I could write a novel on what happened to me last weekend, but here's the short summary.
I am a numptie - I went on a road trip with no puncture repair kit. So, of course I got a puncture in a slightly remote part of Wales (but not that far from the border) on a Sunday afternoon and it took ages to come to me.
The company assigned to help me were just recovery - no repair. They took my bike back to Hereford and BMW got me a taxi to my hotel for the evening, which was 1.5 hours in a taxi. That put me and the bike 2.5 hours apart.
The next day BMW Emergency Services said the bike would be taken to Cotswold (in Cheltenham) for a new tyre and repatriated to me.
They told me to call Cotswold so I did - they said they had no tyres in stock, but would order one for me. Great.
However, the recovery company called me 30 mins later to say they were taking the bike to an independent garage in Hereford who had the tyre in i needed in stock and were waiting to fit it - well that's even better I thought....
However they said they didn't have the authorisation to bring the bike to me after this was done, so I had to get BMW to permit this.
That's where it all went wrong. The automaton on the phone line flipped out when she heard that it wasn't going to a BMW centre and told the recovery agent to take it to BMW... OR I could allow it to go to independent garage but I was on my own after that - remember it's 2.5 hours from where I am...
So, the bike went to.... Motorrad Chester (100 miles north of Hereford). WTF?? Still don't get that.
That left me needing a hire car asap to let me have some kind of holiday... but it wasn't to be. BMW use Enterprise for these situations, but even the nearest office in Bangor said they 'didn't cover my area' (WTF - 45 miles...), so I had to wait another day whilst they subcontracted the car... which no one else could supply.
So, I did my entire hols walking around a little town you can cover in an hour, spending 2+ hrs a day holding/talking with BMW, Enterprise, or a 3rd party hire agency. Then BMW got me a taxi from Snowdonia to south London... which allegedly cost north of ?500.
I spoke to 3/4 BMW centres over this and they all said couldn't understand why a local garage wasn't allowed to fit a tyre. The operatives said they could only follow BMW's b***s**** policy and clearly don't understand what a puncture is. If it had been anything else I wouldn't have let anyone else touch the bike...
Whilst Chester have done everything asked of them promptly, they were unable to source an S22, so I'm getting the bike back today/tomorrow with the older S21 - still much better than the S20 the bike was supplied with at the start of the year.
So, I'm just really disappointed with BMW Emergency Services who turned a small thing into a major problem that cost them far more than I think it should and totally messed my little holiday up. They will look at their processes and the different stages and think that everyone ticked their little boxes in a timely manner. I would say that someone needs to look at the time that it all took and why a human didn't see the effect on my experience. I could have had the bike back in a day and they made sure I didn't. I do wonder if I should have just let the bike get repaired on the first day, but it was such a long way between me and that garage. I have had good experiences with this service, but I'm really angry with how they handle fringe cases in remote areas. They've already sent me the email asking me to review and got 1 out of 10...
Also note that I got the puncture on a popular biker route, but none of the people that stopped/I flagged down had a repair kit either - something for you all to think about!
