First, I am going to pit my auto dealership. Then I'm going to make them pay.

The BBQ Pit
1

Dear jackasses who had a chance to do things right, but decided against it:
Listen, I know that you’re not making the usual $85.00 per hour on labor when there’s a parts recall (I am not making that figure up- that’s how much dealer-employed mechanics are billed out at in North Jersey). But when I call up to make an appointment, I expect, oh, I dunno, not to get jerked the fuck around.

The story I got on Thursday: Oh, bring the car in on Monday at 1 PM. We’ll set you up as a service appointment and handle you same-day. That’ll give us enough time to order the part, and, if you need it, we’ll change it for you right there- it’ll take about an hour or so.

The story I got on Monday, after driving half an hour to get there: Well, we don’t have the part in stock, and we won’t know if you need the repair until we pull the whole front end apart, and that’ll take about three hours and we have all these cars ahead of you, so we wouldn’t be able to get to it today, so why don’t you bring it back a week from today in the early morning?
You fucking assholes.

Don’t tell me you don’t have the part in stock. You told me you’d order it. It’s a factory fucking recall. You ought to have those things lying around, since Chevy, being a big company (and one that “encourages” its dealers to maintain certain sales quotas) certainly KNOWS HOW MANY FUCKING MALIBUS YOU HAVE SOLD AND THEREFORE HOW MANY PARTS YOU OUGHT TO NEED. Fix my fucking car.

Don’t tell me you don’t know if I need the repair. It’s a factory fucking recall. Even if my car is undamaged, I want the fucking repair. Chevrolet says I need it, and I trust them over your grifter asses. besides, if my steering ever does go, I’m not letting Chevy off the hook so their lawyers can say “He got a recall notice and chose to do nothing about it.” Fix my fucking car.

Don’t tell me it’ll take an hour when it won’t. Don’t try to scare me with a time estimate and then throw a longer one on top of that. I don’t care if it takes a whole fucking day. It’s a factory fucking recall, not a loose fan belt. Didn’t expect me to come in, did you? So you had to scare me back out, eh? Why would you do such a nasty thing?

Oh, yeah. It’s a factory fucking recall. Meaning you’d have to do the work for free. Meaning you’ve got a bay tied up doing standard-rate work that you can’t use to suck the blood out of someone else. So you’ll do whatever the fuck it takes to keep me from actually getting my repair. Listen, fuckers. Fix my fucking car. Check my file again. You can even skip over the part where it says that my family’s last four cars have been bought here, because customer service/retention obviously means shit to you. Get to the part where it shows what I do for a living, see, right there where it says [UAW official]. You want to fuck with me, jackasses? I’ll fuck with you right back. I took a day off work to come out here and have you guys basically tell me to go piss up a rope.

I’m going to drop my car off Monday morning like you said. Then, when your auto shop opens, I am going to get you jackoffs on a conference call with the business agent for the mechanics and the guy who’s in charge of renewing your franchise license. And then we’re going to see just how bad you want to jerk me around.

I look nineteen. But I ain’t nineteen. And not only am I pissed off, I am in a position to actually do something about it. You took one look at my t-shirt and baby face and figured, “blow him off.” Nice work, fuckstains. Now the excrement is about to strike the blades of the air-circulation device. And it’s gonna get all over you.

I hope you bitches brought umbrellas.

2

Oh, I do hope we hear the results of this. Any way you can conference us all in? Because that’s one call I’d love to listen to! :smiley:

3

Jesus, Pup - go get 'em, boy! Mechanics already think they have powers far beyond the ken of ordinary mortals, so it’s nice to think of a couple of them shitting themselves for once. Too many times I’ve found myself in thrall to a mechanic’s schedule & whim - - shove it in hard once for me.

BTW - what’s “UAW?”

4

What’s the problem? I have an '04 Classic (the old Malibu) that is making some hella funny noises in the front end. Might it be the same thing? It might be, because I see there are a few TSBs about what I’m hearing. Too bad I can’t find a copy of them online.

