Seeking help with rather awkward situation

Today I found myself in a rather awkward situation and would like to share that with you, hoping some of you can help me on this.

First of all, let me say that I'm in Bangkok, Thailand, where Porsches are less common on the streets. Now, to get the car I want, I had no choice but to place an order for a brand new 911. In August, I placed an order on the new Carrera S (977 MkII) with a few options. One of them is a customization of the interior where I specified red stitching on black leather interior.

Now, when the deal was about to close, I'd requested some pricing details of this customization through my sales agent. She returned with a few items, each with its own pricing such as seats XXXXB, dashboard upper XXXXB, etc. I chose all of the items she presented and asked to be sure that all the interior stitching are red. I got a verbal confirmation as 'yes.'

Another option I specified was "carbon interior package" which includes shiftknob, handbrake lever, and console trims (cup holder cover, etc.).

I also specified the wheels be painted red. My agent said that it would be cheaper to paint them here locally as our OPC has a built-in paint shop.

Well, today I went to see the car just to be sure there was no surprises before my planned collection day (this Saturday). Unfortunately I was greeted with unpleasant surprises.

1) The red stitching covers just the seats (chosen), upper door trim (chosen) but not the lower part where the arm rests, and upper dashboard. Now, that leaves lower dash (by the PCB), door arm rests, rear panel, and shift boot with gray stitching! WTF? These options were never presented to me even though I'd asked to be sure that the entire interior stitching would be red!!!

2) The car came with carbon fiber steering wheel, carbon shiftknob, carbon handbrake lever. Period. The dash trim (cup holder cover) is in plain silver color. So where's my regular contoured steering wheel? WTF - again?

3) The red wheels were painted but not without problems.
- 3a) The rims (edges) were not masked (or left unpainted) as agreed, so they whole wheel is red.
- 3b) The balancing weights are RED! This means that they did NOT rebalance the wheels after repainting! WTF - for the 3rd time!

A Porsche here costs an arm and a leg (and some more) here in Thailand. Here are my questions:


A) What have your experience been with Porsche customization?

B) More importantly, what can I do to resolve this as smoothly as possible?

C) I'm not sure our OPC is capable, is it possible for me to contact customer service in Germany directly?

Thank you in advance for any advice you may have.

Cheers,

Wisrute

PS: Pic of the car attached.

Here's a picture I took today.

nice car, 996 RS look!

Sounds to me that your OPC is incompetent, I would certainly ask them to rectify all the problems or you will complain to the factory, painting the wheels with the weights on is unacceptable.

poon said:

nice car, 996 RS look!

Sounds to me that your OPC is incompetent, I would certainly ask them to rectify all the problems or you will complain to the factory, painting the wheels with the weights on is unacceptable.

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Thanks, Poon. How might I contact the factory, if necessary?

Before you contact the factory, does this not come down to a more basic issue of contract law? You ordered something to a specific specification and it has not been supplied. Therefore you should be entitled to reject it as not suitable. What is the situation regarding payment as well? Is it all paid for or is there a balance to pay on collection? if the latter, hold the payment back until the position is remedied.

As far as the deviated stitching goes its a nightmare...
I know too many people who have ordered the stitching only to find a certain code has been missed and standard stitching is in place at certain parts.
Not an uncommon problem, who fault yours or the dealer ?

I've heard of the OPC not ordering the red wheels and having them done themselves in order to make a bit more profit from the sale.

Carbon fibre options again, its annoying that Porsche don't do a code that's widely available for full carbon or full deviated stitching..
They do in fact have one for the full coloured stitching, but guess the OPC doesn't make as much profit from the one code.

garyw

Gorgeous car :thumbs:

As said, if it's not what you signed for, you can reject the car. Hopefully your OPC can show some sense and try to make up for the errors...

Ghost said:

Before you contact the factory, does this not come down to a more basic issue of contract law? You ordered something to a specific specification and it has not been supplied. Therefore you should be entitled to reject it as not suitable. What is the situation regarding payment as well? Is it all paid for or is there a balance to pay on collection? if the latter, hold the payment back until the position is remedied.

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Ghost, I'm not putting much hope on the contract law here. Obviously they (OPC) did not deliver in this case. I've paid deposit (just under 10% of total value), and I may go as far as giving it up and ordering a new car if OPC's behavior becomes a pain in the neck. That will leave them with a very difficult-to-sell 997 with a manual transmission (no rear wiper, no "Bose stereo"), a spec that most Thai Porsche owners don't like.

Thanks for your reply.

:wink:

garyw said:

As far as the deviated stitching goes its a nightmare...
I know too many people who have ordered the stitching only to find a certain code has been missed and standard stitching is in place at certain parts.
Not an uncommon problem, who fault yours or the dealer ?

I've heard of the OPC not ordering the red wheels and having them done themselves in order to make a bit more profit from the sale.

