The bike was due to arrive on Monday 20th and this conversation takes place on the Friday prior,
“It must arrive before 4pm, because the BMW dealer is having a member of staff in, especially, to accept the bike, is that okay?”
“Yes between 12 noon and 4 pm. Oh and one more thing, we’ve noticed that the crate the bike is in, is twice as big as we thought, but because it’s so late, we’ll do you a favour and only charge you an extra 50%”.
“That’s a favour? Why are you telling me anyway, shouldn’t you be chasing the shipper who got it to you with inaccurate documents?”
“Well they’ll say no won’t they?”
“But I’ve already paid you for delivery, we have a contract”
“Yes but that was based on the wrong size crate, so we are doing this as a saving to you”.
“Do you honestly believe that?”
This went on for some time, they did offer not to charge me the extra, but keep my original fee for delivery, if I agreed to collect the bike rather than have them deliver it. I kid you not, this guy thought he was being the epitome of customer service, by charging me only an extra 50% for someone else’s mistake.
Well I was being blackmailed effectively, so said I’d give the driver a cheque for the difference, when the bike arrived.
“Cash only”.
“Okay a card over the phone?”
“Fine, but we charge a surcharge for using a card”
“I’ll pay it into your account directly tomorrow then at the bank, if you give me your details”
“Okay”.
Come Monday at 12 noon, I’m at the dealers. Come 2:30pm I’m chasing up for an eta.
They’ll call the driver and get back to me.
Come 3pm I’m calling again.
Same again at 3:30pm.
At 4pm they ring and ask if I can get the dealer to stay open another hour.
“And if I can’t?”
“We’ll bring it back until a time we can deliver that way again”
“It’s already taken you over a month to get it here, how long before you pass this way again, another month?”
At 4:30 they arrive. The dealer has stayed open. We unload the bike and the shipper calls. Can I pay them cash?
“But I’ve paid it into your account on Saturday, I’ve got a receipt for it,, I’ll show it the guys with the van”.
“We need to have the cash because it’s not showing in our accounts”.
“Could that be because despite having the bike for a month, you only decided to look at the documents and the crate the day you loaded it, then you call me and I pay you as soon as possible, but because banks don’t open and work on a Sunday, it may not have cleared, but I do have the receipt and the bike is now out of its crate and locked away, so you couldn’t have it back and the dealer and me have been here longer than we should have been because you failed to deliver on time, so why can’t you wait, like you’ve made me wait, because of your incompetence”… and breath in.
“We need your credit card number, so we can charge you if the money doesn’t clear”.
“Go away. Go away now”.
Still have to have it MOT’d and serviced, then registered, so can’t ride it until all the paper work is dealt with and of course suitable amounts of money paid to Government departments. This may be more sophisticated than the Central American border crossings, but at least there you get to see the people that are extorting money from you.