Sid the Saboteur

A couple of months ago my Company very kindly bought me a brand spanking new 525i Sports Edition BMW. Very nice I hear you say but imagine my consternation when the thing started to go wrong not more than 3 months after having driven it out of the showroom. At this point I know that my beloved Grandad will be looking down from above somewhere and chuckling (he was a dedicated Mercedes man).

Anyway, I digress, the electronics started pinging out no end of worrying alerts and fault alarms. I rapidly took it into the local dealer and they said "No problem, we'll reinstall the software and it'll be right as rain in a couple of days."

"Right as Rain", now that's a strange expression! As it happened it didn't rain but it poured - within 48 hours of having the car back not only did I have the same warnings flashing on again but worse "COMPLETE SYSTEMS FAILURE" was the message - straight back to the dealers.

The next day they called me up and said they had some good news, some not quite so good news and some downright unpleasant news. First of all they'd located the problem (good news), it was caused by short circuiting in the main computer control box located directly under the GPS DVD (not quite so good news), the short circuiting was caused by coins having been inserted into the GPS DVD player and it was going to cost me RM4,000 (US$1200) (downright unpleasant news) - "By the way Mr. Cross, do you have small children?"

How dare they accuse my Seb and Sid! I explained that they couldn't possibly have done it as they're not allowed in the car. I didn't do it, Shilpa didn't do it, the maids didn't do it so I've no idea how it could have happened. This went around for a couple of days and in the end, after having to be quite insistent on my part, while at the same time defending Sid and Seb's honour, I spoke to the After Sales Service Manager and he very kindly agreed to put in a claim under goodwill to BMW Malaysia. To their great credit they came back with the green light and they're delivering the car back to me today without charge. Well done BMW - you continue to impress me.

As for Sid and Seb, Seb is insistent that he didn't do it and Sid is equally passionate the Seb didn't do it.!!!! Mmmmmm!