Edo

I'll let you know IF I get a reply....

From: Ed_Owen
To: jthoms26@mazdaeurope.com
CC: mdavey9@mazdaeurope.com, ctwine@mazdaeurope.com
Subject: RE: Mazda RX-8
Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2003 07:02:34 -0500


Dear All,

Given that the car is due to be delivered in November ("and possibly late October"), I am staggered that I STILL do not have a week of delivery.

It is now the 7th of October, and the car could potentially be less than a month away.

I am staggered that an organisation could have such poor ability to estimate delivery dates - I have paid £1000 on a car that is nearly £25,000.

Yet again your have failed your promises to give a delivery date in September.

If I order a Dell Server, as a customer I can track the order through manufacture, testing and shipping. Something you might like to consider.

Please advise if you will ever be able to give me a delivery date, or if I am just going to get a call saying "surprise - it's here".

I really do hope the car lives up to the expectation, and that the
customer service is not an indication of the car it's self.

Your prompt reply would be appreciated.

Regards,

Ed Owen

RobDickinson

Good mail.

Shockingly bad customer service for something costing £25k.

Their customers arnt a supprise, they've known about us, and our orders for months. They've also known about our cars since at least August.

They know how long they take to get here, how long PDi etc takes etc - its thier business, they do it day in day out.

Any more holdups or messing around and I know my wife will be pushing to cancel, she is so fed up - so am I.

I hope we get better service after we buy the car (no idea why we should tho).

Edo

I'll be surprised if I get an email back from Mr Thomson.

Edo

Phone call from very helpful lady at RX8 line. Letters going out next week and the week after giving firm dates... Very apologetic. Confident that the fuel consumption issues in the US/Canada would not effect UK cars, and they were still confident that UK cars would meet the specified figures...

RobDickinson

hmmm

[MAD]I got told letters going out next week LAST week[/MAD]

rael

Wonder why they are so confident over the mpg figures considering the problems in the US?

rael

jimbobjoe

maybe they know what Mazda US really did to those cars to get past Californian emissions regulations. Last minute fixes are always the dirtiest (I should klnow, I've made a career out of it):p

Edo

The lady initmated that the US had been a "last minute fix" and that the UK cars were shipped to spec out of the factory.

As long as this is fine, I will be happy.

Just off out in my 169,000 mile White Laguna. Yum.

RobDickinson

I'll be swiming home in my leaky ford focus

ChrisW

Personally, I want the latest revision of ECU code possible. I'd rather the engineers back in Japan kept developing/debugging the code while our cars are being shipped and then download it at the last possible opportunity.

Kev

I am soooo tempted to doctor a reply

RX8BoiUK

Personally, I just want a tried and tested version that does what has been promised.

specman

This is without doubt the best one to have.
For example the new BMW 5 series that was launched three weeks ago has had three new versions of software already to try and cure problems with the valvetronic. So thats one a week then.........

Oh and each BMW 5 takes approximately 5-6 hours to reprogramme...

ChrisW

Well at least BMW are working on fixing it, and moving pretty quickly by the sound of it. The US RX-8 ECU code is obviously a horrible piece of work, but there's no sign of an upgrade from Mazda in the US. And it's been out for months now.

What worries me is that they may just quietly start shipping cars with decent ECU code middle of next year when they have sorted out all the problems, and not bother upgrading early orderers (and of course deny that any upgrade is necessary or that any ECU code change ever took place).

mr_digital_uk

I have mixed feelings about all this:

1) They (Mazda) should not have said they would write to us with more precise delivery dates last month and just fail to do it .. really, really bad customer satisfaction stuff that one!!!

2) If you phone your own dealer you will get a reasonable estimate of the week/day that they can achieve ... seems Mazda are communicating better with them now than us.

Maybe Mazda should learn to pass the info onto their dealer networks and let us deal with them.

Edo

Reply.