Anyway, I wish you luck.

5

Does UAW = “The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America”?

6

Hmm. Me and my '03 Malibu wish to hear more!

7

United Auto Workers is my assumption.

8

Yes, it does.

I occupy a position of some influence in that organization, and I have a close relationship with both the president of the Local representing the mechanics at my dealership and their business agent. I’m sure that the both of them would love to hear how management is endangering its franchise by refusing to honor recall notices. And I’m sure, on some unofficial level, the guys in the shop will be unhappy that management is turning away steady work in order to keep the bays free for the purpose of gouging.

As far as the recall itself, it’s number 03062, “power steering gear lower pinion bearing separation.”

What does that mean? Well, according to this site (this copy looks like the recall notice), and according to my limited knowledge of automobiles,

"Most reports indicate the driver experienced an intermittent loss of power steering assist when making left turns, usually at low speeds. If the pinion shaft moves too far, some drivers could experience higher resistance when turning left followed by unintended power assist to the right. "

Now, I dunno about you, and I’m no ASE-certified mechanic, but when I turn my steering wheel, I EXPECT the car to go in that direction. Resistance in one direction and “assist” to the OTHER are not part of my intended driving experience, so I’m gonna get this fixed. I shouldn’t HAVE to bust heads to do it, but I’m a vindictive bastard when I want to be, and I generally want to be when I’m arbitrarily fucked with.

(The site linked above also lists the cars affected by this recall. ** Nanoda ** and Doors, I don’t see yours on there, but you might want to check in here just to be safe. If you change your address or if records are updated poorly, you might not get notices you need.)

9

Man, HSHP, that was some well-assmbled brimstone-breathing. You made me very glad that I’m a guy answering phones in California, rather than a Mr. Goodwrench-type in Jersey.

10

Why oh why do dealerships do this??

I used to take my car the the local dealership, where the manager was very nice and treated me like an intelligent human being instead of a clueless female. Then that dealership got consolidated with one in another town and the manager was transferred there, so off I went to that one. But after a while he left to work elsewhere, I don’t know where, but I kept going to the new place out of habit. Bad move.

One day I notice that one of the lift struts in the hatch is badly corroded and weakened, and needs to be replaced. So I call the dealer, describe the problem, ask them to order me another one, and make an appointment to replace it. Come the day, I drive the 40 miles to the shop and wait, and then the guy comes out to tell me that the strut is corroded and needs to be replaced, so they’ll need to order one and I can make another appointment to come back.

Well no shit Sherlock, isn’t that what I told you on the phone? This isn’t rocket science, and I didn’t need to be a mechanic to be able to tell that the damn thing needed replacing. And I didn’t appreciate having to cool my heels in their shitty little waiting room TWICE, not to mention the 40-mile drive and the time away from my desk.

Well, since I was going to have to go somewhere to get it fixed, I just had them order the stupid part and came back when it arrived. I waited for quite a while, then wandered around to peek into the garage and see what was going on. They had removed the old strut, and the hatch was being held up with the decorative walking stick I had bought for my husband as a gift, which had been in the hatch compartment.

I called the manager over, advised him to remove the item in question and prop up the hatch with their own equipment rather than whatever personal property they happened to find lying around in my car. And also advised him that after they finished the repair, I would be taking my business elsewhere.

Been going to the new garage (one that Mr. S had gone to in the past) for several years now. Very decent guys and they use their own tools and everything. :rolleyes:

I’ll also be interested to hear the outcome of the OP.

11

That was sorta beautiful, HSHP. Where were you when I went in for my own re-call adventure? I never did get them to explain what they were doing, which was just as well, since I’m female and car talk acts like acid on my tender feminine brain.

What is it about re-calls, where the dealership they want you to go to is a million miles from your home? Mine was a hour away and I strongly suspect they didn’t even start on it until I came back to pick it up. I sat in that miserable waiting room until they were starting to close up, which nearly made me snap. And I’m good at waiting for cars at the dealer-- my parents owned a Pinto.

