The Truth about the Land Rover Discovery 3

Action from Land Rover

I have some positive news to report. I am starting to pass on angry and frustrated customers  letters and contact details to Mike MUlholland of Land Rover and it would appear that he is following them up.

This is great news - much of my objective with this site has been met. I have set up an alias which directs your email straight to Mike Mulholland, Customer Serivices Manager of Land Rover. Email him at mike.mulholland@haveyoursay.com directly. However, please use this only as a last resort. To be fair on the organisation you should first take up any issues with your dealership.

If you don't achieve resolution from Mike and Land Rover, then write to me at landrover@haveyoursay.com

I am still waiting for the 14 questions to be answered my Land Rover either online or interview. Both ways they will be available on this site.

BBC Top Gear calls for Discovery 3 reviews

I have just picked up the August copy of TopGear magazine and the BBC is calling for reviews from Land Rover Discovery 3 owners. Email your comments to landrover.disco@bbc.co.uk. Please be responsible with this: make sure you are an owner of a Discovery 3 and write a structured and balanced review.

The Public rounds up questions for Land Rover

Mike Mulholland, Customer Services Manager of Land Rover, promised to respond officially by the early part of the week. The silence has been deafening.

We haven't heard from him so here are the firstbatch  of questions compiled by me - more to come - Mike, you need to click on the comment link below this posting to answer them. Alternatively, we could do a recorded interview and post it on this site. That would be really appreciated by us all as an open and transparent way of dealing with these issues and questions.

Questions in blue are haveyoursay.com questions - all others come from other Land Rover owners

1) Is there any truth in the rumour that Ford is considering moving the Land Rover plant to the US as a result of poor quality assurance coming out of the UK

2) My dealership gives me the impression that they can’t support customers properly as it’s a question of commericiality: they say that Land Rover doesn’t support after sales service adequately. It looks like Land Rover won’t come clean and help the dealers solve the problems. Do you think Land Rover supports the dealer network correctly and what processes are in place to ensure that the dealers aren’t caught between a rock and a hard place?

3) I have often given negative feedback when asked to by Land Rover’s Customer Services team – yet nobody has ever followed it up. Why ask when you never communicate with your customers – communication works both ways.

4) Why don't you tell customers ordering a new car with the phone kit that you have very long delays on the cradle accessories that you need to get the device working?

5) Is there a problem with the dealer network in Australia, it would appear there are many angry and frustrated customers down south. I am told that the CEO of Land Rover Australia doesn't (or won't) talk to customers!

6) Why did Land Rover not react to the cries of anguish made by haveyoursay.com? Why did both Land Rover’s PR Manager and their PR Agency not even have the courtesy to acknowledge the emails? This is no different to ignoring a letter of complaint from a customer.

7) What measures are Land Rover taking to communicate with their customers online?

8) Is Land Rover aware of any standard electronic problems with the Discovery or Range Rover or Range Rover Sport? If so what is the process to deal with these and ensure customers are not placed at risk?

9) What is the basic problem with this vehicle - is it design, manufacturing or is it customer service?

10) What measures are in place to maintain quality at the service centre level?

11) How does Land Rover monitor customer satisfaction. The fact this blog exists and is getting attention tells me there is an issue that isn't going away?

12) Have Your Say has attracted a number of people experiencing different kinds of problem (none of them appear isolated)- that would indicate some pretty fundamental QA issues wouldn't it?

13) Why does Land Rover market the availability of accessories and options when they are not available? (PTI Telephone Kit on first build vehicles as an example)

14) Is Land Rover Assist outsourced to a third party? Why do you think the Land Rover Assist representative hung up the phone on me when I had been stranded by my Discover 3 that had suffered electronic melt down.

We look forward to your answers.

Questions for Land Rover: Keep them coming in

Yesterday I invited people to email me questions which I would put to Land Rover on this blog. I have been inundated by them... thanks to all....so will spend today collating and summarising.

Hopefully I will post them tomorrow... I am at a client all day today so won't be around....

I still haven't heard from Land Rover.

Left my car at the dealer today....

