Warranty horror stories
#1
10-30-2007, 10:52 PM
Warranty horror stories
As some of you know I work for a Dodge dealer, and some of you also know that I am going to a managers meeting next week. What I want to hear is warranty horror stories. I want to hear when you have been treated in a manner that you think is unfair. When the dealer said that mods were the cause of your problem.Tell me about beingdenied warranty coverage.. But to be fair, tell me the whole story not just your side. Please keep this to just warranty issues. I am posting this in the 3rd gen and diesel forums...Thanks in advance for the posts. I am taking this and the posts from the earlier forumtitled questions about dealers to the meeting with me......
Link to earlier forum>>>https://dodgeforum.com/m_974580/mpag.../tm.htm#974580
Link to earlier forum>>>https://dodgeforum.com/m_974580/mpag.../tm.htm#974580
#3
10-30-2007, 11:02 PM
#4
10-31-2007, 01:13 AM
#5
10-31-2007, 09:35 AM
RE: Warranty horror stiries
Don't bring this story in, but I'll tell it to you how I remember it.
My parents just bought out 2001 dodge ram 1500 quad cab. She was a left over from the dealership in 02. When they bought it, they got the warranty and the extended warranty. Well I forget the mileage ( was definatly a few years ago) anyway it was still covered under warrenty when the event happend. It was snowing that day and I was with the boyscouts down in maryland for the weekend for what we called "klondike derby." back to the point. My mom drove down to pick me and my friend up to take us back home at the end of the weekend. It's still snowing, a few inches are on the ground. We pulled over and put her in 4wd. Get back on the road, take our time,and away we go. Going down the bypass, I notice that the rpm's seem to be a bit high for some odd reason. We figured it was because of the 4wdsince we rarely used it (maybe twice before). We get to my friends house and this truck smells bad!At the time Icouldn't describe it... We drive home and park it. Schedule and appt with the dealership and she goes in. Turns out something was wrong with the fluid in the front end. My dad was very ... lol meticulous about the truck and kept this thing clean, and was well taken care of. To date,she has gotten stuck one timetrying to pull our exmark out of the mud (it slipped and my mom was driving it.. haha yea its prb the female driver......again)The truckhas never been off roaded to date either (altho now that it's mine... she will) Me being a teenager at the time, never gets the exact details which is why I do not want you to use this story, and also why there are not alot of details. They take it apart and have to replace some stuff in the axle. Aparently something got in through the vent tube or something.. we could never figure out how since it is way up in the engine compartment. reguardless of how it happened, they gave a quote. It should have been covered (and was gonna be covered under warrenty) until the quote came im pretty sure. Because the figure was over 1000 dollars with labor I assume for the damage, they sent out an insurance adjuster to look at it. He looked and denied the claim. So we bought the warrenty which didn't help us, and was out... over a grand for a truck we just bought a year or two before. We honestly do not know how this would have happened again since it is not taken off road. In our defense, THIS IS A PICKUP!!! with 4WD. I mean come on! Have fun at your meeting!
