Short story – I have been told by two Jeep dealerships, that they don’t keep the warrantee repair records for vehicles for more than a couple of years. Back to 2005 in this case.
Is that plausible? Wouldn’t they want to keep that info so that, you know, they could maybe track persistent problems and FIX THEM. Seems crazy to me.
Long story – My Wife has a 2002 Grand Jeep Cherokee. It has been pretty much a lemon. Back in 2003 or ’04, she had some warrantee work done. The problem was that it was stuck on defrost (it was an intermittent problem, making it harder to solve).
Well, now it’s happened again. We are NOT going to take it to a dealership. I’m trying to find out what they did to fix it so that my service guy doesn’t have to go through all of the diagnostics.
Seven years worth of warranty records is considerably more than “a couple of years.”
Also, if you’re looking to get them to repeat a warranty repair they made in 2003 or 2004, you’re likely up against a completely different warranty issue. That warranty work was done on a vehicle that was a year old at the time. It’s now nine years later.
OK. It’s more than a couple of years. Hard to believe that’s it’s 2012.
I’m NOT trying to get them to repeat warranty repair. I didn’t say that. I want this info to help with the new service people (It’s not going to be a Jeep dealership. Had too much trouble with them). “Replaced vacuum control assembly” Or “loose vacuum lines” is the info I’m looking for.
Still I think my point stands. It seems strange that they don’t keep that data. I think it could be VERY worthwhile.
My parents must have had experiences like yours early on, because they taught me from the day I first had a car to keep every scrap of paper related to it as long as I owned it.
In fact, due to be lax about cleaning out my files, I still have repair records for cars I no longer own.
I guess what it boils down to is, what did you do with your copy of the paperwork?
My wife has kept every scrap of paper work related to that car. It’s a lot. It does seem odd that that warrantee repair is not in the file. In fact NONE of the warrantee repair tickets are in the file. It seems that we never got anything for them. All other paper work is there.
And in any case, that’s not really germane to my question.
Why would they need to keep data on your specific car tied to a specific owner in order to track persistent problems and FIX THEM? Jeep, Inc would only need to know that a 2002 Jeep got fixed in 2005 for a thing.
If you want more details you should have your own records of what was done to your car and when.
The more I think of this, and the phone calls I made today, I’m sure you guys are right. Jeep Inc. has no need to track every vin, and what happens to it, just what models were affected by what.
The folks I talked to always asked for the vin. But I suspect they where only looking at their in house data base. And that Jeep Inc. doesn’t track the whole vin, on each vehicle though certainly parts of it. I got the impression that they where going to Jeep Inc. to look for the specific vin, and they could not find it.
When I was told that the repair data base was purged every few (few was the word that was used) years, I thought they meant that Jeep Inc. purged the warrantee repair records every few years. Made no sense.
I should have figured it out from there that there was a miscommunication going on, but the local dealers could not understand my question of “what DB are you looking at?”. “Jeeps” was the answer. Not “ours” .
Certainly we could have lost that one warrantee repair receipt. It is odd that no warrantee receipt is in our records. All paid for repairs are in our records. Pretty sure we never got a repair receipt/ticket when it was under warrantee.
And let me state this again - we are not trying to get a problem that was fixed under warrantee to be repaired again when it’s not under warrantee now. Just looking for information. Perhaps I was not clear.
Dealership service manager here.
Yes we purge paper records after a period of time of no visits by a customer. Usually 5 years, but other dealerships in other states the time could vary. If you kept coming in, we kept the records for as long as you kept coming in. So for example you had a 2000 MY car and were still bringing it to our dealership we would have every repair order we had ever generated on that car. If however you came in once for a warranty repair in 2001, in 2006, or Jan of 2007 your file went bye bye.
Why do we purge paper records? Simple answer, space. At my last dealership the annual purge was about 25 feet of shelf space. Don’t purge and I don’t care how big your file room is sooner or later you are out of space.