I spent some time with Matt at Stratstone (my Land Rover dealer) - he really took the time to listen to the faults and my experience... I must applaud the whole experience - he explained how the electronics system worked and after the time I spent with him I felt like a valued customer and understand so much more about the car. I drove out in a loan Discovery and really believe that Stratstone will get to the bottom of this. Thanks guys.

On the other hand......Its now close to the end of Tuesday and we haven't seen a formal response from Land Rover yet: I am preparing a list of questions for them which will be posted on the blog tomorrow - I invite them to reply to these in public... Land Rover customers: if you want to add any questions about the poor customer care or the any aspect of the relationship you have had with Land Rover please click here.

I am torn

Land Rover agreed to refund me the purchase price.

I spent the weekend eyeing all the competing cars on the road wondering what I would replace it with. Nothing turns me on at all: I drove all of them last year when I finally settled on the Disco 3 - its the undoubtedly the best of the SUV Class.

In any event, I need a  7 seater and this rules out most of the competition except the Volvo doesn't 'float my boat'... The Disco is the perfect car for my family and I. Yet the electronics system seems to fail it. I love the car in every other way - nothing touches it... yet ( in a spate of passionate disappointment and fury) I threaten to return it.... I really don't want to!

So I spoke to Stratstone of Mayfair, who have been very helpful and understanding in all of this. We are going to give it one last try… so I am taking the car in tomorrow and will leave it with them for as long as they want…. They have agreed to loan me an equivalent Discovery until they are absolutely certain that mine is 100%.

No isolated incident: Disco 3 is a failure and I am throwing it away

Until now, I have tried to be measured in my criticism of Land Rover. Now I am pushed over the edge.

So after months of campaigning for Land Rover to take me seriously about the defects in my first Discovery 3 and to agree to replace the first build model with a second build (at considerable cost to me), I took delivery of the car a week ago and the same thing has happened with only 432 miles on clock - electronic melt down!

Check out my account of the original electronic park brake failure which led to the total immobilisation of my first Discovery and how it took Land Rover 3 weeks to rectify it- its happened again!

Well the photograph above evidences that the new vehicle with only 430 miles on the clock has developed exactly the same problem – it also develops engine management faults. It hasn’t completely immobilised itself yet but we left it in the driveway in London when leaving to go away for the weekend, once-again taking our trustee old P Reg Mercedes Estate with 100,000 miles on the clock. I can’t trust the Disco ever again, my wife has 6 weeks to go until our baby arrives and being stuck on the road in the middle of nowhere with our dog and a 7.5 month pregnant wife doesn’t appeal to me - even more so because Land Rover Assist cannot be trusted to organise their way out of a paper bag.

I also received a list of problems from another Discovery 3 owner who is trying to return his car with 500 miles on the clock. The list of faults could be a carbon copy account of the problems I have experienced. I am busy getting permission from him to publish the letter - so will attach it as soon as I have received it.

I have had a repeated experience with two cars – there are other people out there whose experiences echo mine – this is enough of a pattern for me to decide, with regret, on the following action:

I will be depositing the car at Stratstone’s premises on Monday in return for a full refund of the purchase price.

Can anyone suggest what I should spend the £45k refund on - maybe the Volvo XC90, the BMW X5, the Mercedes ML or the Volkswagen Touareg- Take my Poll please.

By the way, Jeremy Clarkson, maybe you should reconsider your Land Rover vote of confidence.

I will text Mike Mulholland from Land Rover now and ensure he reads this post as the past 4 months have been a battle... let the war begin.... I look forward to hearing from him.

Haveyoursay/Land Rover featured on Podcast: listen by downloading below

Yesterday I told you that I had spoken to Neville about the haveyoursay.com campaign. He and Shel Holtz are leading the way in analysing the impact that new media (blogging. podcasting etc etc) has on the way big brands communicate. Shel and Neville broadcast their 50th Podcast yesterday! Its called For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz Report. For the quick way of getting to this mp3 sound file click on the link below: its about 16mb - so beware.