My parents just bought out 2001 dodge ram 1500 quad cab. She was a left over from the dealership in 02. When they bought it, they got the warranty and the extended warranty. Well I forget the mileage ( was definatly a few years ago) anyway it was still covered under warrenty when the event happend. It was snowing that day and I was with the boyscouts down in maryland for the weekend for what we called "klondike derby." back to the point. My mom drove down to pick me and my friend up to take us back home at the end of the weekend. It's still snowing, a few inches are on the ground. We pulled over and put her in 4wd. Get back on the road, take our time,and away we go. Going down the bypass, I notice that the rpm's seem to be a bit high for some odd reason. We figured it was because of the 4wdsince we rarely used it (maybe twice before). We get to my friends house and this truck smells bad!At the time Icouldn't describe it... We drive home and park it. Schedule and appt with the dealership and she goes in. Turns out something was wrong with the fluid in the front end. My dad was very ... lol meticulous about the truck and kept this thing clean, and was well taken care of. To date,she has gotten stuck one timetrying to pull our exmark out of the mud (it slipped and my mom was driving it.. haha yea its prb the female driver......again)The truckhas never been off roaded to date either (altho now that it's mine... she will) Me being a teenager at the time, never gets the exact details which is why I do not want you to use this story, and also why there are not alot of details. They take it apart and have to replace some stuff in the axle. Aparently something got in through the vent tube or something.. we could never figure out how since it is way up in the engine compartment. reguardless of how it happened, they gave a quote. It should have been covered (and was gonna be covered under warrenty) until the quote came im pretty sure. Because the figure was over 1000 dollars with labor I assume for the damage, they sent out an insurance adjuster to look at it. He looked and denied the claim. So we bought the warrenty which didn't help us, and was out... over a grand for a truck we just bought a year or two before. We honestly do not know how this would have happened again since it is not taken off road. In our defense, THIS IS A PICKUP!!! with 4WD. I mean come on! Have fun at your meeting!
#6
10-31-2007, 02:25 PM
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10-31-2007, 10:11 PM
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#8
11-01-2007, 02:26 AM
RE: Warranty horror stories
I am afraid the Dodge was well out of warranty before I bought it, but if you want some warranty horror stories. Here are three different cases you can use, paraphrase or whatever.
1. My parent purchased aGMC Jimmy back in 2001 and even purchased the extended warranty plan at that time. In early 2003 it becomes extremely hard to get the vehicle to go into four wheel drive. My dad has the issue narrowed down to the $50 dial on the dash that engages the four wheel drive, as everything else on the drive train appears to be functioning and the same symptoms happened on his 99 GMC truck a year earlier. My parents take it back to the dealership where they bought it, and ask for it to be fixed under warranty. The truck only had 25000 miles on it and was two years old, so it was not only under the factory warranty, the extended warranty should have covered it as well. Well the takes the Jimmy to the back and roughly 20 minutes later a service manager comes out and says that the dial will not be covered under warranty as there had been no record of the vehicles oil ever being changed. (My family does our own oil changes, normally) My dad asks how an electrical switch in side the cabin can be related to an engine oil change? The manager stood his ground without giving a valid, logical reason of any real sort.. My dad turned around and walked into the sales/warranty manager’s office and had the remaining portion of the extended warranty cancelled and refunded. The sales/warranty manager tried to make things "right" but after being given such a lame excuse, for voiding warranty work, my dad was not going to deal with it any more. He ended up buying the switch from the Chevy dealership down the road and will never do business with that GMC dealership again. Proved by the fact that he just ordered a fully loaded 2008 Duramax, and the dealer was not even given the chance to bid on it
2. My Mustang has had way too many warranty issues but my favorite has to be the cracked heads. Two years after I bought my 2001 Mustang, I started to smell a little bit of oil burring when my exhaust got hot. There were no drips on the concrete but I could see where the back of my engine was lightly covered in oil and how it could be dripping on the cats. I read up on tsbs on my car and find out that there has been a batch of heads with hairline cracks that have been leaking oil. Ok, so with this information I take my car to the dealer and drop it off to have the leak investigated. I tell them of the information I found and how it really only seems to leak when it is hot and I think the heads might be cracked. I leave and come back a day later and I get he story how they put dye in it and ran the car for a few minutes and they saw nothing after five minutes. They didn't seem to pay attention to when I told them it only seems to leak when it is HOT... not just idling for a few minutes. And then they proceed to tell me that there is nothing they can do for me and ask if I have been dumping oil on my engine? Short point of the sorry is consider listening to the customer if they give specific information about when something happens and don't insult them.
And to wrap up the story, I took the car to another dealership, where I made sure to get the car hot by accelerating up a few on ramps beforehand, and there was dye all over the back of the engine. The bad is that they refused to put in a new engine, and instead put crappy remanufactured heads on an engine with 30k miles on it which had leaky valve seals, and eventually had a valve spring go 26k miles later. And this in turn boils down to how extended warranties for cars are pretty much useless which means I will never buy another Ford after having to with their warranty claims service.
