New Cars and Dealerships

[69_500]

Anyone else have to deal with dealerships dragging their feet on repairing a car/truck/suv before the warranty lapses? Our 2004 Durango has been giving a vibration back through the gas pedal at about 18 mph, more like the pedal slaps back up against your foot.
We took it into the dealership to have it looked at (had 30,000 miles on it). They had it for the whole day and tell us they didn't get a chance to look at it. Rescheduled us to come back in 2 weeks, and drop it so they can fix it. In the mean time the knob for the a/c cracked so we asked if they would fix that as well. They said yes.
So we drop it off a second time for the whole day, and get a call back at 4 pm saying they didn't get a chance to look at the Durango today, and that they would have to order the knob for the a/c control as they don't have one in stock.
This time I'm upset. I said to them "you rescheduled us to drop it off 2 weeks ago knowing what it needed, and knowing what parts you would possibly need to do the repairs. How would you not have an a/c knob in stock when you knew you had to replace it?"
So to make matters worse they reschedule us to drop it off this morning for a 3rd time to do the repairs by now the Durango has 34,000 miles on it and we are preparing a vacation in 2 weeks to go to Florida from Indiana. So i want it fixed before the long drive, and also before the warranty lapses. Anyways we drop it off today and they call my wife at 4 pm to say they didn't get a chance to look at it today, and that they will need it tomorrow to diagnose the problem and then fix it. I'll just say this they had better be glad that I didn't hear this until I got home from work at 7 pm, and they had already closed for the night. Because I would have made a bee line over to that dealership and probably would have chocked the manager. That is just total lack of organization in my opinion. This makes the 3rd time we have went out of our way to get them the Durango for a whole day to look at it, and they don't even take the time to look at it. My guess is because its a warranty fix, and they figure if they keep dicking me around sooner or later it will be over the 36,000 miles and then they will find the time to look at it because it would be costing me.
Just wanted to see if anyone else has went through crap like this.

[dodge freak]

Well no but when I work at a dealer-GM Buick- if it was a warranty repair GM would only pay 40 % of the labor cost, so nobody wanted to do warranty repair work. Thats whats happening in your case. I would called Chrysler HQ and try to speak with someone, 4 days and they can't even look at it ? Can't believe Chrysler would think thats right. Good Luck

[69_500]

Only thing is that it hasn't been 4 days consecutively, its been 4 different 1 day scenario's.

[MichaelRW]

Get a copy of the repair order if you haven't yet. In order to work on your car they should have a repair order documenting what the problem is and your signature authorizing them to perform the repairs. This establishes that the problem existed before the warranty runs out. If the warranty runs out before they perform the repairs because of their delays you are still covered then.

[73 Charger 440]

Last year we got pretty upset with Chrysler... First off, we owned 3 Ram 3500s (2002, 2004, 2005) - all of which were bought from the same dealership and all of them were sold to us as having 100,000 mile powertrain warranty (described to us as engine, tranny and rear end)... In fact we have a letter from Chrysler stating it (specifically the transmission).

Anyways, we were on a trip coming back from California, I forget the exactly mileage but it was something around 68k (on a few month old truck) and the transmission started keeping a bit of noise, nothing bad but we still wanted to get it checked out. It was in the evening already so when I called the Dodge dealership (didn't have Chrysler's number because after 3 times of ordering the manual it still hadnt shown up, never came with the new truck...) the service department was closed so I spoke with a person in truck sales and he stated the warranty is until 100k on the transmission. As I said the noise wasnt bad, but we still noticed it and we knew a dealership on the way back wouldnt have time to look at it on the same day, plus we were towing a 48 foot trailer. Had the noise gotten worse we would have gone to the closest dealer but it didnt.

When we did get back to Florida, we went to the dealer the truck was bought from and in the service department were told that the transmission was out of warranty (it was now at 70,100 something)... They said the earilest they can look at the truck would be in two weeks (and we'd have to leave it now) and even when they could look at it they dont have a manual transmission technician.

We ended up taking the truck to a local transmission shop, the problem was that on 2005 models there was some kind of pump removed from the tranny and it caused a bearing and shaft to wear out. The rebuild was expensive and in the end Dodge didnt cover it because they claimed they dont cover 3rd party repairs.

[69_500]

Well they finally returned our Durango today. The A/C knobs are fixed, haven't gotten around to asking the wife if they actually fixed the rest or not.

[Silver R/T]

so much for US customer service