Brown out Samui

[nikster]

Bought our Fortuner at Nyoman panich near central airport, very dissatisfied with their service.

Any recommendations for alternatives? Surely they're not the only dealer in town?

[harrry]

I have received excelent service at the branch inside the moat at Thapae. I am surprised that you have not. Poor in what respect.

[drtreelove]

I too had a bad experience at NP. Saha Panich on Chotana Rd north of SuperHwy is much better.

[nikster]

I have received excelent service at the branch inside the moat at Thapae. I am surprised that you have not. Poor in what respect.

Well - different dealer, I was talking about NP near Airport Plaza. I think the one inside the moat might also be a NP branch, but maybe the people there are just better.

Poor service - they're just not very responsive. Maybe too many customers - that's what I think. The service center is always busy. I wanted to talk to the manager as I was pretty pissed off they wanted to charge me for replacing a part that they already replaced 2 years ago. I was going to have a word with the manager so they replace it on their own cost because obviously they did a shitty job the first time around - or maybe it's normal for the rear hinge to fail on the Fortuner every 2 years? I was also going to tell them I will buy a new car next year or the year after. Thing is, the manager agreed to talk to me "in 2 hours" I left, came back, I waited around 30 minutes, then left. He just didn't show up at all. That is poor service.

This morning the battery had died - Toyota check up did not catch this in advance so the wife got stuck somewhere out there. Then it took them over 2 hours to arrive there as they had 2 more to "rescue" before us.

So honestly, yes, I have seen worse service, but at the same time, I expect more if I spend 1.5M baht.

[noise]

We bought our Fortuner at the dealer at the Hang Dong road ring road (Big C/Makro) intersection. Extremely happy with the service and the modern facilities; excellent waiting room with good fresh coffee and pastries.

My battery died at around 3 years; luckily it happened at home so I just replaced it myself. But even so, I do not see a 2 hour response time as unreasonable. It would be prohibitively expensive to man and equip for an unknown number of simultaneous breakdowns of even the most basic nature (e.g., battery failures).

[jackr]

I too had a bad experience at NP. Saha Panich on Chotana Rd north of SuperHwy is much better.

I found Saha Panich really off when I was ready to buy so spent my dosh at NP... much nicer all round. Reckon it's like anything and everything here; nothing ever works like clockwork, you either catch them on a good day or, invariably, not.

There's a fairly new Toyota outlet on the Super heading into town a few hundred yards before the (what's the name of that underpass?) Makro intersection. Only a handful of models in the showroom though and not sure if the service centre is set up there, but pretty laid-back. Ask for Paew (nice lady).