3. My first experience. When I was 18, I got in a minor wreck with my Pontiac Fiero where I T-boned a car that pulled out in front of me. With the lack of any good repair shops in town where I lived, I took my car to the dealership 60 miles away. The car was still drivable; there was just a lot of cosmetic damage. I was told one week to get the part, and two to get them bolted on and painted. Since half the car was being painted already I asked how much it would be if I paid out of pocket to get the whole car repainted, just to make it uniform. I was told $3000 to paint the doors, the roof and the back half when they were already painting the front. I was a little irked and declined to have the rest of the car painted and they were getting $3000 already to fix the front. Anyway come a week later I get a call saying that the parts were there and everything was on schedule and that made me feel like everything was going well. Anyway I got busy and it was four weeks and I heard nothing. I called, and kept leaving messages and got no reply. I need up stopping by the dealer to see what was going on and I found out that they decided to do warranty work, without my permission, on my car. So my car was two weeks late in getting started, and was just coming out of paint now. And here is where the fun gets started. For one it's the wrong color. My Fiero was a bronze color, but it had been in the sun, so there was small faded spot by the sunroof where it was lighter in color. Well they copied the faded color well, so my car was bronze in the back and kind of banana color in front. And to make it even better, people in the dealership seemed to not notice that my dash had been broken, and my CD changer and amplifier from behind the seats were missing. The passenger seat pushed all the way forward, the screws on the floor, the broken dash piece; you would think it was obvious. The manager’s response to me, "Tough Luck." They would fix the paint, but the stereo missing equipment was not their fault. A letter to the dealership owner from my father and the potential possibility of a small claims court action for the missing stereo equipment and I had a polite call from that same manager two days later saying that my car was complete and that they would be paying to replace my equipment. (The dealership had no security on the lot, my car was in a fenced area, where their was no gate, and half the fence was missing and they never locked the cars anyway so it was just an open invitation for people to break into them)
After these experiences, I for one will never let a dealer again touch one of my cars unless it is under warranty, and then I am going to want several things in writing about exactly what is going to be done, when it will be done etc. I will never pay a dealership to work on my car, ever... My parents on the other hand, have gotten to a point in their life where they don't have the time to work on their cars as much anymore and can afford to pay someone to do it, so they do let the dealership do some minor things like an oil change and grease the joints, but even then they missed half the joints on the front end of my dads truck about a month ago. He was not happy at all and I got to hear it all. Considering how easy they joints are to see and get to, I don't think that the dealership will be seeing his truck much more.
1. My parent purchased aGMC Jimmy back in 2001 and even purchased the extended warranty plan at that time. In early 2003 it becomes extremely hard to get the vehicle to go into four wheel drive. My dad has the issue narrowed down to the $50 dial on the dash that engages the four wheel drive, as everything else on the drive train appears to be functioning and the same symptoms happened on his 99 GMC truck a year earlier. My parents take it back to the dealership where they bought it, and ask for it to be fixed under warranty. The truck only had 25000 miles on it and was two years old, so it was not only under the factory warranty, the extended warranty should have covered it as well. Well the takes the Jimmy to the back and roughly 20 minutes later a service manager comes out and says that the dial will not be covered under warranty as there had been no record of the vehicles oil ever being changed. (My family does our own oil changes, normally) My dad asks how an electrical switch in side the cabin can be related to an engine oil change? The manager stood his ground without giving a valid, logical reason of any real sort.. My dad turned around and walked into the sales/warranty manager’s office and had the remaining portion of the extended warranty cancelled and refunded. The sales/warranty manager tried to make things "right" but after being given such a lame excuse, for voiding warranty work, my dad was not going to deal with it any more. He ended up buying the switch from the Chevy dealership down the road and will never do business with that GMC dealership again. Proved by the fact that he just ordered a fully loaded 2008 Duramax, and the dealer was not even given the chance to bid on it
2. My Mustang has had way too many warranty issues but my favorite has to be the cracked heads. Two years after I bought my 2001 Mustang, I started to smell a little bit of oil burring when my exhaust got hot. There were no drips on the concrete but I could see where the back of my engine was lightly covered in oil and how it could be dripping on the cats. I read up on tsbs on my car and find out that there has been a batch of heads with hairline cracks that have been leaking oil. Ok, so with this information I take my car to the dealer and drop it off to have the leak investigated. I tell them of the information I found and how it really only seems to leak when it is hot and I think the heads might be cracked. I leave and come back a day later and I get he story how they put dye in it and ran the car for a few minutes and they saw nothing after five minutes. They didn't seem to pay attention to when I told them it only seems to leak when it is HOT... not just idling for a few minutes. And then they proceed to tell me that there is nothing they can do for me and ask if I have been dumping oil on my engine? Short point of the sorry is consider listening to the customer if they give specific information about when something happens and don't insult them.
