Farewell Land Rover

**Cap** · 28th June 2007, 11:26 AM

wow - thats a 'positive' article for a change. Ive been lurking around reading all the horror stories (including DionM) and thought how bloody stupid LRA are regarding customer service. Hope this will change soon.

mcrover · 28th June 2007, 12:26 PM

Sorry to hear that your out of the Landrover world now Deon, and Im not surprised that a Freo was the straw that broke the camels back.

It is a pitty that some dealers treat customers like idiots and then the customers dont get the back up from LRA to be able to push for a proper repair.

No matter what anyone says, all cars have their faults. Even Defenders have problems that show up from time to time as do Disco's but the freo got a boot load of them and no one wanted to take charge of fixing them and thats how they have lost another customer.

I doubt that I will ever upgrade to another Landrover unless it is a Fender from my D1 for this very reason, and it is one part of the market that the Japs have it sown up, after market service sells cars in the future rather than trying to look at the bottom line now is how Mazda, Nissan and Toyota look at it.

Hope the Vwee does you well, wont be quite as good off road but a nice car all the same, just take a bigger run up lol.

Damo

**Greylandy** · 28th June 2007, 01:58 PM

Originally Posted by dullbird

the freelander could 4wd

sorry never been a fan of the freelander and probably never will, i dont think freelander enhanced landrovers image at all or really set any bench marks.....

The Freelander did bolster LR's coffers by becoming the top selling small SUV in Europe in early 2000. It came at a critical time when Land Rover were once again on the ropes. The Freelander might be the bastard child but it kept LR afloat and able to produce some of its modern offspring.

I agree with Dion, if LRA didn't want to support him .. why should he support LRA by sticking with the brand. Dion, enjoy the VW and get yourself an old S3 SWB to play around with. At least LRA will not see any of the cash you pay for it!

**FenianEel** · 28th June 2007, 02:27 PM

Sorry to hear your woes Dion, I'm neither a fan of the Freeby or LRA, but I wouldn't drive anything else - I am a sad article

Hope the hitlermobile looks after you well and we see you back with a green oval soon.

All the best and Good Luck mate

**mudmouse** · 28th June 2007, 02:28 PM

Dion, that's a shame after your long association with the marque, and no doubt it's been an expensive little episode. My wife and I looked at a few diesel Freelanders but NONE we looked at (ranging from 70,00k's to 130,00k's) inspired any confidence - wierd noises etc... Maybe our expectations were in the wrong place.

So, i hope you fire off a similar letter, to your thoughts on the forum, to Land Rover Oz. It might end up in the 'one way fax' but it also might add weight to many complaints, not only for Freelanders but Td5's etc...

Anyway mate, sorry to hear that. Best of luck with your next set of wheels.

Matt.

**BigJon** · 28th June 2007, 02:45 PM

Originally Posted by mcrover

It is a pitty that some dealers treat customers like idiots and then the customers dont get the back up from LRA to be able to push for a proper repair.

freo got a boot load of them and no one wanted to take charge of fixing them and thats how they have lost another customer.

We recently replaced a complete vehicle wiring loom in a 5 year old Freelander TD4 to rectify an intermittent rough running fault. Many many hours of diagnosis, most of the diesel injection system replaced, ALL of it done at NO CHARGE to the customer (not the original owner, bought the vehicle outside of factory warranty), LR paid for the lot even though the vehicle was well outside of the warranty period.

Good things do sometimes happen!!

**Pedro_The_Swift** · 28th June 2007, 03:16 PM

and its good to hear about them

mcrover · 28th June 2007, 03:31 PM

Originally Posted by BigJon

We recently replaced a complete vehicle wiring loom in a 5 year old Freelander TD4 to rectify an intermittent rough running fault. Many many hours of diagnosis, most of the diesel injection system replaced, ALL of it done at NO CHARGE to the customer (not the original owner, bought the vehicle outside of factory warranty), LR paid for the lot even though the vehicle was well outside of the warranty period.