Download forimmediaterelease.biz covers Land Rover haveyoursay.mp3

It's 17 minutes long and worth listening to for a variety of reasons.... Let's see what Land Rover's Communication Professionals do and whether they take up this opportunity. Lastly, if they still think its not worth taking seriously perhaps they should also read Niall Cook's analysis

[more on podcasting - read below]

Podcasting is real easy - check the links out here if you want to learn how to do it. If you use Apple iTunes make sure you have version 4.9 and podcasting is an idiot proof feature which will change your life (if you know what to subscribe to!)

More than meets the eye: the stories roll in.

Since Neville showed interest in this campaign, it has been picked up by several influential bloggers and journalists and Businessweek Online.

I spoke to Neville about the campaign and he is covering excerpts of our conversation  and his analysis in For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz Report : ( podcast #50 - content is at 47 minutes into the podcast) – which should be released a little later today.

I feel like Land Rover’s Agony Auntie and have received a few desperate emails from Land Rover owners pleading for my help. Land Rover has shown interest in dealing with these emails so please post them as comments here or email haveyoursay.

In a telephone conversation with Mike Mulholland yesterday he stated that he knew they had to react quickly with an appropriate message and strategy and that he would be meeting with the Head of Communications. Despite the positive move by Land Rover, Mike told me that he was pretty snowed under for the next few days, as was his Marketing Director Andy Griffiths who is then going on holiday for two weeks. So we can only expect a formal response in terms of my offer sometime next week. Has the urgency evaporated overnight : do they understand that this conversation moves at lightening speed and spreads like wild fire?

Haveyoursay is currently attracting over 3,000 hits per day and I have received some interesting emails from Land Rover owners who are so desperate to be heard that they are pleading with me to help them. Here is one of them:

“I need your help to Identify problems they say don't exist, as I have rejected the car after three weeks of ownership and 500 miles, but surprise surprise, they won’t accept any problems exist and are threatening to dump the car back on my drive!”

I am starting to see a common theme in these messages and I can’t say I am 100% convinced that my experience was an isolated one. I think there just may be a Design, Engineering and Quality Assurance problem in addition to the perceived lack of customer care. Other issues might exist in the Dealership Network Model that Land Rover applies – are we to feel sorry for the dealer in all of this? – one consumer wrote to me last night saying

"[Land Rover] is failing to compensate dealers to properly identify and repair manufacturing faults”

As anecdotal as the above may be, this is going to blow your mind … last night when leaving Glyndbourne in my new replacement Discovery 3 (second build) with 300 miles on the clock- the engine shut-down telling me there was an “engine management fault” when I started it again it seemed fine until I got a message “Suspension fault” – I restarted the car again and managed to get home safely….. I suspect my personal story is not over. Let’s see if Land Rover or Stratstone of Mayfair (the dealer) contacts me about this.

Oversensitive to Semantics?

I wanted to apologise for the wrong tone of my messages and using the words "terrorism" and "warfare" in some of my posts: these entries were posted well before last Thursday's tragic events in London. In any event, its easy to steer away from using words like these and I will do so. I don't really want to terrorise Land Rover - I just want them to listen to me - and the other many frustrated customers. They are listening now - sorry to anyone I upset... I promise I won't do it again!

At last: Land Rover is finally listening

I had an email from Mike Mulholland - Customer Services Manager from Land Rover. He said

"I know how genuine our intentions are to support our customers and to continue to improve our brand loyalty and so I am confident that we can turn this negativity into a positive message for our brand.”

He asked me to forward emails which I had received from frustrated customers directly to him and he would get the process rolling to sort these out. So Land Rover owners: when emailing landrover@haveyoursay.com please give me specific authority to forward to Mike.

I also suggest you post your comments to this blog entry - that way Land Rover has just one place to read Customer Complaints landed by this site and hopefully they will be in touch with you directly without me having to forward emails to Mike.

You can come back to haveyoursay.com if you feel that your issue has not been adequately resolved. I am going to think about a way of establishing a fair jury system to steer people away from being unreasonable : any ideas?

