14 responses so far ↓

• 1 99GL // Dec 15, 2008 at 9:07 am

  Like many of us on this site I’ve had great support from Saab dealers – first of all back home in Nottingham where the salesman gave me a model 900 when my Mum and Dad bought a real one, in what turned out to be the correct assumption that I would eventually buy a Saab of my own.

  Three years or so ago Reading Saab were kind enough to give me a 48 hour test drive in a 9-3, even though I had told them that because it was a company car I’d have no control over which dealer would supply it.

  This time round the leasing company has negotiated two 48 hour test drives if we want them, so alongside the Saab, I thought I would spend two days pretending to be an estate agent (realtor) and drive a BMW. An hour or so after I email the leasing people, I get a call from the local BMW dealer, who has exactly the car I asked for and can bring it to my house on the day I asked for it. And he calls me Mr. 99GL. He’ll need a copy of my licence, but no rush, just fax it over some time before they deliver the car.

  The following day comes an email from GM UK. I should ring their call centre to organise the test. After pressing a few different options I’m talking to someone very young who calls me by my first name as soon as I tell her what it is (which is very annoying to a British person), and more annoyingly she does so to ask me for my credit card number. What do you need it for, I ask. We just have to ask for it, comes the reply. She then asks for my driving licence number. I don’t have it with me, I say. Well we have to have it before I can make the booking, she says. I suggest that we can just make the booking now and I’ll fax it tomorrow, but she’s not allowed to make that kind of call.

  So I’m no nearer that test, but any idea that this was going to be a ‘premium brand’ experience is right out of the window. I thought I’d mention the story here though, because if you’re a Saab dealer in the UK it must be massively dispiriting to know that whatever you do to treat the customer well and to try to make that sale, all your corporate leasing customers have to come to you through this inflexible and ill-mannered call centre in Luton.

  Luckily I’m prepared to put up with being treated like this because I know what the car will be like when I finally get to drive it. But GM’s call centre is giving a terrible first impression of the brand long before the dealer even knows I’m interested. GM don’t understand Saab, indeed.

• 2 Tedjs // Dec 15, 2008 at 9:17 am

  I was just in for my 20,000 mile the service at the ‘new’ Saab of North Olmsted (http://saabohio.com/) the other day and although they are not selling many cars, service seems to be humming along at a fairly steady pace.

  This is something I have been seeing for awhile now at many shops in this area. People are simply not buying new cars right now, and are putting money into their older vehicles to get them through the winter or at least another year. Putting money down on a car now is probably the last thing on peoples mind.

  This is not just at Saab dealers. Even Toyota and Honda are not moving anything right now – a sign of the times. It is going to be a long time before car sales recover. Unemployment continues to increase and it is difficult for people to get credit as well. The perfrect storm…

• 3 Alex // Dec 15, 2008 at 10:09 am

  I’m not TOO worried about our local Boston-area Saab dealers as long as there’s still something for them in the service market. The dealer guys I’ve talked to all agree that service and parts are where they make the bulk of their money anyways. To be fairer to them, the Norwood Saab dealership is kinda the red-headed stepchild of the Boston-area Saab market, second maybe to Long Cadillac/Hummer/Saab in Southborough.

  I’m sure that Saab sales are a bit brisker at the standalones like Herb Chambers Saab in Boston, Village Saab in Acton, Shaw Saab down in Norwell and my local favorite Charles River Saab. Even then, those standalones seem to have all but given up on the new car sales side of things to focus on CPO cars and service. CPO sales seem to be a fairly big deal, as it feels to me like these cars get a whole lot more attractive once they’ve depreciated to be cheaper than an equivilent age VW, especially with the CPO warranty. Even a big dealership like Herb Chambers has maybe a salesman or two working on any given day, just as a formality, but the parts and service desks are always pretty busy both at Herb’s and at Charles River. Hopefully parts and service will be enough to keep them running until they have sexy new NG9-5’s and 9-4X’s to sell.

  Speaking of service, my car seems to be doing it’s part to keep the local dealerships in business because in the last month the window break sensor has died, the parking brake cable has gone, the SID’s gone from bad to worse and the plastic center console piece cracked. Ahh, the joys of owning our lovable turbocharged, front-wheel drive Jaguars.

• 4 Bernard // Dec 15, 2008 at 11:22 am

  Alex,

  You can have the sid rebuilt by BBA reman in MA for under $100, with a lifetime warranty.

  I feel for the dealers because most of them originally got into the business for their love of cars. That’s not necessarily the case for second-generation dealers, or newer suburban “auto malls,” but a lot of dealership staff is made-up of people who have decided at some point that they would rather work in the car industry than make more money elsewhere.

• 5 Andy Rupert // Dec 15, 2008 at 12:31 pm

  That was a good article in the Boston Globe. Things have been down for months now. But thankfully, in answer to many prayers, sales have picked up in the past month. In the past four weeks, I’ve sold five Volvos. That’s not great, but it’s better than the zero it had been. Times are definitely bad for the auto industry.