Good things do sometimes happen!!

Good to hear BJ, LR may just be starting to notice that there may be a problem with the freo.......

Mrs Mcrovers big boss has a RR sport, major rear end problems, wears out $1000 each tyres in under 30,000km's, just on the inner edge.

On a long drive ended up with a blowout just over the SA border after picking it up from the dealer to have 2 new tyres fitted and a rear alignment the day before.

Apparently he had the wrong tyres fitted, but they fitted them and they were the same as what was fitted in the first place brand new.

He lost a court case against them as he didnt specify to them what sort of driving he was going to do or something of that nature and they came out with he was told to have an upgrade done but they didnt have the part in stock.

He did tell them he was going to drive it interstate and was told that it would be fine with an alignment but when that was brought up in court it was only hear say and wasnt on paper.

Her other boss has a V6 freo which has had loooooooooooots of hastles and her partners car is a P38 so all 3 of them wont be buying LR again any time soon.

Hope LRA is learning about customer service, maybe BJ has someone who can pull the right strings or something as down here and in Sydney it seems like you cant win with LRA.

**Michael2** · 28th June 2007, 03:37 PM

Originally Posted by BigJon

We recently replaced a complete vehicle wiring loom in a 5 year old Freelander TD4 to rectify an intermittent rough running fault. Many many hours of diagnosis, most of the diesel injection system replaced, ALL of it done at NO CHARGE to the customer (not the original owner, bought the vehicle outside of factory warranty), LR paid for the lot even though the vehicle was well outside of the warranty period.

Good things do sometimes happen!!

I'd say that if anyone has warranty issues, it would be worth the drive to Alice Springs.

Life is so much simpler when you buy a 2nd hand Land Rover that's had all these things sorted out.

DionM · 28th June 2007, 04:06 PM

I was patient with them ... very patient. I fired off many letters, met with the state manager, all that stuff. But it was all talk and no action. They were good in extending support past end of warranty ... but what good is that when all they did was look at it?

It was - and still is - disappointing how it ended. But I just got frustrated - here was a vehicle my wife (rightly) refused to drive because of the power loss (she feared for someone hitting her when it came to a halt in the middle of traffic), and there was nothing being done to fix it. They just didn't understand the importance or the safety implications - it was as if I was complainig about a little rattle in the door or something.

I was fine with the problems we had while owning it; I never had an issue with all the problems that came up and they fixed (we had quite a few, but I wouldn't say the vehicle was a lemon ... they were mostly 'known' issues). I never got annoyed at the frequent visits to the dealer, because problems were fixed and I knew that was part of owning a Land Rover - other things about the vehciel made up for it. If they had fixed these other outstanding problems like they should have, we'd probably still have it.

So it was never to do with the number of problems we had, nor the frequency of them ... it was the fact these problems were never fixed. I mean, 4.5 years of poor cold starting? Approx 2 years of severe power loss? Ridiculous. Perhaps I was patient for too long? Anyway, it was that latter unfixed safety related problem was the straw that broke the camels back.

I didn't understand why they did that. The vehicle was serviced meticulously (every 6mths, even though it only 'needed' 12mth services according to the schedule). Always serviced by LR. Never abused. I kept it immaculate (even the guy doing the trade-in valuation remarked on how clean it was), always fed it PULP or higher octane fuel. There was no reason for them to stall on it, but all they did was just tell to bring it in, they'd drive it around, download codes for a while and say "no fault found". Now I can understand intermittent faults are had to diagnose, but after the 10th trip I made in there you'd think they would start doing something more. And from what I understand, the FLs engine management does not log anything to do with the fuel system, but they never checked anything with the fuel system, so if the fault was there ...

I only hope the next owner has more luck getting the problem fixed, LRA just wore me out. They won. They ignored me long enough and I gave up. At least the dealer I traded it with is part of the same chain who owns the LR dealer who sold & serviced it, so all the history is there.

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