Carbon fibre options again, its annoying that Porsche don't do a code that's widely available for full carbon or full deviated stitching..
They do in fact have one for the full coloured stitching, but guess the OPC doesn't make as much profit from the one code.

garyw

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Garyw, thank you for the insights, especially about the stitching. I'm surprised to learn that the problem is more common than I thought. I don't know whose fault it is, but certainly I wasn't informed about the 'full colored stitching' option. Question is, how will OPC's manager react to this. We'll know soon.

The carbon fiber issue, they do have a code for this package which states very clearly where the CF trims are. There are two possibilities in this case: 1) OPC's fault - putting wrong codes, 2) Porsche factory's fault - unlikely.

It is sad that if the OPC is trying every little trick to make profits from these options. I'm sure they're well aware now that it's probably not worth doing it.

As I said above, if they're being difficult. I will leave them with a car they will find rather difficult to sell.

Might you be able to live with the mis-match in the stitching? If so, then I would have thought the rest could be fitted by the OPC themselves if they ordered in the correct parts.

I am guessing you have the original paperwork with your ticked option boxes at hand? If so, you can argue the OPC is supplying you with a car that you didn't order - same argument as the one Ghost put forward above.

~ Maxie :?:

In the UK a purchaser would have the right to reject the car, giving the seller a reasonable period of time to rectify the error. I suspect that one would need paperwork to support an argument that the car as supplied is incorrect as this is not a mechanical failure. A rejection may be harder to justify if the order is based on a discussion but there may be a duty of care on the dealer where one is dealing with a fairly complicated choice of options.

How this works in Thailand is another issue but wouldn't the starting point be to complain to the dealer principal listing the points with which you are unahppy. Write them down and get a legal representative to confirm that unless they are corrected to your satisfaction, you will be rejecting the car, assuming that is posible under local laws.

Maxie Islam said:

Might you be able to live with the mis-match in the stitching? If so, then I would have thought the rest could be fitted by the OPC themselves if they ordered in the correct parts.

I am guessing you have the original paperwork with your ticked option boxes at hand? If so, you can argue the OPC is supplying you with a car that you didn't order - same argument as the one Ghost put forward above.

~ Maxie :?:

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Thanks Maxie, I can 'probably' live with the mismatch stitching, given some kind of compensation. The rest of the problems must be corrected or I'd reject the car.

The problem here is that there options were selected by ticking the soft file. Plus, there wasn't any customization form, but only paperwork stating the 3 points for red stitching.

I've been told recently from a fellow Porsche owner who has a few Porsches. He said that most (if not all) OPC are not properly equipped with customization process. The best way, he said, is to visit the factory and customize the car there. That's rather obvious to me now.

I'm going to speak to OPC again in a day or two. Will see what else they have to offer. Thanks again for your input.

Tiptop Topcat said:

In the UK a purchaser would have the right to reject the car, giving the seller a reasonable period of time to rectify the error. I suspect that one would need paperwork to support an argument that the car as supplied is incorrect as this is not a mechanical failure. A rejection may be harder to justify if the order is based on a discussion but there may be a duty of care on the dealer where one is dealing with a fairly complicated choice of options.

How this works in Thailand is another issue but wouldn't the starting point be to complain to the dealer principal listing the points with which you are unahppy. Write them down and get a legal representative to confirm that unless they are corrected to your satisfaction, you will be rejecting the car, assuming that is posible under local laws.

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Anthony, thank you for your reply. I thought about doing this the hard way, but then I'd rather give them a chance to rectify this first. Perhaps they can come up with something that satisfy me. After all, this is my 1st Porsche, and I'd rather keep the buying experience a pleasant one, well, as much as possible anyway. :mrgreen:

The laws here (consumer protection, etc) can be unreliable unless one take things to the extreme. Few years ago, an unhappy Honda CR-V owner smashed her car in front of the Press, and that really woke up the bosses at Honda to replace her defective car!

I'll speak to OPC soon. Will let you guys know how things work out,... or not!

Has to be said, that's a very fine looking 997!

Back to your problem, I'm sure the dealer will want to keep good relations with you. Clearly state your problems, and ask what they are going to do to sort it out. The sales man must remember what you asked for.

It's possible that the stitching could be sorted out by a trimmer, and as said above, the correct carbon parts could be retrofitted.

On the bright side, you've presumably not been charged as much as you might have, and the labour may be cheaper in Thailand than Deutschland!

Robertb said:

Has to be said, that's a very fine looking 997!

Back to your problem, I'm sure the dealer will want to keep good relations with you. Clearly state your problems, and ask what they are going to do to sort it out. The sales man must remember what you asked for.

It's possible that the stitching could be sorted out by a trimmer, and as said above, the correct carbon parts could be retrofitted.

On the bright side, you've presumably not been charged as much as you might have, and the labour may be cheaper in Thailand than Deutschland!

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Thank you, Robertb. That's what I'm going to do and see how OPC can rectify this as much as possible. While the labor here is less expensive, the quality of the work may be lower also.

Wisrute