OK, I don't know the final chapter of this. I gave my granddaughter a car. It was my wife's car and a great one. That was 2 years ago and it was already 14 years old. It was my wife's VW Eos. Yeah, we spent a bundle on it back in 2007. A pretty white convertible and kind of expensive at the time, maybe $32,000+. So the GD takes it to a dealership (they're all crooks) for an oil change.

Son goes to pick it up and it won't start. Never had a problem before this. They've got to keep it they say. I think son should call the locals and have them charged with car theft. It just won't start. The son isn't in the owners office screaming, his mistake. The dealership is King's in Mason, OH. You just can't let them get away with this kind of shit. Its why they can keep doing it.

He won't answer me yet, or doesn't know. I'm pretty sure I'd get arrested if I drove all the way up there. The owner or manager needs to get involved, but I'm pretty sure the employee's don't want him involved. I've not shot anyone at a dealership, but only because I don't take along a suitable device. If more of them received really painful gunshot injuries. At some point in time they've got to behave. Or learn how dangerous it is to mess with people and their automobiles.

Cars are one of the things American's like. Its really dumb to pull this crap. King's VW at the Fields Ertel road exit on I71. We've learned to never trust them. They're incompetent crooks at best. I bought a Jeep from the Jeep dealership there. Took them/Me 4 trips to the county courthouse to finally get license plates. They're mistakes, compounded. Now this. More to come as the story unfolds.

Over the years I’ve learned to avoid dealerships just like I’ve learned not to shove wasps in my mouth.

Dealerships or small shops, it is getting impossible to get an honest place for service anymore.

They cant be the only game in town. Pay to have it towed to another place. Beats having a stroke or getting a mugshot.

There's got to be a whole lot more to this story .I'm going to wait until you fill in the blanks .

Just go shoot them, that'll fix everything


Why is it not starting?

You are sure it was something they did to the car?

Have you given them a chance to make it right?

No one knows why, and they didn't have time to look at it! Remember it was 3:00 on a Friday. So yeah, I don't take a gun along. Son should have.

If I'm ever on a jury and someone shoots a service manager or dealer manager, the shooter'll get off. Dealers have a duty not to screw something up. If they fail in that duty, they need to die!

Worse, they need to make the "mechanic" work OK to fix it. Just because they want to go home on time doesn't cut it. They took a car in for a short job. An oil change no less. Now they're saying Tuesday. They'd be out of business by then. I have no confidence in Ohio dealers, particularly that one. At the very least they'd have bullet holes all over their showroom.

I like the suggestion of towing it to another dealer.

quote:

Originally posted by gjgalligan:
Dealerships or small shops, it is getting impossible to get an honest place for service anymore.

It is tough. I luckily found an excellent place through word-of-mouth, family owned business. But I drive 45 minutes away for service. But it is worth it.

I’m going to be real unpopular here because I see it from the dealership side.

You’ve got a sixteen year old car. The parts like the starter, switches, relays, all have a finite life. Does it not crank when you turn the key or does it crank but not fire? Two separate types of failure, two diagnostic trees to follow.

Another thing, parts availability. All my dealership experience was in GM and I can tell you that going into a parts department and expecting to find parts on the shelf for a 2007 is going to be a non starter that is IF the parts haven’t been discontinued by now. Today’s inventory controls are pretty strict, if it doesn’t “turn” in “X” amount of time it’s gone and woe to the parts manager that disregards those dollar turns. And in the case of many OEM’s, the manufacturer determines what you WILL stock. And if you disregard those guides anything you have on the shelf that the manufacturer determines you shouldn’t have, you are permanently stuck with it, you can never return,it. So obsolescence on the,shelf can cause a parts manager to be fired, a dealership monetary penalized by that, losing future discounts, gets ugly.

Staying and working on it after hours, sounds good. So, the tech works on it, you need someone from parts to handle those requests. Ok, so you have two persons working. Oh wait, many insurance carriers prohibit one person working in the shop in case of accident or injury, now we have three.