Now some dealer computer systems will retain a computer record beyond the 5 year time frame mentioned above. The system I use holds every record of every car I have ever worked on. Give me your VIN and I can find the computer record even if I purged the paper years ago.
The dealer might be able to access some information about a warranty repair via the car maker’s computer data base. On my car line, I can see the warranty history on any car I input the VIN for, but the detail is slim to say the least. It may say something along the lines of AC repair with an labor operation code.
Now that I have explained that, now about a problem that occurred in in 2005 and reoccurs in 2012. First off you have no idea if the cause is the same or not until someone diagnoses the car. In 2005 it could have been a lose vacuum line, today it could be a broken vacuum line in the engine compartment, a frozen solenoid valve, or a broken vacuum motor. The symptom is the same, but the causes are different. Or to put it a different way, my one uncle died of a gun shot during WWII in combat, my other uncle died of a heart attack. They are both dead, but I am sure you will agree the causes are nowhere near the same.
Also, you seriously going to have someone NOT diagnose the car and just repeat the repair done 7 years ago. Seriously? Do you feel lucky? Dude, go buy a lottery ticket if you feel that lucky.
If you came into my shop and told me that, I would probably show you the door right then. Or if you amused me enough, I would maybe try to explain to you the folly of your ways.
Either way there is no way I would just agree to repeat the repair and not diagnose the issue first. The reason for this is simple, if what you wanted me to fix did not fix the issue, you would get temporary amnesia and blame me for not fixing it right (been there done that and got that t-shirt).
Customer that diagnose their own cars always forget that they told us to replace part A and then blame us for the car not being fixed when we replace part A.
A quality shop won’t put themselves into that corner.
Man up, find a quality shop and pay the diagnostic and get the car fixed.
Where you were putting forth the idea that the fault is from EXACTLY the same cause as seven years ago. Here let me repeat your words **
**
If that isn’t you looking for the magic screw*, I don’t know what it is.
Just because my one uncle is dead of a gunshot wound in WWII that does not mean we don’t need an autopsy on my other uncle that died last week.
*The magic screw = that one screw on the car that when turned 1/4 turn clockwise fixes all problems. Most often looked for by clueless owners and less than competent technicians.
Two points, dealers generally claim manufacturers warranty back from the manufacturer, so the onus is actually on the manufacturer to keep records of warranty repairs to their vehicles. The dealer will keep their own records of course, but the records kept will vary from dealer to dealer.
Secondly, you have a fault on your car. Yet you are bitching here that the dealer will not assist you in getting it fixed, even though you have made it quite clear that you will not be bringing the car to them and they will not be getting your work. Why exactly should they be worried about you again?
(Its a peeve of mine. I get about a dozen calls a day from people who don’t spend a penny with us, but want me to diagnose their faults over the phone so that their own mechanic can do the repair. We are a business, not a fucking charity helpline.)
Oh give me a frigin break Rick. Yeah, I know that different faults can cause the same or similar problems. Christ. I Just want to give my service guy all the info I can to help him solve it.
Do you not look at the history of a vehicle when making a repair?
I would not call this problem chronic, but it has repeated itself. It was fixed and whatever failed before, failed again. Or, perhaps something else has failed causing the exact same symptoms. I doubt it though.
Umm. Please believe me when I say that I was not looking for a ‘charity helpline’. I was surprised that this information was not available though. From what I can see, we were never given any receipts/info when a warrantee repair was done. We have all other receipts.
What surprised me more was that I was told that the warrantee repair info was deleted after a few years. As I stated before, I thought that the dealership was looking at our specific vin at Jeep Inc. database. I hope I cleared that up in post #7. Makes no sense to track every vin and it’s problems at Jeep Inc. But I’m sure they do track problems by model year, manufacturing plant excreta, excreta.
I donno, perhaps so that my next vehicle I buy will be a Jeep? I will say that the phone calls yesterday where in no way confrontational, and the dealerships seemed a bit surprised that they could not provide the info. I really didn’t think that it was such a big request and that this would turn into such a contentious thread.
