Anyone else been stuck in Quality Check for a week or more?

I got this back from using their Contact Us form on miniusa.com a few days ago.

"Your 2023 MINI Cooper SE Hardtop 2 Door finished assembly/quality check May 17, 2022. It was estimated to be produced May 17, 2022, but it has not yet marked as such in our tracking system. Please note, all dates are estimates and subject to change. Once it is produced, new estimated dates will be generated."

It's interesting they said it finished assembly/quality check, not that it's in quality check.

In other words, no change, still hopeful that the car is actually on a ship but it's a very slight chance that's the case. Should I order another one and see which gets here first?!?! lol

 

huh - not quite what i expected….what was the projected production date? Also seems like they gloss over the larger question around it being in limbo.

 

so - i couldn’t stand it and called ask mini again. this time, the agent was super helpful and gave some additional insight - basically he said that my car had passed final assembly and qc and they are waiting to assign it to a carrier. he was curious why the status had not been updated but said he was looking at the modification dates and could see that it was completed and ready to go. I asked the most recent modification date and he said it was 6/1! wish i had paid attention when he gave me his name. i told him there is a growing group of us….

 

you should call too!

 

2023 Mini Cooper SE

TIMELINE

Mini Ordered 3/5/2022
Enters Production Que 4/27/2022
Exterior Begins 5/12/2022
Paint Begins 5/13/2022
Enters Assembly Line 5/13/2022
Assembly in Progress 5/14/2022
Quality Check 5/16/2022
Final Assembly
Ready for Transport
Carrier Assignment
Dispatched from Factory
At Port
In Transit
At Dealership
Vehicle Delivered

I've been stuck "Quality Check" for 24 days now.

 

How many people would a US Sales Operations Specialist have to go through to get to one of the many people at the factory who knows which parts are causing the QC parking lots to fill up? If it's something basic like a wiring harness or a traction motor, there's no way they could build the car and put it in a parking lot. What could it be? What could it be?

The obvious reason to keep this information secret is if MINI is not following the moral first-in-first-out imperative. If they're getting a batch of the missing parts in and putting them in cars still on the assembly line instead of in cars populating the QC parking lot, they would not want impatient customers to know about that scandal.

So the question is: What is different between the MINIs leaving for Southampton and the MINIs languishing in the QC parking lot? OK, there's a second question: Are all the MINIs in the QC parking lot SEs?

 

Yeah, great questions. I've dug through the tracking spreadsheet way too much and don't see a common identifier. Honestly, there aren't that many differences between the trim levels and interiors. Mine is a Sig+ BRG with tentacle black and black cloth/leatherette interior, all pretty common configs and cars before/after mine have moved on.

 

They are absolutely doing that if they don't have enough components for both. The highest priority is always going to be keeping the line moving and preventing additional cars from ending up in QC hold.

The delay could also be labor. They won't be pulling anyone from the production line to rework these cars so maybe they're stocking the missing components and waiting until there's a large enough batch to pause production and rework all the QC cars at once.

 

I just called ASK MINI, got a really nice guy who dug as much as he can, found nothing, stuck in Quality Check since 5/17, last modified date on my record is also 5/17.

At this point, I'm giving up trying to get more info. It will happen when it happens. I don't need the car, I have a Nissan LEAF but am looking forward to the Mini big time for the driving experience. My son gets the LEAF whenever he gets his license so he can drive himself to high school - we've told him if he doesn't get his license, he's walking the 1.5 miles, lol, and we're serious.

 

I’ve been driving a 2010 Toyota Yaris (that’s used to be my parents and my sister didn’t need anymore) since my oldest got their license last year and I let them take my Legacy. The Yaris was free, and it runs (sometimes with an array of warning lights), so every day the MINI doesn’t show up is a day without a car payment.

I’ve decided that my new game will be seeing if my car shows up on the Google Maps satellite image of the Oxford MINI plant before it gets out of QC!

 

Lol fantastic! I’ve found my virtual sibling! [1994 Crapolla with a broken cassette radio, 3-speed auto, and wind-up windows]

 

Kind of the same here. We haven't had a financed car since 2007, just been driving ~$10-11,000 cars with no payments until 2 months ago when we replaced my wife's Prius V with a new Tucson hybrid - 0% interest though . We sold her Prius V for $500 over what we paid for it 3 years ago, mind boggling, and could have gotten more had we waiting probably.

My 2015 Leaf I paid $11,000 for 2.5 years ago, it replaced my totaled 2011 Leaf which I paid $10,500 for 2 years before that.

The Mini is my 'more range' city car that's going to be tons of fun to drive. I did want a Mach-E for a while, but after seeing what Sandy Munro had to say about the cooling mess under the hood, that feeling went away. The BMW i3 driveline is proven to be good, so I'm totally happy with what I'm getting.

EVENTUALLY

 

Yeah, we've got a 2019 Odyssey to move the 4 kids about, the 2015 Legacy, which I felt better putting my kid behind the wheel of than a beater, and the Yaris. When the warning lights started to become more persistent in March I figured it was time to order something, and I originally put an order in for the new Civic Si (one last MT), but that wasn't going to come until August (LOL) and I looked at my daily milage on Google Maps and decided that 110 was enough range for me, and pulled the trigger on the MINI.