Also, please try and deal with issues through your dealers first - at last resort use this platform.

Thanks, Mike and Land Rover, this will go a long way to sooth the anger and discontent out there.

3,766 Hits in the last 24 hours

I have a life outside blogging unfortunately so can't post much until a few hours time. But quite a lot to report - have a look at the trackbacks and comments on this article and you will notice it was picked up by Businessweek Online amongst other influential bloggers.

I have received some interesting emails last night from customers and Mike Mulholland from Land Rover and will share all - sorry for the suspense.

Land Rover Responds openly and honestly.

Mike Mulholland from Land Rover UK called me today and we had a constructive and very worthwhile conversation. I think he is head of Customer Relations. I immediately remembered his name from the numerous postal feedback questionnaires I have received over the last few years: most notably the one I mailed off slating Land Rover for their terrible Breakdown Recovery service they call Land Rover Assist. I never hear back from him even after taking the trouble to write it all down and walk it to the post office - which shouldn’t be the rules of the game.

He confirmed that Land Rover had been aware of my campaign from the outset but chose not to react to it. He told me their PR Manager had received my emails dated June 2, as had their PR Company, Harrison-Cowley. I asked him why it had taken him 6 weeks to make contact with me and his defence was that he felt the dealership was looking after me. Mike said he dedicated resources to tracking the blogosphere, but I told him it wasn’t good enough just listening you had to do something about it- Communicate! I don’t profess to be a blog expert but I do know someone who is - he understands how brands should deal with blogs and I am sure I can convince him to give up some of his time to guide Land Rover through this new mine field. (That's a free offer Land Rover)

Mike was open and honest with me (which I appreciate greatly): Land Rover has released 5 new models in a very short space of time to great acclaim. The demographics of their customers are changing with the release of the Discovery 3 and Range Rover Sport and Land Rover UK are doing their best to keep up with customer demands but haven’t yet got to where they need to be.

In case you have missed this piece, like others who accuse me of blackmail, the case involving the replacement of my Discovery 3 is now closed. Stratstone of Mayfair and Land Rover struck a fair deal in which I took delivery of a new vehicle last week and paid £5k for that privilege- so it doesn’t set any nasty blackmail precedent because we met half way and resolved it. (Having said that, I feel that the only reason Land Rover stepped up to the plate was because I was forced to kick up this dust – prior to launching this campaign everyone treated me with blasé apathy)

This campaign is now for the greater good of Land Rover owners who have one thing in common: they are frustrated with the lack of communication and care that Land Rover appears to afford them.

I explained to Mike that if he is selling a car with a sophisticated Satellite Navigation system (like the Discovery 3) he can bet that his customers spend a lot of time on-line and that they want to interact with their Brands online. Land Rover UK only receives feedback by post and when I accused Mike of not even reacting to my written feedback – he held up his hands and took the criticism with laudable admission. This made me feel much better. He is guilty of one offence here, he should have initiated this conversation with me 8 weeks ago when he received the postal feedback I sent him concerning my vehicle’s electronic system failure when it was forced off the road for 3 weeks.

I told Mike that I had started to feel like Land Rover’s Agony Aunty: I was being heralded by frustrated Land Rover owners all over the world. He asked me whether I would forward all the emails I had received and I agreed to do this. He honestly wants to hear about these experiences. Perception rules reality – is the reality that Land Rover does care and they just don’t have the processes and systems to cope with a changing customer base that has exploded in recent years? You only have to read this blog to understand the perception that I and many other customers have – I am afraid Land Rover has a chasm to cross.

Mike is going to talk to his colleagues at Land Rover UK and come back to me. By the end of the conversation we tacitly agreed that we could boil our conversation down to a couple of issues:

1)     Land Rover UK needs an efficient platform to listen and care for their customers. The reason I am getting 700 hits to www.haveyoursay.com, mostly search engine driven, is because their existing customers want to talk to one of there favourite brands – just like me – they want to be loyal – but they are frustrated 'cause they think nobody listens. They have no way of communicating with Land Rover save through the Royal Mail, and that doesn’t work for them.