  I don’t know how Classic Saab in Mentor is doing, but there service & parts department have been decent to my family.

• 6 Alexandre // Dec 15, 2008 at 2:45 pm

  I’ve actually had this in mind more and more as I read this site. Even though I’m from a “buy it used and service it yourself” kind of cheapskate family, for the 1st time I bought a bunch of parts at the dealer instead of my usual route of scouring the internet for the best price. It may not be much help for them but I like having them around all the same.

• 7 progolf // Dec 15, 2008 at 7:38 pm

  Keep up the spirit. The 9-3X is coming!

• 8 PT // Dec 15, 2008 at 10:19 pm

  Just to balance the books a little with the UK BMW experience. I’ve had quite a lot of contact with both Saab & BMW dealers in the last few weeks and the Saab guys have followed things up much better than the BMW ones. Mind you, this has not been the call-centre type of experience but it was good all the same.

  BMW are send me weekly emails with offers and “news” and yet when I had my car in for service and they valued it – at my request – ( for the obligatory trade-in insult) no one has since called me back. I know they are desparate to move cars and have big incentives from the head office but it hasn’t translated into some real sales hustle in my experience.

  They called to see if I was happy with the service but that was it. If they are really trying to move cars, I can’t see it. There was however, a guy in their finance team with the wonderful title of Business Retention Manager and he DID follow things up. Unfortunately for BMW, he was helping me finance part of our new 93 SportCombi and so it was a kind of hollow victory for him I guess.

  The Saab guys called back, emailed and texted me with responses or even just ideas about how they could match a car to our budget. Due to their balanced and polite manner, it was never annoying and always informative.

  I know its not always the case (I’ve been the invisible man in a Saab showroom in the past) but just thought that I should put forward some good news where I can.

• 9 triple // Dec 15, 2008 at 11:46 pm

  I don’t know. It’s hard to spare a thought when they aren’t doing much for me. I’m one of the apparently few that is actively looking for a new/used car. I’ve been to 2 Saab dealerships in my area and beyond. One has yet to follow up with me in over a month with any leads on the car I’m looking for; the other was downright insulting with their trade offer. They have also yet to call me, despite promising that they had “2 or 3″ cars exactly like what I was looking at in the pipeline. Just like home sales, this is a buyer’s market, but I don’t see the dealers making that much effort. If I was only making a sale a week, I’d be sure to spend time hunting down the car a for a prospective customer.

• 10 Mike C. // Dec 15, 2008 at 11:49 pm

  Roberti Saab (stand alone Saab dealer closed his doors last month. Very sad. (wwwrobertisaab.com) He claims that as soon as GMAC cut the leasing, that killed 70% of his business. HE WAS ONE OF THE VERY LAST STAND ALONE DEALERS FOR SAAB IN OUR AREA (Northern New York)

  Let’s all hope for the best.

• 11 Alexandre // Dec 16, 2008 at 1:30 am

  Here’s what Roberti looks like these days (at least until the auction Saturday): http://www.collarcityauctions.com/12202008/SaturdayDecember2020081000AMInspection830AMAuctionDay/index.html

• 12 Karen // Dec 16, 2008 at 1:59 am

  New York City and their close-in suburbs are close to becoming a Saab-free zone. Very bad and sad.

  Repeating my shout-out to Reinertsen Saab in Denville, New Jersey, and Pioneer Volvo/Saab in South Deerfield, Massachuetts. Hope Gary Small Saab in Portland, Oregon is also hanging on – where I bought my 9-3 in 2000 during an ill-fated cross-country end of career move.

  Still have Gary Small’s license plate holders even though the guys at Reinertsen turned one upside down to protest my one year absence. Maybe they were protesting the loss of my beloved 1987 900 that Reinertsen tended for 10 years.

• 13 Mike C. // Dec 17, 2008 at 5:41 am

  Alexendre: Thank you for those pictures, Just made my heart sink. When I purchased my 04 cpo convertible last year, Roberti made it fun for the Saab lover to buy a car from them. I did not take my car to them for service as I live in lower westchester county (Croton-on-the Hudson) Todd the sales manager was great to deal with. I sold them my 02 9-3 convertible and they sold it in less than a day. I only have Arroway Saab in Katonah left to go to. I do like the Saab tek (Peter) that works for them. He does a great job on my Saab. As I agree with Karen, Beck is not that hot, in Yonkers. The Saabs at Arroway are less and less. The Hummers are more and more. NOT GOOD.

  So, the question is: With only one Saab dealer left, do I hold on and hope for the best or, do I go to BMW or Audi? The local BMW guy SOLD ME MY SAAB. Now they moved into a new building in Mount Kisco and are doing well with BMW. He can’t wait to see me come in. What do you think?

• 14 99GL // Dec 17, 2008 at 7:49 am

  Thanks PT – yes I should say that that was my first and so far only contact with a BMW garage. Anyway I’m looking forward to actually getting to meet a Saab dealer, after one more very dispiriting bout with the GM UK call centre yesterday.

  The good news is that someone will bring me a TTiD on Thursday and I’ll finally be able to drive one at last.