Yes I remember. Sumner/Buckley highway wasn't it or near there.

I love this car. I miss my R56 but this one is sooooooooo much faster and well just different. I will have to go to PSMINI.

Here's a wave.

"Wave"

 

Love your coupe! My white silver and black top baby will be here soon, it's on it's way. Should be able to take delivery in just over a week (fingers crossed). Thanks for sharing!

 

I must say, I am not very happy with the trucking company responsible for getting my Coupe to Salt Lake City. It was released to the carrier on Oct. 22 and was supposed to have been delivered to my dealership on Saturday. I was scheduled to pick it up today however my MA says that it is now showing as a Nov. 2nd delivery to the dealership. Really? 2 weeks to make it from Oxnard to SLC? That is almost as long as it took to go from Southampton, across the Atlantic, through the Panama Canel, and up the Western seaboard. Complete BS, what an incompetent arrangement. Very frustrated.

 

Well tcassa looks like both of ours are supposed to hit the dealership at the same time. My MA said he just got confirmation that mine will be in to the dealership on Nov 2nd also. Since the JCW suspension is not part of the deal should mean we can likely take delivery this next weekend.

 

Someone else recently was told the same, but then the MINI showed up.

 

There is something rotten in Denmark in regards to the trucking company. My wife's Coupe was released to the trucking company on Oct. 26th and was estimated by the dealer to be in Saturday, Sunday or at least Monday. At 11:30 am today the dealership said the truck was 2.5 hours away. Now 8 hours later not only is there no truck, there is no information on its whereabouts anywhere. A call to MINI USA was fruitless. They said no information available at their end after it leaves VDC. All they could do was allow me to file a complaint. Meanwhile one of the other MAs said maybe they mistakenly took it back to the port. Really?

 

Coupe S, ordered 10/14. 3728xxx Midnight Black on Midnight Black, silver stripes. Cold Weather and Sport packages, Center armrest, Bluetooth/USB, Harmon-Kardon upgrade, 17" Black Star Bullets, and yes automatic trans. Went back and forth on the trans, but auto won out.

 

Take heart... Mine went from 10/29 delivery to 11/6 once the trucking company got their hands on it. Then, it showed up. Go figure.

 

Relax everyone. Your Coupe will get to you. Yea sometimes the intelligence is wrong but lets face it Mini wants to sell you the car as much as you want to buy it. Your purchasing an ordered car.

Mini has far more information than a lot of other manufacturers out there. You place the order (if you can) and then wait until the dealer calls you to pick up it up.

I know easy for me to say I have my car but having been through this 4 times I know it's an exercise in patience. Just remember that Mini wants to sell you the car. They want your money in their bank not yours.

Truly, complaining will not hasten the delivery once the car is ordered, though I admit it may make you feel better.

Motor On

 

I was told by the a reliable source at my dealership that the trucking company's line is often forwarded to one person's cell phone, and that person often has no access to any information. It's almost as if they are dealing with someone running a business from their garage.

From what I've been told, don't put ANY stock in reports of when your MINI got on a truck, where it is while en route, or when it is due to arrive. These days, truck arrivals are surprises almost as often as they are expected, and their contents are almost never known beforehand.

 

True Pat, though I have to say that OL, AskMINI seem to pull from differnt databases. The trucking component is out of BMW/MINI's direct hands but still I believe that they are not the best out there by any measure. Think what could have been achieved if MINI would have used the pointless funds it wasted in the Superbowl commercial to bring this process into the current world. Pretty sad when Walmart (that drives me mad) blows BMW/MINI out of the water for its logistics. I am not blasting BMW/MINI for what they currently have but do believe the process could be MUCH better.

 

If I can order a $15 DVD from Amazon and track every single movement as it is shipped to my home, why should I be satisfied that MINI does a little more than most car companies yet fails at specific points in the process. It is hard to accept with all the available technology at our disposal that a company cannot keep tabs on a $40K vehicle.

 

Says the guy who already has his!

 

Shipping an auto amongst hundreds of others in a barge isn't the same as tossing a DVD in a bag. I realize that many here are able to track the car and ship's every movement, one dude could get the windspeed on the ship and see the car get unloaded via webcam. But most of us can't get that deep into it. Take a deep breath.......

 

No value add to the car, no value add to the sale. Advertising adds sales. Mini hardly spends any advertising compared to other mfg.'s and without that are you going to depend on NAM to drive sales? Ha I doubt it.

I suppose they could have perfect tracking but it would cost a whole lot and add a lot of cost and the consumer will end of paying for it. I think we pay enough. It would be much easier to just get rid of the tracking. Order the car, east coasters you get it in this range of days and west coasters you get it in this range of days. Problem solved.

Hey but I already have my car so what the heck.

 

It's much simpler than you think. I used to do it as part of a job I had years back -- tracking freight on rail, river barges, trucks, you name it.

And I also know from having that job that while you may be able to track everything like crazy, that doesn't actually make any of it move anywhere. You would be amazed at the number of things that can slow down freight... and usually it's related to other freight trying to do the same thing that yours wants to do at the same time. Some of that is bad dispatch, some of that is just coincidence.

AND, I can also tell you that the only thing that will fix a crappy dispatch situation (if that is the case here) would be if BMW has a contractual agreement to meet ETAs and they're not meeting them. They actually don't need our complaints to see that freight isn't arriving on time. If they're not happy with the service they're getting, the hammer will drop.

 

Looks like the production status spreadsheet got wiped out again.

 

Nope, just filtered. I went in and unfiltered it.

 

Arizona truckers must be faster! Our MCS (Nigel), which was on the Asian King along with Jack S, arrived at our North Scottsdale dealership last Thursday. We picked him up on Saturday (10/29) and couldn't be happier. Even got an extra $750 discount for attending the Moter-Tober event which happened to be that day!!!

 

My wife's Coupe' finally arrived at the dealer yesterday and they quickly got it ready for her to take home last night. However, I am still not satisfied in trucking company role. Today's technology makes it too easy to track shipments of all types. A simple barcode scan at specific stages in the process can be accomplished in seconds affording not only the awaiting customer and dealer information on the shipment, but MINI as well. It would not speed up the process, nor would it add any significant time to the process, but it would reduce stress placed on dealerships trying to communicate to customers and would allow customers realistic expectations.

 

Ba humbug, just adds cost and adds zero value to the car!!

 

The bar code you speak of would have to be something on each vehicle's bill of lading, and the scanning you speak of would have to be done at every stop where the truck unloads. I guarantee you that this would end up a disaster in about 5 minutes as bills of lading would be more easily misplaced, left at the wrong drop, etc. Believe me, it's hard enough just to get a trucker to keep track of ONE bill of lading for a bulk haul.

Trucking is a paper world and likely will remain so for quite some time.

 

but you should be able to associate all of the codes for every car on the truck together in a group. So you wouldn't really have to scan every vehicle's paperwork at every step. Just like tracking a ship with you car on it is possible it seems like you could do the same thing with a truck.

I would guess that most people aren't as obsessive about it as the people here are though. :-)

 

Trucking typically isn't that sophisticated, that's just kind of the way things are. That's not to say BMW couldn't seek a contract requiring their trucking companies to track more closely, such as the way you mention. I'm sure the trucking company would be glad to do this so long as BMW required it and they were compensated appropriately for the extra work effort and infrastructure in their contract. But given that BMW has little to gain from something like that (just us!), they're not going toss good profit for the service.

It's a cheap, cheap world...

 

After cooling its tires in Southampton, my car, ordered in late July is about to get on board and head across the pond. ETA at Baltimore is the 15th. Woo Hoo! I might have it to drive for Thanksgiving.

Paul