On my drive back home I discovered that while working on the re-call problem, they had also broken all the tabs that held the instrument panel part of the dash when it just fell off, going around a corner. Not happy with that small bit of destruction, they had also broken off the tabs that held the cover plate below the steering wheel.

It’s not fun to have a big piece of metal fall onto your foot and wedge itself so as to prevent using either pedals, as you careen down the highway. The cherry on top was breaking my special-order cup holder and taking my cds out of their case and breaking them.

The dealer who actually sold me the car is fantastic. Guess where I’m buying my next car?

12

No, no no – never sit around in that waiting room.

Wander out onto the sales floor, and listen in as the salespeople do their pitches to unsuspecting buyers. Casually interject comments like “This is a year newer model than the one I bought – the one I’m waiting for them to repair. I’m in here a lot, because it seems to need repair so often. But I bet they got that fixed on this year’s model.”

Soon you will have several salespeople out in the shop, yelling at the mechanics to “hurry up and get that car fixed and get her out of here!”. Plus next time you bring your car in, they WILL have it ready at the promised time. And if they don’t, they’ll call you at home and tell you you don’t need to come in until later.

If they don’t treat you right, you don’t have to treat them right either.

13

Bwahahahaha! That is absolutely EEEEEE-VIL! I’m gonna have to remember that one, because I fully intend to use it! Thanks.

14

So.

Was this a fucking factory recall or what? It wasn’t very clear to me.

::::::::::::::::::::::;;;;flees:::::::::::::::::::::::::

15

?? I was unaware of any recall notice that sends you to a particular dealer.
I know for a fact that my company does not do this. FWIW at all the dealers I have worked at recalls are handled in the same manner as any other work, no prefrence for customer pay, or ignoring recall work. Hell there have been a few recalls where the techs would fight to get them cause they paid better than some customer pay jobs.
Of course YMMV

16

northern nj?

is this by any chance a DeFeo dealership?

if so, you have my sympathies. rat bastards they are.

17

On some recalls, I get fast enough at doing the repair that I can double or triple my hourly rate! A few years ago, we had to swap out radios in a lot of BMW K1200LTs, it paid 1.92 hours. I got the time down to 45 minutes or so.
Often, the parts department hasn’t ordered the parts, or enough parts, or the management hasn’t scheduled the work properly. It doesn’t take much for someone to fuck up the system.

grumblegrumble lazy parts department assholes grumble WHERE ARE MY FUCKING VALVE ADJUSTMENT SHIMS YOU LAZY FUCKERS dammitgrumblegrumble

18

My parts guys moonlighted at YOUR dealership? :eek: Who knew?

19

To add to the recall gripe - in favor of the dealership (not to say that HSHP’s dealership had any right to be the dickheads they were. This is a different story…) I got a recall notice on my Escape and let it go for a coupla months knowing I’d need my 15k tune up in a while.

While I was waiting, another recall came in the mail. So I called up the dealership to schedule my tuneup and dual recall service. The person I spoke to (head of the department - I met him when I bought the car) said that not only did they not have the parts for recall #2, they hadn’t even HEARD of it yet.

Ford sent out these thousands of recalls - the Escape is one of their most popular models - and didn’t even bother to tell the dealerships! He said that usually there’s like a 2-month lag between car owners getting the mailings and the dealership getting the parts!

I still haven’t gotten it done yet. I’m sure that Ford is expecting us all to procrastinate. It works. :frowning:

20

Mazda did for me, though I don’t know if it’s usual for them to do so. Maybe it was something only a big dealership could do? Some of the dealerships around here are pretty pathetic. The dealership they sent me to was huge.

DeFeo must mean something else in Italian, because in Spanish it means ‘of the ugly (guy).’ There’s got to be an interesting etymology there, otherwise.