel pump nozzle properly on the one next to mine... Removed perfectly today by my Dynamic Dent removal mate.
Your luck must surely improve soon i hope.

 

[Deleted member 360]

@Mick Harris I’ll get there, but I suspect they aren’t going to help me. I’m popping into the body shop place on Saturday hopefully and they’ve said they’ll take a look and let me know what the score is (I can’t recommend Al Shaw in Milton Keynes enough, they are brilliant). It’s just bad luck but I’d desperately like them to start treating people better, I haven’t even asked for anything except for a local garage to take a look instead of me having to do a 150mile trip for someone to spend 2 minutes looking at my car.

That’s rubbish about the petrol pump, I’d have gone mad (do you sense a theme here?!) but great it’s all fixed ok.

 

[Member left member 268]

Yes i wasn't happy didn't want to even look at it until I calmed down lazy inconsiderate idiot and there are plenty like that about. ... I would suggest that if they are rude to you again... That perhaps you could achieve a perfect fit up the Hyundai guy's backside with your windscreen trim.. and let Hyundai sort that out at the local hospital.

 

[Jajodu]

@Mick Harris It looks like it hasn't been put in properly at all. On the driver’s side the clips along the bonnet don’t situate at all, it’s completely misaligned. The passengner’s side is out but not as bad. The wing, a frame and bonnet are all out and that’s what worried the tech and said it needs looking at but they can’t do it. But this is ‘up to standards’ and ‘it was allowed to leave’. Hyundai said it’s the dealer’s fault and dealer say it’s warranty even though Hyundai have said that won’t be happening. I’m taking it to a local-ish bodywork place who will assess it for me, because I don’t think it will get fixed any other way. Blah I don’t want to be pissy about it all because I love the car, it’s a roar but they’re worrying me. The garage where I dropped t off for the washers said they wouldn’t help because I could have done it myself (the service guy there is so rude it actually verges on funny)

@jeroenvde I’ve done that and they’re not particularly interested, not until I mentioned a massive GDPR failing when I got my washers repaired and they gave me the paperwork for another customer’s car with her name, phone number, car, reg the lot on. I’ve had no apology for that and not even received the paperwork for my car which I’ve asked for but no proper response or apology.

I had the exact same issue with that bit of trim on my Nov 2018 I30N, solved by pressing down hard on the bottom of the A pillar so that it dropped down far enough for the trim to clip under.

 

[_Emma]

I had the exact same issue with that bit of trim on my Nov 2018 I30N, solved by pressing down hard on the bottom of the A pillar so that it dropped down far enough for the trim to clip under.

The Deleted member 360 is me...but that doesn't work, mine is too far out. I've been to a bodyshop and basically it means all the wing, door, and bonnet need to come off, be realigned. If you do that, it knocks everything else out by quite a bit. So I have to live with it, or get a heat gun (or hair dyer) on it.