Car is finished, ready to release it to the customer, got to have someone figure out labor time and job operations coded to the order, now you are looking at having the shop foreman or service advisor close out the order and send it to the cashier to be totaled out and accept payment, another person. Now you have five persons involved “staying over” past closing time. At some point your employees are going to say “enough” with staying over multiple hours on multiple occasions.

What happens in the middle of this repair when say two hours into the job you find that there is a part you need and don’t have? Where are you going to get it? Another dealer? How many miles away? Need a parts driver and truck, add another person. Parts store? They like another dealer is probably closed for the day also. So that job now sits for the next day. Again, if they can find parts locally.

Scheduling for Tuesday, techs are generally specialized in their areas. You wouldn’t want a soft trim/squeak/rattle guy try to diagnose a problem outside of his area of expertise, it might take him two or three times longer to find the problem. The tech may have other jobs lined up before yours that have been waiting on the lot before yours came in. Is that fair to make them wait longer?

Usual dealership “day” for a technician or a parts counterman is 9-10 hours excluding lunch. I ought to know, I worked those hours in multiple dealerships over forty seven years. At some point we say “enough”. Ok,so you might think “get someone who will do those hours”. Great, except seasoned persons will take a pass on those so you hire second tier less experienced people. Now your quality of service goes down and at some point once those less experienced start getting better they will probably move on. Similar to the part time job in the powersports industry I quit last year. We “closed” at 7 P.M. but sales was so hungry they would schedule one on ones at closing, pressure the customers to buy motorcycles and all the support departments, service, parts, motor clothes all had to stay and “support”sales.I got fed up after an everyday go home time at least one to three hours after the posted closing. This is after 24 years part time in that particular brand I walked away never to return to,that store. Thirty plus hours in three days, I didn’t sign on for that and didn’t have to take it. As I told management “If I wanted in retirement to work a 40 hour week I’d go back to the car business and make a helluva lot more money than I’m making here” I worked in that business because I liked it, not because I needed to. Literally I could have gone back and tripled my money if I wanted to renter the car dealership world which I didn’t.

I know people get frustrated but threats of violence will get that person escorted out the door with a do not trespass order. And removal of that vehicle by a towing service. And getting angry and yelling at dealership personnel without the threat of violence might get you “ahead” once but probably be told to go elsewhere. I personally fired parts counter customers and refused to deal with them.

I used to “go the extra mile” for customers, stay after closing, meet with them offsite, even took parts to a customer broken down on the road when I was in commercial truck parts because I cared. But we all have our limits.

On the Dixie Highway, at the light before the Richwood Flea Market, Uhaul, turn right. You will be on Frogtown Road. Go 1 1/2 miles to Union Auto Salvage on your right. Turn in and follow the gravel road out between the buildings. There is a auto salvage yard there. A long yellow building with 2 overhead doors is where you are going. The man works 6 days per week in his garage. He is the best I have ever known as a mechanic. You will see many BMWs, Audi, VW, Mercedes, Porches and a mix of other brands. He repairs them all. His name is JR and although he will be grease covered from all manner of auto work, I promise you
rburg, you will like the man from the first hello. He works far cheaper than other mechanics. He has a strong background of work in the UAE on heavy equipments, oil and gas wells, Arabs German cars. He was in charge of 22 mechanics there. One trust worthy and honest fella. Did I mention he is very likeable? If you wish, I can email you his phone number.

I'm on the outside here. Yes, I bought the car for my wife, but its now in my granddaughters hands and son's. They live up in the evil buckeye lands so they picked a VW dealer up by where they live.

Me, I'm banned from driving by both my son and wife. Wife is a lousy driver, but its all I have.

Dealers have a less than honorable reputation. Mostly, they're crooks. We've learned to hate them for their stunts. They complain that we hate them, but they've earned it.

Me, I must sit here and wait. I'll just buy here another car if that is warranted. I like her. She's already engaged. Wasn't my problem.

