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I definately echo the words of support for Carrs of EXETER.....excellent service. I’ve used them exclusively since 2002, no other ferrari dealer comes close. All the staff bend over backwards to support customers, and they don’t give the impression they are only after the money, in my experience, a dealership that makes its profits but makes you feel they deserve every penny you know you have to spend! I’ve bought every marque of car through them too, maserati and ferrari of course, but they organise the support for all my special cars over the years including Bugatti EB110SS and Aston’s. If they can’t do it, they have organised for someone to do it, and monitored it for me to make sure the service matches their own. Buying and selling cars, they are fair with pricing both ways, and I think their margins of profit per car are nowhere near as high in expectation as the likes of dick Lovett who seem to want to bang you both ways if you ever discuss a deal, even if they approach you to get them out of a hole (ask how I Know!)
Well I’ve just booked my 348 into Carr’s for a major, belts and a few other bits. If it comes back crap; I’m blaming all you lot!!!!!
Thanks for that. Sounds like my dealer to go to now and also sounds just like my experience of Dick Lovett! Amazing short term greed.
Well yet again, Dick Lovett Ferrari have given me a totally loaded bill. Hourly rate not as agreed - charged me full rate of 150 GBP per hour i stead of 120 GBP. Charged for fixing their poor previous work from last year, and of course charged 3 hours to look at the car and see what's wrong! Good news is Dino now booked into Carrs and they have bene lovely so far and standard Dino / restoration rate is 78 GBP per hour. Bye bye Dick Lovett!
I think you will be very impressed with Harvey, Mark Ware and the team at Carrs. There’s no ********, no pretensiveness, just honest work and nice people. Lovetts think they are a step above their customers, regardless of who those customers are, they forget they are only there because we spend money on the cars, customers are supposed to be respected, they are just a service provider. I had a friend who bought a lot of Porsche’s from lovetts, and bought a brand new 911 turbo cab (a while ago now). Oliver lovett delivered it on a Friday afternoon (nice of him, you’d think), arrived top down (like it was his, but hey, why not), and drove off. My mate went to put car in the garage, roof wouldn’t go up. He called Oliver, now five minutes away, and his response? Well, if it were me, I’d have turned around, come back, been on the phone to a tech to make sure they stayed around to talk him through a fix - not Oliver, no, tells my mate to ring the dealership tomorrow, he’s going home! What a tool. My buddy called Porsche GB, and then in Germany, and I know lovetts got hauled over the coals for Oliver’s lack of courtesy. Even if he had turned up, gone through the motions, and not fixed it, he could have made my buddy feel a bit better at having a brand new car arrive faulty, he would have put it away and called the next day at least in good spirits, but no, acts like the £100,000+ was **** all to him, and gets himself and the dealership in major trouble. Contrast to Carrs, I had the possibility that my Cali T had an issue when I got it home (a seeming water leak), I left a message (it was late at night, did NOT expect any response till the morning), and within 15 minutes, around 10,30 on a Friday night, I had a call from someone who collected the details, talked me through a couple potential reasons for the apparent issue, stayed on the phone while I tried the fixes, and was apologetic and empathetic with me. By the next day, I managed to confirm the fix (tighten a cap, that’s all, easy and blameless) has worked, but the impression I had was a dealership that cared about my experience, was devastated I might have had a problem (with a used car no less, not a new one) and they were genuinely happy it was fixed so easily, but were prepared to collect the car the next morning and get it immediately under ‘the knife’ if needed.
Yes, I have many similarly sad stories with DL. They don't care about customers at all. At some point I've had my Dino, my 458 spider, Speciale and F12 with them for sales or servicing and EVERY time there are problems. They lose things, damage things, over charge, under deliver and never ever check before doing work. Then they have the audacity to argue, charge storage and never ever collect or deliver. Matthew Beard runs a terrible ship imho with low standards and contempt for customers. I used them for two years as very local but so happy now to have a reasonable alternative.
Interesting comments on DL. Twice now I've tried to get costs for my annual service from them, twice now I've not been able too. Cant even get to first base with them, let alone a home run I suspect they don't like "clients" that ask for a price first!! Anyway, booked into Carr's for February. Said they would call me in January to finalise details, so lets see how we go.
