Not sure how many times I've said this but it's the motor trade. As plenty have observed, you need to find a good one and then be lucky to get consistency.

The bottom line is they're market traders in a suit. Don't be fooled by the cheap aftershave and faux silk ties, the overwhelming majority would be right at home on a market stall. No qualifications required except being able to BS and sound convincing.

Find a good one, preferably by finding a decent and pragmatic DP (or senior manager at least) and hang on to his coat tails. I've done this for 15 years and followed the guy through 5 dealerships now. Never really had a bad experience and I certainly don't get treated like dirt by salesmen.

It is a problem with the structure of the car industry.

Manufacturers are represented by dealerships. So LR do not control, in detail, their customers experience. When we buy a Range Rover, we buy a Land Rover product and get an independent dealership customer experience (NOT a Land Rover customer experience).

Dealerships have to turn a profit regardless of the brand. They have to source used cars cheaply, sell new and used car expensively and charge as much as they can for servicing.

There are now additional ways that this can go wrong. Some will be Land Rover's fault (shoddy cars), most will be the dealers (poor customer facing experiences).

Now Land Rover can set minimum standards and SLAs for their dealers but they don't own or manage them. Our day-to-day contacts are utterly unknown to LR and LR don't have the resources to resolve ever issue we have. It is the same for every manufacturer.

/\

But lets be honest, some manufacturers seem to "control / influence" the behaviour of their dealers, much more effectively than others

^ Audi do that particularly well but none of the others seem to take an interest. Given I don't really like Audis (none since the amazing Quattro of the 80's & 90's anyway) I'll stick with developing and maintaining a decent relationship with people who have influence over my experience.

Our AB was in Taggarts on Maryhill Road the other week for a couple of niggles.

There was wind noise from around the drivers door if you opened and shut the window on the motorway. It's intermittent and it's been there since new, every other time it's been reported they've never found anything. Thankfully this time they either started changing things or they did find the fault.

The starter motor was clicking on it rather then starting the car. I explained to them, again, that this was also intermittent but I did have a video of it doing it on my phone. The girl on the service desk (the younger one) was down right rude and arrogant. If they couldn't find a fault on SDD then it wasn't doing it and that was the end of it. I told her that the starter clicking wouldn't log a fault as the engine didn't know it was being asked to turn over. She started an argument about this on the phone, telling me that I was wrong and didn't know what I was talking about. She then went onto explain that she has spoken the workshop manager and he's told her she's right and that I'm wrong.

When we collected the car I asked her to go and get the workshop manager and I asked him. He instantly said that I was right and that she'd never asked him!

We asked her 3 times how to update the Sat Nav on the car. When we left the dealer they still hadn't told us how to do it and they were meant to be calling us back the next day. That was 3 weeks ago and we've still not heard from them.

Upon inspecting the car when we collected it we found a tiny little chip on one of the doors where it looks like they've opened the door onto the ramp so it's going in next week for them to sort that out as well.

We told them we were thinking of changing the car for an L405 TDV8 AB and asked if they could arrange an L405 for us with 3 weeks notice when the car was originally booked in. When we got there they had a Discovery Sport and wanted to charge us £25 for it!

I'm going to be cancelling the service plan and using Team Valley Land Rover in Newcastle from now on. We've got family down there so we'll visit them and get the car serviced at the same time. The guys there have been nothing but helpful, they know what they're talking about and if they don't know they're not afraid to say that and go and find out.

If we didn't like LR as a brand and enjoy having the RR's then Taggarts would have put us right of LR for life!

David. 2002 4.6 Vogue SE - Alveston Red with Lightstone Leather
2012 Range Rover 5.0 SC Autobiography in Indus Silver with Jet/Ivory Interior
2012 Range Rover 4.4 TDV8 Autobiography in Baltic Blue with Sand Interior

Good customer service is not dead but on life support. I think that a lot of people running their own business don't understand the importance of good customer service.

So there seems to be plenty space for new dealers that do a good job overall, I see business opportunities. I also believe that JLR should be vetting these dealers and take away their dealership if they don't perform well. It is certainly affecting the sales of new and second hand cars because there are people that get turned of and decide to switch brands. MY 2010 5.0 SC Galway green and sand interior!!
Have the Faultmate MSV2 Extreme to be tinkering with the settings etc. !!

I echo your sentiments dhallworth I've used Taggarts in Motherwell for both parts and servicing on various occasions - I think the best way to describe them is incompetent, rude and downright useless  Now: BMW 640d M Sport, Alpine White
Gone: Range Rover 4.4 V8 Vogue, Zambezi Silver, Charcoal Oxford Leather
Also: Mk1 Audi TT 1.8T Quattro, Brilliant Black
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Taggarts , Meh not the sharpest outfit around , rude lazy and forgetful plus they tend to employ the stroppiest madams in town for the service desk but Shields are even worse and you do get a good box of shortbread every time you pop in  2008 MY Supercharged
Rimini Red / Jet
four zone climate
remote park heater
and no ugly kid windows.
magnus satis quod turpis satis

I agree that is depends entirely on the particular staff member you deal with, hunters in derby are generally very good, I speak to a chappie called Richard in service and he always without fail returns my calls and sorts the cars out in a workman like manner, with necessary courtesy cars and a minimum of fuss. Much better than going through the bleeding "booking line"

Needed to talk about booking in to get the tailgate sorted and a small oil leak fixed, but he was on holiday (fair enough) left 3 messages to get the service seat to call me, no response, finally spoke to their New Guy who has only been there 2 months who had no clue of what to do about it and promptly put me back through to the service booked my line to get the cars booked in!

I hate with a passion not being called back. It really gets my back up!!! The worst offenders though are COop energy. Don't get me started on them!! Possibly the worst organised company I have ever dealt with! There is nothing that can't be fixed with a hammer😜😜
FFRR 4.4 SDV8 Autobiography Santorini Black.
KIA E-Niro 4+
2021 Discovery 5 D300 MHEV commercial