A friend of mine takes her Elantra to the Hyundai dealership for an oil change at 8 am. The service writer calls her at work and leaves a message on her voicemail recommending $2,500 worth of preventative maintenance. Before calling them back, she called me for advise. I said she would be better off taking the car to an independent shop or waiting till I have some extra time.
She calls the shop back and gets the service department voicemail. At 3:00 the service writer calls back, and she told them that she only needed the oil changed at this time. The service writer responds by yelling at her and telling her it is too late, the shop already has the timing belt off and they are halfway done with the job. He proceeds to scream and berate her till the service manager is called. They agree to put the old belt back in and waive the charges. 5:00 rolls around, the car is apart, the oil is unchanged, and everybody goes home and her car is locked inside the shop.
I already knew that the Grayson family owned dealerships employed a bunch of E36 M3heads, but this takes them to a whole new level.
If they don't return her car tomorrow, should she send a rollback and a law enforcement official or take a different approach?
Woody
MegaDork
11/30/12 9:48 p.m.
Contact the local news station. They love E36 M3 like this.
Woody wrote:
Contact the local news station. They love E36 M3 like this.
This.
Pretty sure its stupid illegal to do work like that without prior authorization. I'm sure the whole town would love to hear about it.
If she wanted to be mean she should have waited until they finished then picked up the car and refused to pay for unauthorized work.
modernbeat wrote:
If she wanted to be mean she should have waited until they finished then picked up the car and refused to pay for unauthorized work.
mean? that's what they deserve..
Yeah, there has to be some legal issues with them doing work without authorization.
SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote:
Yeah, there has to be some legal issues with them doing work without authorization.
or how about when they swap plug wires when they are checking a car to try to drum up business? this happened to a friend of mine..
i sold him a Beretta with a 3.1 in it that i had gotten for free because it just died and wouldn't restart.. i put a battery in it and it started... before i sold it to him, i did my usual OCD thing that involves me putting things like stray spark plug wires into the looms in the proper sequence and routing loose vacuum hoses more cleanly and what not. i told him the full deal on the car, and he bought it knowing that it might die on him for no real reason.
a couple of weeks after he bought it from me, it died on him on the way to work, and he coasted it into the parking lot of the repair shop across the street from where he worked and had them look at it because he was in a hurry and didn't really know anything about diagnosing problems on cars with efi and distributorless ignitions.
he goes back during his lunch break to check on the car, and they said that it started right up for them and had a pretty bad misfire that they were pretty sure was the ignition module dying and they could install a new one for some crazy amount like $500. he took the car, paid them something like $50 for their time, and calls me and asks what i think, and i tell him i'll meet him at home after he gets off work..
anyhoo, first thing i notice when i pop the hood is that 2 of the front wires were no longer in the right place- i swap them back and it runs perfectly. he went back there the next day and reamed out everyone he could find as loudly as he could- and since he's 6'6 and weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 pounds at the time, they apologized, gave him his $50 back, and even offered a free oil change.. he told them to shove their free oil change up their ass and to this day he flips them off as he drives by- and this was in '03.. as for what was wrong with the car in the first place- we never figured it out.. he drove it for about 2 years after that and it never acted up again..
This is why all dealers get a bad name and the good guys get dragged down with the bad.
Same issue cops have.
aussiesmg wrote:
This is why all dealers get a bad name and the good guys get dragged down with the bad.
Same issue cops have.
the bad ones ruin it for the other 1%?
Don49
Reader
12/1/12 4:42 a.m.
I am sure all states have very specific laws regarding the need for prior authorization for work over a certain $ amount (usually $100) unless authirized when the repair order is written. I would not only contact the local news, but also the State Attorney General. If possible she should have an attorney contact the dealership on her behalf and do no futher discussion with the dealer herself.
Having had a shop for many years, I can tell you that there is absolutely no defensible position for the shop.
windsordeluxe wrote:
, should she send a rollback and a law enforcement official or take a different approach?