2)      Mike acknowledged that a little conversation and relationship building could have averted the whole problem – and that should have happened long before this URL started breathing fire

I offered Mike an olive branch: to use the haveyoursay.com platform as a means to communicate with his customers – I agreed to post verbatim any content that Land Rover wished to publish.

Not sure what will happen next, but I do hope that the message isn’t

“Thank you for visiting this site, please write to:
Land Rover UK Customer Relationship Centre, Browns Lane, Allesley,  Coventry CV5 9DR"

I still expect and am looking forward to a conversation with Andy Griffiths (the Marketing Director) because I have a series of questions for him and after all this effort I think I deserve some of his time. Of course, all the above assumes that my experience with the Electronics of the car was an isolated case: I hope it was for Land Rover's sake.

I am not around for the rest of the day as I am off to Glyndebourne in my shiny new Discovery 3 – which (by the way) is the best SUV on the road by far! We are all human – even Land Rover and I only reached that conclusion when I got to talk to them yesterday after two and a half months of battle.

Who am I?

  Neville Hobson picked up my trackback to his site about Dell ignoring the blogosphere and he rightly tells me that my Land Rover campaign lacks credibility  because I carry out my battle anonymously!

Neville - thank you - you are quite right - Just in case you really thought it was Land Rover's apathetic PR Company Harrison Cowley - I will set the record straight - You can read all about me and the campaign at my other blog www.smartapps.co.uk

Keep your eyes peeled - I actually got a call from Land Rover today - i will tell you all about it imminently.

Land Rover isn't Listening

Thanks to google answers I was told that I needed to write a good old fashioned letter to Andy Griffiths the Marketing Director of Land Rover as they treat all externally bound email as SPAM. So I have written to Andy today - let's see if I get a response!

Take the poll - let's see if you think they will just ignore their customers - like Dell Computers seems to be doing. Read Dell isn't listening by Neville Hobson.

Remeber, to date I haven't had a response from Land Rover's PR Manager or their PR company Harrison Cowley. I wonder if its because they don't understand Blogs or maybe its just arrogance and they don't care about what their customers are saying.

Search Engines send people this way: Land Rover Discovery Problems

It's interesting a lot of the search engines are taking surfers to this blog when you search for Land Rover Discovery Problems - must mean that there are enough people out there struggling with their new Discovery - consolation is you are NOT alone. Let's mount the pressure on Land Rover - leave your comments on this blog - I am going to invite Land Rover to reply in the public domain - Let's see if they are brave enough.

Steering Knock: Anyone experiencing similar?

I had an email from Alan who is also a First Build HSE owner. His car has been suffering from a steering knock...

Have a read of his email " just thought I would ask if anyone else suffers from the subtle steering knock in the new Discovery 3, I have a HSE which as you know is not cheap so its a bit disappointing to have something as fundamental as the steering not performing as it should. My car is also a so called first build, purchased November 2004 and I must admit very little has gone wrong with - so far. The car has been in twice to the dealership to see if they can rectify the steering problem but they insist all is OK. I was fortunate to have a half day off road voucher from Land Rover and was able to drive an identical vehicle even down to the wobbly steering, is it a design fault or manufacture fault. If you have encountered any such problems, I would like to know."

Alan, I haven't had a problem with the steering - "yet"! - but let's open this up for comment. I have had problems when turning the steering into full lock when the car's suspension is lowered for access - it creaks and groans as if its in its last days...Land Rover can't fix this.

Land Rover's Marketing Database needs some work

Can you believe it - after all the fuss... today I got a direct mailing from Land Rover inviting me to a day out to test the Land Rover Discovery 3  !! - Don't they know I have already bought their latest and 'greatest'?" I find this sort of thing insulting.... don't they know who their customers are?

I am going to write to the marketing director, Andy Griffiths and let him know he needs to spend some money on cleaning up his database. Keep posted to see if he bothers replying to my communication.... I am willing to bet you doesn't!

It doens't appear that Land Rover has any policy about returning emails or communicating with their customers.... at least that's my experience.