No helpful input from me but seriously...**** the stealerships.

I'm recently having an issue with wife's car and have been having a hell of a time finding reliable, honest shops. I was to the point where I wanted to schedule an appointment with the stealership for her Mitsubishi. So far I have heard it is the oil pump and now valve lifter broke. For those of you that have read on a previous thread, it was either sludge, which I crossed off or lifter tap. We'll see, at a local shop getting checked. Didn't wanna take it to the stealership to pay $122.10 just to diagnose something a lot of us on here already figured it would be. ****ing A men!

 

Thanks for all the responses gentleman. I thought I'd briefly update everyone. I picked the truck up today from Les Schwab and it runs excellently; no squeaks at all. Turns out the strut mounts were warn out so it ended up metal on metal. Cost me $230 to have both sides replaced and the problem is solved.

I'll be heading down to the dealership tomorrow (Wednesday) morning to try and retrieve my $102 diagnostic fee. I'll let you all know how that turns out.

 

Glad to hear it got figured out Frank. Hopefully the dealership doesn't give you a hard time about getting that money back.

 

dealerships are absolutely terrible. I just took my ram in to get the power seat fixed for free. It was one of the conditions when I bought my truck. I go to pick it up only to realize that they had put in a used seat (with a huge ink stain on it) that didnt have the lumbar support that the first seat had. when I told them about it, they said they didnt realize the first one had lumbar support. Now they are going to have to do it again.

a few years ago, I took my dakota to a different dealership to get the ignition lock recall done. I waited there for 2 hours while they supposedly did the repair. When I got in it, the first thing I did was put the truck in drive without pressing the brake or even having the key in the ignition (which was what the recall was for). When I told them about it.. they said they replaced the parts and it must not have worked so there was nothing they could do about it. I just laughed. Then I told them that if a little kid got into my truck and put it into drive and let it roll into a crowd of people or something they would be held financially responsible and said to hell with it..

 

They hire friggin' morons! I just got back from taking my mom's Journey in for 2 recalls. I got to her place in Florida from Georgia over the weekend and she hands me the two of them.
I call monday morning, give the service desk idiot the two recall numbers and he gives me a 1:30 Wed. appointment. I then SPECIFICALLY ask if they have all the necessary parts in stock to do BOTH repairs because I am traveling a good distance to get there and would like to make sure both get done in one trip. He tells me "yup, everything is here, no problem"

Sure enough I get there at 1:20 today, am told it'd take about an hour and half so I get a buddy who's working at the golf course where I used to work to pick me up and hit a couple of buckets of ***** to kill the time. (the course is only 3 miles from the dealership).

Show up at 3:00. vehicle is outside waiting for me. Goto the service desk where I'm told that they could only do one of the two recalls and they had to order the part for the other one! Should arrive in about a week to 10 days!

Why does this have to be so hard???

 

Amen brother. Though I'm afraid it's not that they are morons, but rather they seem to simply not give a damn about us poor schmucks who, among a sea of options, chose to trust them with our vehicles.

Couldn't go down to dealership today so I called instead. Spoke with the service adviser who had "helped" me initially who of course pawned me off to the service manager's voicemail. I left a brief message stating the plain facts without any fluff (or cussing) and received no call back. Surprise. I called the service manager directly about five hours later, told the service department receptionist that it was important that the manager called me back and to please forward me again to his phone. No answer. No returned call. Surprise.

I'd really hate to go to war over $102 but so help me, I will.

 

I almost feel like the invention of OBDII and standard code protocol has ruined dealer technicians. I have a FSM for my buddies Subaru STI and use that if and when he ever has a problem.. One time his wipers were acting up so used the fact. schematic to diag and then replace the switch..

but if you notice at the end of all the tshooting sections there is a list of steps to perform to fix the problem. and all of them involve replacing parts.. nothing about testing.. nothing about using your brain.. it's just car has X problem start with Y fix... if that doesn't work do this and so on.

And when I was having my fuel lean code in my ram that was pretty much what the dealer told me was that they have a list of parts in order to replace and that's what they do.... not to mention they could only work on the truck if the CEL was on because apparently there's no such thing as a stored code after the light goes off lol...

 

Everything is like that anymore, Ben. I was in high school in the early 80s when PCs were in there infancy. Got into it at the start and learned to repair them. At that time, motherboards were close to a grand and there was no just replacing a bad one. You had to board level troubleshoot and de-solder and solder chips if you wanted to fix one.

I've been out of the industry since about '04, but the last ten years or so I was in it, it just wasn't cost effective to put that kinda time in a part that could be replaced for $100. Cheap, mass produced Chinese crap bought on low bid replaced those $1000 Mylex and IBM PC boards. They tore up 5x more often, but they were just so inexpensive to use.

The need to do as much work in as little time as possible to push out volume is the name of the game today. I've got a cousin in the medical field and the doctor she worked for gave up his private practice and went to a large firm. He at least negotiated a position for a couple in his staff including her with the new firm.

Her first week there, she had to sit through seminars out the a$$, headed by a general office manager who's last gig was being the manager of the local Wal-Mart. In these seminars, which doctors had to sit through as well, nothing was discussed about hard core medicine, but rather how to do as much as possible so the doctor could spend an average of 10 minutes with each patient, with much of the initial tests and readings done by a $12 an hour staff person. Then she had to sit through one about UPSELLING costly test procedures based on what symptoms the patient was having.
Spreadsheets and weekly analysis reports are included in a weekly meeting, seeing what doctors are spending too much time with patients, what employees are not meeting quotas for scheduling tests and so on.

Society has become "get 'em in, whack them for all you can, get 'em out and get on to the next victim"...

 

Please let me know if there is a section on this forum to inquire about reputable repair shops around the country. Having written that, contact me if you ever want the name of a reputable repair shop in Ontario County NY.

 

Update: The service department manager had not returned my third call so I again called and left a still professional, but less than friendly voicemail for him. 20 minutes later the service tech that initially helped me called and said they would refund my $102 due to a "misdiagnosis". Misdiagnosis my ***. She said it would take up to two weeks to clear my bank account but whatever. I'm just glad I will get it back.

Of course, should it never clear my bank, I will be escalating this further.