And to wrap up the story, I took the car to another dealership, where I made sure to get the car hot by accelerating up a few on ramps beforehand, and there was dye all over the back of the engine. The bad is that they refused to put in a new engine, and instead put crappy remanufactured heads on an engine with 30k miles on it which had leaky valve seals, and eventually had a valve spring go 26k miles later. And this in turn boils down to how extended warranties for cars are pretty much useless which means I will never buy another Ford after having to with their warranty claims service.
3. My first experience. When I was 18, I got in a minor wreck with my Pontiac Fiero where I T-boned a car that pulled out in front of me. With the lack of any good repair shops in town where I lived, I took my car to the dealership 60 miles away. The car was still drivable; there was just a lot of cosmetic damage. I was told one week to get the part, and two to get them bolted on and painted. Since half the car was being painted already I asked how much it would be if I paid out of pocket to get the whole car repainted, just to make it uniform. I was told $3000 to paint the doors, the roof and the back half when they were already painting the front. I was a little irked and declined to have the rest of the car painted and they were getting $3000 already to fix the front. Anyway come a week later I get a call saying that the parts were there and everything was on schedule and that made me feel like everything was going well. Anyway I got busy and it was four weeks and I heard nothing. I called, and kept leaving messages and got no reply. I need up stopping by the dealer to see what was going on and I found out that they decided to do warranty work, without my permission, on my car. So my car was two weeks late in getting started, and was just coming out of paint now. And here is where the fun gets started. For one it's the wrong color. My Fiero was a bronze color, but it had been in the sun, so there was small faded spot by the sunroof where it was lighter in color. Well they copied the faded color well, so my car was bronze in the back and kind of banana color in front. And to make it even better, people in the dealership seemed to not notice that my dash had been broken, and my CD changer and amplifier from behind the seats were missing. The passenger seat pushed all the way forward, the screws on the floor, the broken dash piece; you would think it was obvious. The manager’s response to me, "Tough Luck." They would fix the paint, but the stereo missing equipment was not their fault. A letter to the dealership owner from my father and the potential possibility of a small claims court action for the missing stereo equipment and I had a polite call from that same manager two days later saying that my car was complete and that they would be paying to replace my equipment. (The dealership had no security on the lot, my car was in a fenced area, where their was no gate, and half the fence was missing and they never locked the cars anyway so it was just an open invitation for people to break into them)
After these experiences, I for one will never let a dealer again touch one of my cars unless it is under warranty, and then I am going to want several things in writing about exactly what is going to be done, when it will be done etc. I will never pay a dealership to work on my car, ever... My parents on the other hand, have gotten to a point in their life where they don't have the time to work on their cars as much anymore and can afford to pay someone to do it, so they do let the dealership do some minor things like an oil change and grease the joints, but even then they missed half the joints on the front end of my dads truck about a month ago. He was not happy at all and I got to hear it all. Considering how easy they joints are to see and get to, I don't think that the dealership will be seeing his truck much more.