Hello my first post on this forum. I own from new a 2018 DS3 Connected Chic 1.2 Auto in Red.
This car is my daily runabout and apart from a crude ride and iffy trim quality leadi g it to rattle like a bag of tools, its the perfect size, and has all the convenience features to make it ideal to use for local journeys and when parki g places are difficult to find.
Despite its age i continue to use my local and only DS agent for aftersales.
However despite being promoted aa a premium brand, the aftersales is decidedly miserable!
Whilst i accept my car is just a restyled old model Citroƫn C3, Stellantis continue to say this is a premium brand with all the benefits such as collection and delivery.
Probably the easiest way to explain my usual annual experience of arranging a Service is to ācopy and pasteā a comment i left on the Autocar site when they published an article on the DS9 replacement.
Whilst a bit long i would welcome anybody elses comments.
As an owner for the past six years of a DS3 (the CitroĆ«n C3 based model), the problem for the brand isnāt so much the cars, withe the current range being a stylish alternative to the likes of Audi, but the utterly lacklustre approach to aftersales. Apart from a few staff members who try to offer a premium product service, for the most part booking something as simple as an annual service is a miserable experience.
Just yesterday I tried to book my car into my local Stellantis DS dealer- for London we are down to a single dealer in West London, and speaking to the central booking line which also covers Peugeot and CitroĆ«n, the experience was absolutely dreadful! Owing to a broken leg it may be that I would need my car collected and delivered back for its annual service and MOT, a service which should be fairly normal with a āpremium brandā wax met with what i can only describe as a ācanāt be bothered, couldnāt care lessā attitude by the agent. Maybe this would be fine for the owner of a small used six year old CitroĆ«n or Peugeot customer, but was a million miles.from an Audi BMW or Mercedes customer. As for the supposed collection and delivery service available to DS customers, there was absolutely no chance, it simply didnāt exist! In the hope of recovering from my injury, and not needing the work carried out till mid March, I asked about a courtesy car - the responce from the utterly disinterested agent was - 22 April (long after the MOT had expired)!
Maybe given my car is just a CitroĆ«n C3 restyled and rebadged i shouldnāt be surprised, but if i were a customer of a more expensive current model, let alone a DS9, i would be feeling pretty sick at plowing that much money into the brand.
For context, my DS3 is my everyday runabout, and i also own a premium brand car. I have been a Jaguar customer for twenty years, and then a Maserati customer for seven years; in mid '22 I switched to an EV from the new to the UK Genesis marque, in the shape of their Electrified G80 (I have tosay best car Iāve owned, and at around Ā£80k some 10 grand less than the equivalent rival the Mercedes EQE), and the standard of aftersales service is the best I have ever received, with the service staff all keen to help resolve any issues, in fact the polar opposite to the agent I spoke to yesterday.
Until Stellantis can get the quality of customer facing staff up to something approaching its rivals, no one will want to buy any of their cars, or if they do bitterly regret the decision!