So now I must wait until the dealer, on his own, decides what is wrong with the car driven to his shop. Then driven inside, then outside without incident.

quote:

Dealers have a less than honorable reputation. Mostly, they're crooks. We've learned to hate them for their stunts. They complain that we hate them, but they've earned it.

I’m not going to argue with that statement,I’ve worked for a couple slimeballs all those years. Imagine going to work,stopping and picking up a newspaper and seeing an front page article about how the state is cracking down on dishonest dealers and seeing the one you work at as the headliner.

Fortunately I was insulated from those games most of the time I was in dealerships. The employees were usually considered “house” deals and didn’t have to put up with shenanigans from the sales departments.

Believe me I understand your frustration with the internal process for getting your grand daughters car into the shop, dispatched and ultimately repaired. But if the dealership that car is like most today all maintenance operations like oil change/lubrication, tire rotations, minor things are all delegated to the lowest training level personnel. Those are exactly the last ones I want to work on my vehicles. I quit going to the local Jeep dealer, apparently 5w-30 on the oil fill cap is a secret code word to use 5w-20 instead then argue with me when in response to the writer telling me “It’s fine” until I told him “Show me the TSB (technical service bulletin) and I’ll go away.”

As a VW owner, rburg, I can say I feel your frustration. I won't hijack your thread with the details, but I've experienced the frustration that comes with an incorrect diagnosis and the ridiculously long wait for parts (that turned out to be unnecessary). I have an issue pending right now that sums up with "bring it next week, we only have two techs right now, might take a while to figure it out."

I'm both enamored with and frustrated at my VW. Member petr knows about this, and has been tremendous help in sorting out some some issues.

I won't trash the dealership or service advisor, however -- they've treated me very well during these events. One particular tech, however, was the root of a **very** expensive service visit, and a metric doodoo-ton of aggravation.

The repeated references to taking a gun to the dealership seem excessive and out of character.

It seems the issue is the car was fine when brought in, but not fine when picked up.

That should have been remedied immediately, post-haste.

With respect to all the other issues regarding staffing hours, tech expertise, parts availability, cashier availability, overtime, tech scheduling, etc—these are distractions from the basic point that a working car was entrusted for basic service and a non-functional car was returned to the customer after service. Period; end of story.

quote:

a working car was entrusted for basic service and a non-functional car was returned to the customer after service. Period; end of story.

Sounds to me like that part hasn't even happened yet, this is a "hostage" situation.

Update: Son stopped by this morning and was told the fuel pump was bad and would cost $640 to fix! OK, and none were available in town and would take 4 full days to acquire. Of course no one was working because its Saturday. Well, except for the sales crooks.

I remember when it used to be fun to go to a dealership. Now its just a visit to a bunch of crooks.

Just tell them to put the fuse back in and let your son go home.

So the car started to drive it there and park it. Then the car started by the tech to drive into the bay for an oil change and then the car started to drive out of the bay ans moved back to the parking lot. And then magically the fuel pump crapped out while in the dealer parking lot ? I guess that happens…

quote:

Originally posted by ElToro:
So the car started to drive it there and park it. Then the car started by the tech to drive into the bay for an oil change and then the car started to drive out of the bay ans moved back to the parking lot. And then magically the fuel pump crapped out while in the dealer parking lot ? I guess that happens…

Had something similar happen on my HD, it was in an independent shop, I was actually doing some of the work, bike ran find on the way in and wouldn't start when we were done.

Diagnosis, coil went bad, even though it ran fine on the way down, just sitting in the bay it crapped out, you do wonder how the heck crap like that happens but it does...

It's unlikely that someone doing an oil change caused the FP to fail, in fact it failing while they were there may end up being a good thing vs her being on the side of I71 at rush hour for a few hours waiting on a tow

I found a good independent shop to work on Debs Porsche, less expensive on oil changes and services than the dealer and a good rep. Should check around and find a good local German based vehicle shop, VW, Porsche, Audi.