Unfortunately, we have only one authorized Porsche dealership in Kentucky, and they have a lousy sales and service department.

As a result, I tried the only independent Porsche service shop in town, and they managed to badly strip my alternator shaft when installing the pulley update and belts. I managed to find out about all this when it all fell apart on a road trip 500 miles from home (only 4 days after the work was done).

So....it's been all about DIY for me over the past two years, but I have recently found a wonderful race shop that is willing to care for my 993 - probably because it is starting to resemble a race car more and more with its GT3 seats, DAS bar, PSS-9's, lap timer, and 6-point harnesses. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

mmodi, I hope your situation improves. I certainly agree with others who believe that SUV owners will be less inclined to put up with poor service in the long run than owners of Ferraris and Porsche sports cars.

 

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Helvetica">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Helvetica">Originally posted by RobertG:
<strong>well have you recieved your Offical Porsche service call yet? they havea company that calls you and asks you to rate your Porsche service experience.....I'd ask them after you answer their questions.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Helvetica">John H., don't get me wrong, I sympathize with mmodi, I just don't think his experiences are all that unusual. When my wife saw the Lexus GX 470 at an auto show, she convinced me to place an order. We gave them our specifications and were told the vehicle would be in by the end of last year. They called us the week of Christmas to tell us our vehicle was in. It was in a different color and with different options than we ordered, but it was in. They actually expected us to rush down to the dealership and pay for it.

When I explained that we expected a vehicle that matched the specifications on our buyer's order they said they don't do special orders. I pointed out that writing up a buyer's order with specs and taking a $1,000 deposit certainly gives a customer the opposite impression. After much brow beating they said they would order our truck to spec and that it would be here in 3 months. I said, thanks but not thanks. The Cayenne and Touareg will be out by then, and I think I'll be shopping around.

My point is that Porsche hardly has a corner on the market for poor customer service. The service you receive at any particular dealership is influenced much more by the GM and his/her management team than anything that the manufacturer does. The rating system for service is useless - anything less than the highest rating and they feel you're punishing them rather than simply pointing out addressable deficiencies in their processes.

The best you can do is find a dealership that has their act together and also sells a marque you can live with (or, ideally, lust for).

 

Jim I agree with most of what you say but will add a caveat based on my experience with BMW- as in my experience the manufacturer and the use of surveys can have a great deal of influence on how a dealer treats their customers.

BMW is actually reading web forums and responding to customers concerns. They also (based on the surveys) take dealers to task who are not performing up to their standards.

I was amazed that even a minor complaint about our X5 on the Roadfly board brought an immediate response from BMW- both posted on the board and in an e-mail to me. When I called them they got in touch with the dealer directly- who then called me and took care of the problem. A poor survey response resulted in similar actions being taken by both BMW and the dealer.

These acts engendered in me both goodwill toward and loyalty to BMW that will result in their being the first stop when the X needs to be replaced (assuming Bangle doesn't screw it up of course).

I think if Porsche really cared about solving mmodi's problem they would have read this post, gotten in contact with him and, if necessary, taken the dealer to task.

 

Jim, that Lexus story is awful as well, although I suppose we've come to expect more screw ups and arrogance on the sales side of the equation. The "right" outcome there was definitely that the dealership lost your business. Also, given how hot the GX470 was at its launch, the cynical consumer in me supposes that they may have taken your ordered vehicle and sold it to someone else at a mark-up, then offered you another available vehicle.

At any rate, Porsche cannot afford to lose any business over sales or service screw-ups in tough economic times. With this new model introduction, given the preconceived notions by some non-Porsche owners and actual service nightmares by more than an acceptable number of Porsche owners, Porsche dealerships simply cannot afford to have these kinds of service experiences. They must redouble their efforts to improve the service experience for SUV owners. I haven't heard anything about that. I have heard about the millions invested in facilities, though. The expectations and inconveniences for consumers in this context seem much more onerous for dealerships than in the sports car context. But, it's still early, and as more Cayenne's are brought in for service, the dealership's product/repair knowledge will improve and they'll have more parts available for recurring problems.

It seems that the electronics, rather than mechanical issues, are the most frequent culprits for serious service problems now. Of course, Porsche has decades of experience designing and testing the tolerance of parts. But with all of these never-before-seen electronic doodads offered on the Cayenne, should Porsche be doing something different for their quality testing and service preparation?