Dealerships Suck II
This is a continuation of my experience with Park Place Motor Cars - Bedford. And if the last rant seemed questionable, this one is surely not.
As I mentioned in the last post, I took my car in for service to prepare for a road trip for my Grandmother’s funeral. Over and above the regular service and the rough idle condition, the purpose of the visit was to ensure the car was ready for a road trip. And as mentioned in the last post, regular service plus the diagnosis of a rough idle condition and the subsequent replacement of spark plugs cost me $580+.
On my way back from San Antonio, my car suddenly lost power when I would accelerate aggressively. I could gradually increase speed, but I had no agility on the highway. And so I limped home for the last hour — carefully planning my lane changes.
As you might imagine, I was frustrated and questioning where my money had gone the previous Friday when I had someone “look” at my car.
So I took the car in the next day (Friday). I received no phone call until placing a call late in the afternoon on Friday. These guys just don’t believe in proactive customer communication, so it leaves you wondering what’s going on. When I called, I was told that there was no news yet, but that the service advisor would go research. And so he did. He called back to say that the mass airflow needed replacement at some $700. Grudgingly, I approved.
Fifteen minutes later, I received a phone from the same service advisor saying that the technician had found oil where oil wasn’t supposed to be while replacing the sensor. And because of that and because it was late on Friday, they would have to hold the car over the weekend. There was nothing I could do, so I allowed it.
As an aside, shouldn’t they have known about the oil prior to the first call? My theory is that these technicians just hook the car up to a computer now and get a diagnosis and do less visual inspection than they used to. If he had bothered to visually inspect the part, he would have discovered the oil.
Monday arrives and I get no phone call. I do not call them out of principle.
Tuesday arrives and I do not get a phone call once again. But this time, I call at 4:30 or so. Apparently, they had switched me back to a different service advisor and I was advised he would call after getting off the phone. After 45 minutes, I called him and got his voice mail. I received no phone call the rest of the day. So to summarize, my car has been in the shop now 5 days and I haven’t officially approved any work.
On Wednesday, I call the Service Manager and recount my story and my frustrations. He gets to the bottom of it and by mid-morning my car has been diagnosed. It apparently needs $2300 worth of service!! Apparently, their opinion was that one part went bad and oiled up lots of neighboring parts. So they wanted to replaces $1000 worth or parts and install them for $1100 in labor (tax was extra).
At that point, I considered the inflated prices of my previous experience and told them that I would call back to approve the work. In the meantime, I called two import car service places. In both cases, I was told that I could save money on parts and on labor. The labor rate was $80 versus $125. And it appeared that these technicians were certified as well.
So I called the dealership and had them reconstruct the car. They did. Although when I picked it up, the check engine light was on. I had been told they would give me the car back in the same shape it was in when I dropped it off. It did not have the check engine light on. So after 20 minutes of arguing with the service advisor, he finally agreed to clear it. After doing so, he wished me luck and I was on my way.
The import service shop got the car and turned it around within 24 hours, placing proactive calls to tell me the status, and did so for $400. My car is running fine and I save $1900.
Moral of the story: let dealerships do warranty work, but when your warranty expires, go somewhere else. Its clear why at Park Place you are able to drive a free loan car Mercedes. People like me are paying for them every day!
So in closing, I’m trying to figure out who to contact to register my complaint. I’m thinking about writing Mercedes a letter and copying the Better Business Bureau and perhaps the local TV stations.