That’s exactly my experience of DL. They love to spring work on you (always twice or more the price you expected) and not five estimates. Their other trick is to quite a price and then it greatly increases because of what they found but they won’t tell you on the way. Add to that always at least 2-3 hours to “diagnose” anything and always try to charge to rectify work they did recently. She. You point out that it was their work, they still try to argue it was new work / faulty parts / owner fault! Amazing DL.
Update on my Dino now it's been assessed at Carrs of Exeter. It seems DL completely mis-diagnosed the problem and would have ben doing work for no reason whilst the real problem was caused by them wrongly tuning the carbs. Moral of the story, never take your Ferrari to Dick Lovett Ferrari!
Good to hear that Carrs have quickly diagnosed the issue for you. I knew they would sort it. Tuning carb's is a skill that most main dealers lost long ago but Carrs have a local specialist they use who is very good. You'll also discover that they have built up a network of specialists they can turn to, to cover almost any aspect of the car as we encountered virtually every type of problem during the restorations on my cars.
Yes, indeed. I'm very impressed so far and understandably fed up with incorrect information from Dick Lovett Ferrari, who clearly make it up as they go along as long as they can gouge some money from a customer. The correct thing to do would be to get a specialist in if they don't know but as I've realised the whole ethis there is finding ways to increase servicing revenue regardless of if it's justified.
Great service from Carrs of Exeter and so happy top have my Dino running properly at last! Harvey is a magician....
I would not deal with anyone else in UK. Interesting that DL are an official "Classiche" workshop and Carrs are not. I know they do a lot of work with older cars, prices are sensible and they always tell you what is not worth doing.
I don't think Dick Lovett deserve that status. They have one mechanic who does their older cars but he certainly knew very little about the 246 Dino. Making it up as he went along was more accurate.
I’m guessing it’s about how much cash the dealership is willing to spend to get the plaque on the wall! as to not being able to sort your Dino, is it not a v6 with twin Weber’s on it? I’ve only tuned 4 pot engines with twin SUs, but for a trained mechanic how hard can it be!
Classiche dealer certification costs a lot of money and would require a high throughput of cars to justify it. Due to their location Carrs would be unlikely to recoup that cost so simply get on with the job of providing owners with a high quality of service at very reasonable cost which is, IMHO, far more important for anyone who uses their cars.
As an aside, I had an interesting conversation with a bmw indie as he wasn’t taking on any new work cause he could not recruit anybody who new what a spanner was!! Lots of trained mechanics who could wield a laptop, but he said he just could not find anybody who had actual spanner experience/ knowledge! I find that worrying; as a kid if the car broke, if you couldnt fix it nobody else would do so you learnt! What I find easy and do able a lot are baffled with. Still I’m of the school/ vintage if you can’t fix it with a hammer....
I may be wrong, but I think the Classiche certification is based basically on an ability to know what parts of the car to photograph to send to Maranello where the actual assessment is made plus being able to advise what needs to be changed to bring a car back to factory originality. It is nothing to do with mechanical ability. I don't doubt there is also a substantial cost factor involved.
That is nothing new Adrian. The Indie I used to service my tehm Vauxhall Omega V6 15 years ago had exactly the same problem and the mechanic who in subsequent years looked after he car told me that he did all the cam belt changes on those cars because the younger mechanics were scared to do it!
I had a chat to Tony Willis about it a while back Francis just before he relinquished the role. From what I can recall of the conversation the dealers had to apply to become Classiche approved and then send tech's to the factory for training in how to carry out the inspection. From various cars I've seen advertised as having been through Classiche - but are clearly not to factory spec in terms of finishes/parts etc - I remain sceptical of the process though it may have been tightened up in recent years.
I have posted this before, but not sure where, but purely out of interest, as I didn't really have any intention of submitting my GT4 for Classiche, I some time ago asked Tony Willis what was involved. I pointed out that my car has modern cooling fans, a non standard steering wheel (though I have the original), an upgraded fusebox, non Ferrari Superformance 5 spoke 16 inch wheels, and non original boot carpet (though I have just taken delivery of very nice reproduction carpets from dinoparts.de). All that was fine, but it transpired that it would not pass because it doesn't have an original spec exhaust. At this point I totally lost interest because my exhaust is far superior to anything Ferrari ever supplied. I really wonder if any Classiche dealer actually knows as much about factory originality of my car as I do, or indeed you do on your cars Iain, and I certainly wouldn't want to pay to find out. Maybe Classiche has some worth on a £300K car but it certainly means nothing on a probably £60K car