EX90 MY26 - 5000 km of love and drama
I want to be upfront: the car itself is amazing, maybe the best I've ever owned. I previously had an XC90, a good car on an old platform with great design, but I dealt with plenty of issues through the service department, mostly related to the driving experience.
This post is about the EX90 story. Not about the car, but about how consistently reactive and unprepared the dealer and service have been at every single step.
I placed the order in March 2026 and got a good discount despite it being a MY26. The plan was to move to the new platform; with our family expanding to two kids, we needed a car for mixed city and highway driving.
The car arrived in April, though the delivery date kept shifting week to week with no clear tracking from the dealer. I was notified it had arrived just before Easter, while I was preparing to return my XC90 under a buy-back deal. I expected to pick it up on the agreed date, but instead the real story began.
The car sat on the lot for a week and a half before PDI even started. Then I was told Volvo had blocked the car because the GHCA needed to be replaced, adding another week's delay. My reaction to that part was actually positive; better to catch it before delivery than after. A proactive move from Volvo, but it also meant the dealer had even more time to prepare the car properly, time they didn't use.
By the end of April I was told the car was ready. That's when the pattern started: every step of this story is the same issue repeating, a dealer and service team that reacts to problems instead of preventing them.
Pickup day: a car nobody actually checked
I signed the papers, but based on past experience with this dealer (the only Volvo dealer in Bulgaria, based in Sofia), I did a basic inspection myself: paint, bodywork, interior. I found heavy swirl marks across an entire panel, unacceptable on a brand-new car, marks on the piano black trim, small paint scratches, and a dent in the front decorative panel.
None of this had been caught by anyone at the dealership, despite having had the car on their lot for weeks, including the extra week from the GHCA delay. This wasn't bad luck, it was nobody doing the basic quality check that's supposed to happen before a customer sees the car. I noted everything on the handover paperwork.
The next day I noticed a punctured passenger seat. Brand new car, and still nobody had looked closely enough to catch it before handover.
I wasn't frustrated by the issues themselves, things happen. I was frustrated that no basic check had been done at all, at any of the several points where it could have been. Volvo markets itself as a luxury brand; I expect the service to match that.
The repair saga: no plan, ever
The dealer's response was essentially: we'll order the parts, and you'll need to drive the car to a paint shop. No delivery timeline for the parts, no coordinated plan. I was left to organize everything myself.
While waiting, a knocking noise appeared, apparently from the suspension, and the door trim strips started rubbing and peeling against the rear door. Another issue, another vague "we'll deal with it," with no plan attached. I had to push for escalation to the branch manager myself just to get things organized in one visit instead of being called in piecemeal for every part.
The suspected cause of the knocking was the shock absorber, "suspected," not confirmed with any diagnostic equipment, which isn't what I'd expect from a Volvo service center working on a car this new.
Three weeks ago I was told the parts had arrived and booked the car in for August 14th, confirmed as a one-day job: shock absorber, trim strips, seat, and decorative panel. I planned my whole day around that confirmation and waited at the showroom.
Two hours in, nothing had moved. At 1PM, with the shop closing at 6PM, a mechanic told me they wouldn't finish that day after all, despite confirming twice beforehand that they would. Then the branch manager tried to blame me for arriving an hour late, which was false and easily verifiable via the entry ticket. Instead of checking the facts, the first instinct was to find someone else to blame.
As compensation I was offered a loaner car, initially a V60 (with a newborn and a toddler, not exactly practical), later upgraded to an ES90 after pushback.
The final act: still nobody double-checking anything
Two business days later I got the call: the car's ready. Except the shock absorber they installed wasn't the correct part, even though the box was labeled correctly. They'd had three weeks since confirming the booking to check that the parts on order were the right ones, and simply never did.
I let it go and picked up the car. That night, in my garage, I noticed the new decorative panel's backlight wasn't working: the LED was blinking, not lighting properly. Something I couldn't catch at pickup because it was too bright outside, and something a proper handover check should have caught regardless.
Back to the service the next day. Confirmed: defective LED, after 8 km of driving. Either it was never checked before handover, or something went wrong during assembly and nobody verified the work afterward.
So that's where things stand, waiting on the LED and the correctly matched shock absorber, and honestly bracing for whatever comes next.
The takeaway
The car itself is genuinely great. But at every stage, from PDI to handover to every single repair, the dealer and service have been reactive instead of proactive, catching nothing on their own and only fixing what I personally found and pushed for. Every visit wasn't just a visit, it was a half or full day taken out of my life, with no sign anyone on their side saw it that way. That's not what I expect from an official Volvo dealer, and it's certainly not what "premium" is supposed to mean.
https://reddit.com/link/1vsczdc/video/i260ryg5m9kh1/player