Dear Mr Owen

Thank you for your e-mail, addressed to Jeremy
Thomson and copied to me, regarding the delivery of your new Mazda RX-8.
Although Mr Thomson has read your e-mail he is currently out of the office and therefore he has asked me to reply to you on his behalf.
The current situation on the delivery of your Mazda RX-8 is that we are currently loading the data for all the pre-order Mazda RX-8 vehicles onto our individual dealerships databases in order that each dealer will be able to view the status of each of the Mazda RX-8 vehicles allocated to their customers. With over 1,400 pre-orders this process is taking some time, however we anticipate that all dealers will be able to view all their customer’s vehicles by Friday 17th October 2003.
Once your dealer has this information he will be able to track the delivery of your vehicle and then provide you with a delivery date for your particular vehicle. I would therefore recommend that you contact your Mazda dealer towards the end of next week so that they can update you on the progress of your order.
Please accept our apologies for not writing to you in September, as we stated in our August letter. This was an oversight on our behalf and we accept that this error has caused dissatisfaction. We will be writing to all pre-order customers shortly advising them that their vehicle details are being downloaded to their Mazda dealer.
We fully accept that some of our communications to pre-order customers have not been as timely as we would have wished and we have learned lessons from this, our first pre-order exercise. Extra resources have now been brought in to ensure that the final stages of this launch are executed corrected.
We are confident that you will be delighted with your Mazda RX-8 and thank you again for your valued comments.
Yours sincerely
Chris Twine
Customer Assistance Manager
Mazda Motors UK Limited

RobDickinson

"We Continue to Stuff Up Big Time, and we honestly will try to get things right sometime soon"

"Extra resources" and "1400" pre-orders.

SQLloader would get that done in about 1.2 seconds...

So when I got told last week (by phone from mazda cust service) to expext a letter this week with my delivery date it was pure bullshit? Oh joy, they cant stop lying.

morganrogers

Have to say , I read that to say "We will not be writing to you with a delivery date".

This is odd , as we have been told all along that they (Mazda HQ) would be advising on our delivery dates.
Now we have to chase the dealer ?

My dealer with up to 70 pre-orders will be delighted that every customer he has will be calling for constant updates to see if anything has happened yet.

(sigh)

Edo

Basically, they have no idea. Until the cars get to the dealers, and the dealers decide on the order of PDI, you will not know when you are going to get your car. I rekon you''ll be lucky to get a weeks notice. Pathetic!

AndyPearce

It's disappointing as it seems to imply that we can only get the delivery date from our dealer (which I was beginning to suspect) and that this long promised delivery date letter from Mazda was never going to exist.

The longer it takes to get a firm date the less chance I have to make the numerous arrangements I need to make.

I guess the only plus point is that I didn't change dealerships. The dealer I'm at only had 8 preorders wheras the one I was going to has over 35 so I'm guessing I'll get it quicker at the smaller dealership.

oilman

Interestingly enough..................

I was talking to my Dealer today and he mentioned that from now on all new cars ordered for Feb/Mar 2004 delivery will be ordered and dealt with directly by the Dealers!

Looks like Mazda has washed their hands of the whole direct ordering system from now on in.

Do ya think they've had a few problems?

Cheers
Oilman

RobDickinson

US orders can track their car as soon as its made and has a VIN assigned. Every stage from shipping onwards.

I guess I ring my dealer friday and see what they have. Will do my best to pressure them into getting me the car ASAP. If I can I want it onthe 8th as its my 1yr wedding aniversary on the 9th and it'd be nice to travel in a new car...

MarkW

Does this really mean:

We are currently employing a number of temps to manually key the data for 1400 orders into our dealers computer systems because our IT systems dont talk to each other..........

I really fail to understand in this day and age why this process should take so long.

Lensman

Allow me to remind you that the database used by the pre-order website was not digitally linked to the database used for the ordering system. They had to phone me and ask ME for my details to enter into the order DB! Consequently I'm far from surprised that the main order DB can't auto-update the dealer DB. They're shoddy amateurs playing at professional business men! I am incensed at the sheer contempt that these people are showing to us and the virtually non-existent level of customer service that we are forced to endure. Another thing: Mazda's own magazine with a multi page feature on the RX-8 has been available for weeks. I got hold of one because a colleague's wife once bought a Mazda and therefore was mailed one. She passed it on to me. Why hasn't Mazda UK sent these out to the pre-orderer's? Pathetic.

c170673

I think some of the pre-orders got these magazines.

I only got one when I picked it up after my test drive, my father-in-law who bought a Mazda6 earlier this year got one in the post.

Strange but not unexpected.

Chris