An aquaintance was in kind of a similar siutation. His scenario, and this one, if it happened in MN is considered a civil matter. The guy I know of took his case to small claims court and won.
Man, that's a real shame. Makes you wonder how places like that can stay in business.
novaderrik wrote:
the bad ones ruin it for the other 1%?
Exactly. I have never met a dealership I liked. Private shops? A couple. But for the most part, it's a sleezy business because it is so easy to take advantage of.
Even in a cut and dry case with my 2 year old 2004 Golf, the clutch would sometimes shudder so bad it would HAMMER the car. Obviously the throwout bearing. Take it to the local VW dealership "We can't recreate the problem". WTF, it does it EVERY DAY. I take it for a spin, show them "oh, well I guess we can look at it".
The best part is that they say if they find nothing wrong, they charge me for it. THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG YOU ASSHOLES.
Once they were in and found there was a problem though, they had no issue with me wanting to substitute a non-oem flywheel/clutch, as long as I knew it voided my warranty. I even could have provided the parts, but I decided against it. Which was odd. But whatever.
A guy I know recently had his 4L60E transmission blow up in his truck. He took it to a shop he "trusted" and they'd gone to for a long time. $3k. I have a licenced mechanic that does it for $1k, $1500 built for towing and a gnarly oil cooler as well.
sachilles wrote:
a $26,000 repair?
it costs extra to put Audi logos on the box that the parts come in.
The local MINI dealership told me I had voided my warranty because I put tires on it that weren't run flats. They fixed the power steering and door locks on warranty after I put on a rather dramatic display in the middle of the MINI/BMW waiting room.I don't go there any more.
Dude, that's bizarre. I can't imagine the dealership wasting their time and good will like that. They must not have had any other work going on, perhaps their bad reputation has tanked the traffic through the service department??
I used to work at a dealership and quit because of shady stuff like that.
For instance, customer brought in his Mazda millennia with complaints of over heating. Before I even pulled the car in the shop the service writer had already sold them a water pump, thermostat and a radiator. I looked at he car and the coolant was the original stuff that had turned from green to brown over the years. A simple coolant flush fixed the overheating. I went back to the service writer and told him te good news, only to be bitched at told to install te parts because it was already written up that way. So I had to do all that work for nothing. berkeley that place.
wbjones
UltraDork
12/1/12 12:02 p.m.
what would have happened if you had left a note for the owners detailing your findings and the response of the service writer ? 
I deeply considered it. I suppose I was worried of the repercussions once the HMFIC's found the source. Looking back, I should have done it seeing that I quit a few weeks after that.
Update, I accompanied my friend to the dealership to pick up her car. They did not charge her for the oil change or anything else. I am still planning on replacing the timing belt asap since it has been berkleyed with. I will share the details of the entire service history later when I have it in my hands again, (somehow it found its way into my pants while they were getting her keys.) I theorize the shop guys took the wrong silver Elantra into the shop and went to town. If they would have been honest and admitted their mistake, I would have advised her to go ahead and pay for the timing belt, if they would throw in a water pump and a timing belt tensioner too. (Why would anyone NOT recommend a water pump and tensioner at the same time?) You are a service writer, your job is to sell E36 M3, it is an easy upsell if you aren't a total berkleytard.
As someone who makes his living honestly doing this, I can say the scenario mentioned here is the exception, not the rule. I know of one instance where a $3k Aisin transmission was installed in a Cherokee when the real problem was a throttle position sensor. All we would have had to do was replace the TPS, then zap the customer for the transmission. Nope. We ate that $3k transmission, charged him for the TPS that was the real problem and apologized.
Having said that, I also know of a supercharger which was ordered by a tech at the indie Mercedes shop I worked at for an engine oil leak. Those superchargers have their own oil supply, they don't use engine oil. Turned out the real problem was a crack in the valve cover. The owner of the shop got a used valve cover (so it wouldn't look new) then had me charge the customer for the supercharger. I protested, was told 'so do you really want your job?' I was not exactly in a position to be unemployed so I did what I was told. I was some kind of glad to get away from that slimy SOB and his shop.
