Well 6 legally they can only charge you what you authorized them to spend, go over the papers you singed, they can not just tell you it's done and this is what you owe unless you singed on the line that says " I do not request an estimate" - Redline (service advisor for a reputable car dealer)

This post has been edited by redline: 09/27/07 7:11pm

I know a good one !! LOL

Lady calls and says car is loud and dragging something . Me and that other fella drive to her place and I find exhaust hanging . She tells us to fix it. I crawl under vehicle, tie it up , in the rain and drive it back to shop (For Free). Call her with estimate . She agrees and I performed the repaires . Me and that other fella, drive the vehicle back to her (For Free) with a detailed receipt. Made her day! Never had to go anywhere , no towing charges and no hidden costs. She only comes to us now. We even did this for a customer that lives 36 mile away from the dealership. I would say this one went the extra mile.



-Gereau

These losers at my dealership fight me over every warrantee item. I always win and they have to eat it. Takes a little yelling. $28,000 for my jeep, nothing better be going wrong until I pay it off.

Also, order the right parts buddy. How hard is that? You mess it up evry time. "Oh they sent us the wrong part"
Bullcrap.

I'm sure Overheated is a fine service manager.
I would drive to Green Bay, but I would need service by the time I got back.

CAR TROUBLE:

A blonde pushes her BMW into a gas station. She tells the
mechanic it died.

After he works on it for a few minutes, it is idling smoothly.
She says, "What's the story?"

He replies, "Just crap in the carburetor."
She asks, "How often do I have to do that?"

INCREDIBLE! If it wasn't you saying this I would not believe it! Nicely done!



I must say that there are an aweful lot of private repair shops that are extremely dishonest. It is just soooooo easy to take advantage of people who know nothing about cars.



I don't change my own oil much anymore. I now take it to a Jiffy Lube or something similar. Every single time they try to sell me an air filter when they know it is perfectly good and still looks new! I really feel bad for the ederly and people who don't know, and just pay out extreme amounts of money for nothing.

LOL Capt. Andtennille, I just got that joke in an email a few days ago...lmao. Maybe I should drive to Green Bay to, after talking to Jack last night ... I was suprised to learn quite a bit about how things work. I have to admit, for the longest time I thought the world of this dealership. I even brought several friends to them to buy cars. I have been dealing with them for years and this is the first time that I've ever had this problem. One thing that I would like to know is why this car dealership doubles the price of the parts for the car. Before going else where, I called the parts department and asked them the price for a roter, it was $138.00 each and $80.00 for pads. Dave called NAPA and got the roters for $62.00 each and the pads for $42.00. This makes a savings of over $200.00... taking into account taxes. I guess it would save over $300.00 with Dave doing the work (hopefully he doesn't charge me)....LOL Please don't take offense if you work at a car dealership, I am sure that you can understand why I was not a happy camper. A lot of my friends own dealerships, one of my good friends just lost a dealership last year. I guess hard time have hit Ontario and money is tight.
Gereau, we need more good people like you!!!!

6, to quickly answer your question and not get into pricing martix and other blah blah.... the parts that i and other dealerships sell to the customer are OE. the parts that customers purchase at NAPA are what are refered to as aftermarket. the diference is that factory parts are designed by the manufature in conjucntion with the vendor who supplies them and then those parts are installed on new cars in the factories and sold through the dealer groups. the parts "aftermarket" at NAPA are not from the original factory supplying vendor but made by a company who copies the design and then sells them to the aftermarket companies at a greatly reduced cost due to very little investment in their design.

we have an electronics aftermarket company in our area who will buy as many as 20 of each electrical component from us, dissassemble, investigate it's operation, and then manufacture that part for the aftermarket marketplace. these may or may not be as good as the OE parts. i say not - first hand experience.

the cost paid by the dealerships for the OE parts that we are required to sell to the public often times cost us more then the retail price of the aftermarket parts through NAPA....

i could go on for days on this this topic but won't : ) i will say this though. calendar year 2006 my dealership saw fit to cover the replacement costs of 106 transmissions that had in each case over 100,000 miles that the owners had no reason to expect any assistance at an average cost of 2,500 USD. there are dealerships out there (and perhaps many of them) that have poor customer handling skillz, bad policies, and are just bad places to do business with but, there are others out there that strive to the umteenth degree to satisfy everyone who walks through their door. the rub comes when people generalize that my industry is a bunch of crooks, rip-of artists, and the like. it is NOT so.

peace

jack

Don't get overheated Overheated. We're just venting a bit. LoL!
I have had positive experiences at dealers also. But there's no fun in those stories!

I actually took my Dodge Charger to the dealer I bought the car from yesterday. Told the guy that the parking brake release handle fell off of the cable. (I had to crawl under the dash and use some vice grips to release the brake).
I asked him to put the handle back on. He said I had 39,000 miles and it's past it's 36,000 warrantee. So I left. I wish I lived near Gereau's dealership! Bet he would have fixed me right up, no charge. I won't be buying my next car at that dealer.

This post has been edited by Cpt. Snot Rocket: 09/28/07 9:32am

I take my words back, it's not all car dealerships... just mine and on one occassion or maybe two. A lot of my friends work or own dealerships... sometimes you just feel you got the short end of the stick as I did yesterday.

The one thing I can say it that dealerships warranty the parts better than anyone else. Any suggestions for a car CD player that reads--> CD error FO. I've googled it and it looks like there have been several G35's that have this problem. Kind of wish I bought a Honda:) I'm thinking a nice S2000 would be sweet!

So guys, to solve your problems with dealerships is easy. Just buy a honda and move to Green Bay.

I've had my share of horror stories with car repairs, that's for sure. But I've also had some great things happen too.

When I drove a really old car back in my lean days, I had this great mechanic who owned/operated A+ Automotive here in Austin. He knew I didn't have much money, so he would jury-rig a broken part to get me back on the road, search junkyards for parts, and even gave me a lift home when I had to drop my car off. As my income improved, I still went to him, and he always gave me great service and prices.

Then I bought a new Saturn. Twice I had to call them to help, and they came right away. They never charged me for warranty parts or work, and gave me a fee rental car when they had to keep the car overnight. I'll definitely be buying my next new car from them.

dont ever and i repeat,dont ever buy a volkswagon! everything on the car will fall off of it except the actual engine.

Hey, with that attitude, you will probably die of old age.

Great news, I got new roters and brake pads for under $200.00. Bought the parts through a private company and installed by Dave and my Dad. Total cost at dealership would have been 640.20 with tax. All it cost me was under $200 for parts and dinner:) Pretty good return I must say!!

well, from my time working in the shop, sometimes the customers are just assholes, little example.
Had a guy come in bitching his car wont start, "all hell is breaking loose", is how he put it. So, i get to work on it, hooking it up to the computer, doing test on it like mad, probably for about 3 days. We'll, to make a funny story short, me and the guys had trouble finding out what the problem was for just about a week. the whole while, this guy would keep calling us every hour, every day, and stop by twice a day to yell at us. For some reason, i just said to my self, "self, this guy is a big dick", so i decided to take a quick look in the gas tank, dropped it down to find so much sugar, i couldn't believe it. I guess i wasn't the only one who thought he was a jerk, and he still didn't like the price, after have to re due all gas lines and injectors, but it was funny.